How do secondary students in Bangladesh make sense of school based assessment (SBA)?

• Main Author: Purvin, Nazma
• Language: en
• Published: University of Canterbury. Educational Studies and Human Development 2012
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10092/6211

There has long been criticism of the adequacy of end-of-year summative assessment in secondary schools in Bangladesh. As a result of this, formative assessment arrived in this educational assessment landscape in the form of school-based assessment (SBA) in 2006. SBA aspires to incorporate the use of formative assessment to assess many of the important objectives of secondary education, such as solving problems, expressing thoughts clearly in speech, learning to behave appropriately, and developing sound personal and social values. While this relatively new approach has many merits, it is nevertheless the subject of ongoing debates. This study involves exploring SBA from students’ perspective using a qualitative research design. It aims to identify students’ understanding of the nature and purpose of SBA, the perceived usefulness of SBA and the factors hindering its implementation.