Opinion: Hong Kong's Education Bureau made right move in suspending school-based assessment
The Education Bureau has recently revamped its policy on school-based assessment (SBA) for senior secondary subjects, scrapping the original plan of introducing it to more examinable subjects by phases, but retaining it for those that have already implemented it and fine-tuning existing practices.
Some welcome the move, while others raise objections, arguing that if SBA is indeed good for learning by helping both teachers and students review academic progress and is widely practised elsewhere in the world, there is no reason why it should not be adopted across the board.
Personally, I applaud the bureau's decision for several reasons. First, the tremendous workload stemming from SBA has in recent years taken much of teachers' time away from teaching and learning; they have to spend more time on assessment, marks submission, record-keeping and other logistical issues, resulting in less time providing meaningful one-on-one feedback to students, which is far more important than the act of assessment in promoting learning. That can easily lead to teaching for assessment. It is therefore appropriate to limit SBA's scope, sharpen its practice and let schools have a breather.
Most SBAs take the form of project work, which is a good way to help students develop study skills, analytical thinking and even social skills. But if every subject needs to carry out an SBA, one can imagine how it could have a negative impact on students. They would be kept under constant pressure throughout the school year because they are so exam-oriented and mark-conscious.
That would reduce the psychological room for real learning, leading to meaningless cut-and-paste work for project reports just to meet assessment requirements, and weariness.
It is what American systems scientist Peter Senge calls "the tragedy of the commons" - when every subject is vying for students' time and energy, seemingly for a good cause, it would ultimately destroy genuine learning as the total burden would just overwhelm them.