Monitoring and Assessment

The primary purpose of assessment is to enhance learning and enable the reporting of student's achievement. The Curriculum Framework (1998) outlines five essential principles of assessment needed to ensure that the practices used by teachers are valid, educative, explicit, fair and comprehensive.

Whether at the level of the classroom, school or system, assessment information should enable judgements to be made about students' progress towards the desired outcomes in a way that is fair and contributes to continued learning.

Thus, assessment information should enable teachers and students to know what students can do assisted and what they can do unassisted and what they can do when working in groups and when working alone. It should enable them to distinguish between work that is original and non-routine and work that is reproductive or memorised.

Fair assessment is based on criteria which are valid and transparent and applied with consistency and without discrimination. These in turn require an assessment regime based upon multiple kinds and sources of evidence. Assessment is likely to enhance learning when the criteria are valid and explicit and when the assessment activities are themselves educative. (Curriculum Framework, p 37, 1998)

When making judgements about the outcomes of gifted and talented students, teachers should use the Outcomes and Standards Framework as a guide, as some students will be working at higher levels than their phase of development peers.