History of assessment:

          The term assessment was first used in France and in French this term was known as “assessor” which means “to fax a tax”.

After that, it was used in China in the 18th century for the purpose of doing politics. There in China if someone wanted to be a president or minister he had to pass a test. Then after the test the candidates were assessed if only they were passed then they could do leadership.

          After China this term was used in England, the meaning of assessment in England was “to sit beside”. The purpose was to sit beside someone in order to observe him/her.

          After a long journey of a century then this term was brought in Education by Henry Fischer in the late 19th century.  The purpose of assessment in Education is to “check and balance” which means to check whether students are learning the objectives or not.

          Assessing the students’ teacher after teaching for a period of time takes different kinds of tests, quizzes, etc just to check whether learners have understood the topics or not.

          In the world, every institution does have multiple processes to assess students. In the same manner in Pakistan, there are multiple institutions that are assessing students’ outcomes, nearly 163 Boards are there in Pakistan that have their own process of assessing students.

BBISE (Balochistan Board of Intermediate Secondary Education)

          This is a board present in Quetta that assesses from 8th to 12th level students. It mostly deals with annual system examination in which the teacher is else, the papermaker is else, the examiner is else and the checker is else.

UOB: (University of Balochistan)

          This is a university present in Quetta too that takes the examination of those students who have completed their 12th. It also had a process of assessing the students but unfortunately, it was changed in 2019 now UOT also has the status of being a board and conducts examination of BA level students.

Semester System;

          The system of assessing students in which teachers teach limited topics and then take tests for the assessment of students.

Annual System;

          The system of assessing in which neither teacher completes syllabus nor it has taught limited topics. The teacher teaches the syllabus that he/she got from the institution and then he is unaware about assessment because in this system teacher is only to teach not to assess the assessors are others.

Major Types of Assessment

Formative assessment;

          This is an ongoing assessment that the teacher can apply during lectures by throwing a question to the students, sometimes teachers feel that a student is mentally not present he/she asks questions to that student to be sure that the student is mentally present learning.

In the same manner, teachers can apply it during the semester by quizzes, assignments, tasks, etc.

          The term assessment has been defined with only a word by Coral Tomlinson who said that assessment means “Today”. He had given this meaning because he believed for modifying tomorrow's instructions one has to be assessed today.

          If a teacher assesses his/her students today, then the tomorrow of the students can be modified

and bright and for that, a teacher has to be an observer and observe the students.

Elements of assessment

          MR. Coral Tomlinson suggested that by process of assessment we go for four WH questions which are called elements of assessment and mentioned below.

What to assess?                                                                                     

          This element refers to whatever teacher teaches must assess same things not to be a journal and must not assess the topics that are not taught yet.

How to assess?                                                                                      

          This element refers to the teacher's should fix a plan that I should assess verbally, objectively, non-verbally, through quizzes, tests,s or something else. We have certain tools to assess.

 How much to assess?                                                                                      

          The quantity teacher has taught must assess that not to assess that is not taught. If the syllabus is not completed teacher should not bring those topics in tests or exams that are yet to teach.

 When to assess?

          This element refers to when teachers make a plan about the time of assessing that is when to assess?

          It depends, if the requirement of assessment is in the duration of the lecture then the teacher does it during the lecture and if the syllabus is finished then the teacher assesses in the shape of a Midterm paper or Final term paper.

 

By:  Abdul Basit Fida

The writer is a student at Atta Shad Degree College Turbat

Kech Balochistan