I have heard a rumour of the impending demise of the Assessment Standards (ASs). Actually, more than rumour …. The Minister of Basic Education announced last year that the curriculum would be reviewed with the aim of simplifying its structure.  This is currently on the go.  Sue Müller of NAPTOSA, who has served as a member of the task team which was set up to review the curriculum, recently told me that one of the problems  which the reviewers of the curriculum have identified is that ‘content knowledge is often obscured by writing it into the Assessment Standards (ASs)’. She continues as follows:

‘This makes it extremely difficult for teachers to “extract” and sequence specific content. And, because the skills and competences are also often not clear, it makes it difficult for teachers to identify WHAT they have to teach. The ASs (wrongly) place the emphasis on the notion of an AS as a discrete “thing” that can be taught, assessed and reported against. Hence provincial officials demanding that teachers record learner performance against the ASs! ‘

Great news! One of the biggest banes of teachers’ lives has been having to pretend that they teach and assess according to the ASs. So you are not meant to say, ‘I’m going to teach this poem’ or ‘I’m going to teach fractions’. Heaven forbid! You are meant to say, ‘What AS shall I teach next?  I think it’s time for AS 12.3 or 2.8.’ Then you are meant to follow this up with a further question: ‘Now that I’ve chosen my AS, what shall I use to teach this AS? Well, I could teach a poem (one from the prescribed list).’ Humbug! You have your list of poems – in the same way you have the content that you need to teach in Maths – and that’s where you start, using – if they are of any value – the ASs to guide you regarding this.

But there’s more! The officious officials from the Department added further demands. Work Schedules and Subject/Learning Programmes (the latter now mercifully abolished – I sincerely hope those same officials have taken note) had to be drafted in terms of these asinine items, instead of starting with what has to be taught and then, once again, if helpful, using the ASs to guide one here.

But there’s even more! The bureaucratic district despots also insisted that lesson plans be littered with ASs – which, if teachers bothered to do (if only for WSE visits) – would be shoved in to no purpose. I have seen many lesson plans which contain these but where the teacher never refers to them. Far better – if the teacher is still inexperienced – would be to jot down what he/she hopes to achieve in a lesson. I recently gave my English Method students at Stellenbosch University the following example when planning to teach a poem:

WHAT LEARNERS ARE MEANT TO LEARN / ACHIEVE FROM THE LESSON

Specific:

1. Understand the poem.
2. Be able to answer questions on the poem – demonstrate understanding.
3. Understand how poetry works, for example, understanding that poetry is not necessarily rhymed or has a set metre – what makes this poem a poem?
4. Understand how to analyse a poem.

General:

1. Understand the effects of apartheid better.
2. Develop critical thinking by asking learners.
3. Develop ability to substantiate answers by reference to a text.
4. Develop ability to use appropriate language for formal contexts.
5. Improve reading ability and language usage generally.
6. Understand the concept of ‘connotation’.

This is far more helpful than a list of ASs. At least the teacher is called upon to adopt a focused approach, to think about what they are hoping to achieve with their learners, rather than merely to go to class simply ‘to teach the poem’. At any rate, as I understand the Curriculum Minute issued by the DoBE, lesson plans are no longer required as formal documents – the list of items to be included in the ‘teacher’s file’ does not mention this.

And then there was also the demand that teachers should record learner assessment against the ASs – a nonsense expectation.

So the ASs are to be shipped off to the abattoir hopefully by 2011. What do we do in the meantime? Well, they remain part of policy, but surely if they have been condemned, it would be foolish to follow them dutifully. Surely teachers as professionals should be allowed to use them as a rough guideline where necessary, but not to have to list them or assess against them. Leave them to plan, teach and assess in a meaningful way which involves deciding what to teach, how to teach it – and with what goals in mind – and then how to assess it in terms of those goals. This is how Sue Müller put it to me when I raised this issue with her:

I take your point about the so-called ‘Assessment Standards’ that, mostly, describe activities and have very little to do with assessing learner performance. Remember that it is NOT national policy to ‘assess the ASs’, nor to report against them. However, the subject or Learning Area content is sometimes embedded in the ASs and without them some subjects / LAs would be devoid of content or knowledge. This varies across subjects / LAs.  Where they are awkward, where they make little sense or where they do not include embedded subject / LA  knowledge, it would make no sense to adhere to them rigidly especially as learner performance cannot be reported against them.

I would advise teachers to check with subject advisors first and not to deviate too much from what they have been doing up till now as the new Curriculum and Assessment Policy does not yet exist. However, they should NOT be assessing individual Assessment Standards nor should they be attempting to report learner performance against individual ASs.

The key point to teachers is: Say NO to bullying by departmental officials on the slavish adherence to the ASs! Let them make asses of themselves if they want to, but don’t join them.

Assessment