Written examinations are only one way to assess a person’s knowledge and skill.

Would we accept that driving licences should be passed by only sitting a written examination.?

Would you want to be operated on by a surgeon who had only passed written examinations?

Would you be happier with a surgeon who had done a period of training with an expert surgeon and who gradually learned and practiced techniques under a regime of assessment and checking?

 

Internal assessment is a general term for a whole range of other assessment techniques that include projects, practical work, submissions, essays, tests, and demonstrations.

 

In drama you would want to see a performance, in woodwork a finished article, in art a piece of work or a portfolio and in science a student’s practical experimental skills. 

 

Can creative writing genuinely be assessed in a one off examination? What author writes a book in a strict time frame and doesn’t draft and redraft, polish and edit and get suggestions from experts and friends?

 

Do different assessments produce different results at different times? Of course. Just like any human endeavour varies in quality and success from time to time so does performance in assessment.   In fact one of the advantages of internal assessment is that it can take place over a longer period of time and thus be less susceptible to quirky performance effects.

 

Examinations can vary enormously. When an examination only has to decide the rank order of candidates, in other words who is best and who is worst, it doesn’t matters so much if the exam varies from year to year. You can also scale the marks and move them round to disguise easy years and hard years because the standard is not the main issue, the order of candidates is.    School Certificate was like this. Over time people came to believe that somehow the examination kept standards up. It didn’t. It could hide changes of standards from year to year. 

 

Research has found that teachers’ judgements about how students would do at University were more accurate a predictor of success at University than the University Entrance examination was.

 

If the weakness of examinations is that they do vary in standard and impact from year to year and they can be statistically manipulated the weakness of internal assessment is that it is open to poor professional practice and to undue influence by personal relationships. But both types of assessment are valid.

 

There are national spot checks in every subject in every school every year. Teachers have to show the internal assessment they are using, their marking schedule and their judgements of student work to outside experts who give us feedback on the results. If we don’t keep up to standard we can loose our “licence” to internally assess for NCEA.  Over half the Achievement Standards in NCEA are assessed by written examinations.

 

Exams demand focussed challenging tasks from students. They have no personal tailoring because they are held at a fixed time independent of readiness, mood, emotional state, physical state and learning style.

 

Internal assessment is good because it provides for feedback. It challenges student performance to get better. It allows ‘coaching’ and re-submission. (Which sport team doesn’t believe in training, coaching, drilling and opportunities for frequent re-playing?). It can be influenced more than examinations by teacher professional practice and by relationships between teacher and student.

 

Which is best? Well it depends. Scholarship level Chemistry suits an examination. Public speaking suits internal assessment. Doing simple calculations can be assessed by examination, painting needs submission of a piece of work to an outside expert, while a research project is best assessed over a period of time by the teacher.

 

NCEA uses all forms of assessment. It is much better than SC and UE at matching the topic being studied with an appropriate assessment style and technique. It caters for a wider range of learning styles. The internal assessment components are checked regularly and strictly. The examination scripts are subject to peer review every year.