Issues in School Based Assessment (SBA) in Malaysia

1. Informational-personal.
Informational personal item focus on the teacher awareness of when implementing SBA.
It also looks into personal awareness of how SBA changes their academic role and
personal life (in terms of time, energy and commitment).
From the result, respondent (teachers) admit that their time, energy and commitment are
require very much in demand in the implementation of SBA. SBA requires a certain level
of commitment among teachers. In spite of knowing that SBA require some commitment
from them, their knowledge of matters pertaining to SBA such as how the marks are
moderated, is not encouraging. It showed that, teachers also indicated difficulty in
analyzing SBA scores.
As a suggestion, this is relatively low suggested that there is a need to know how the
process of moderation of marks needs to be carried out.
2. In marking students assessment, bands are given according to the students
performance. The issues that have been raised by the society are on how teachers
evaluate their students. Factors such as the relationships between teachers and
students will influence their evaluation towards the students. Additionally, some teacher
might not have the idea on how to distinguish each band because they do not have
enough exposure on it since it is implemented. Some teacher might just grade their
students based on the rubrics given without really understand it. Thus, the chances of
the teacher biasness might still affect their grade even though students have strived for a
better score.

3. Management
This item is focused the managing time to complete all tasks relating to SBA. The tasks
include filling, key in data, planning for assessment, as well as managing students.
Teachers indicated difficulty in proper management of SBA due to time constraint is a
major problem. They have many requirement including non-academic requirement
entailing doing analysis and a lot of other paper work. From the previous research
showed that, there are respondent that have awareness of their pertaining to SBA.
Some of teachers know that their actual knowledge about SBA is not good as might like
it to be.
The ministry should really carry out a study to ensure whether there is sufficient number
of teachers prior to the implementation of a policy such SBA. Alternatively, the
educational planners might consider reliving the teachers of some of the administrative
work.

4. Attendance student
SBA is a formative assessment which means that the continuous attendance of the
students is the great importance to the teachers. If there is students that not come to
school, the teacher need to find another time to assess that student.

5. Students motivation are decreasing
The implementation of SBA terminates examination, such PMR and year-end
examinations. Therefore, students have lost the driving force to study and they are not
keen in learning anymore. They have lost their goal in the final exam.

Issues of SBA in Malaysia
1. Teachers capable and sufficient knowledge to carryout SBA.
2. Time constraint, increase teacher work load, lack of knowledge, monitoring as well as
supervision as obstacle to effective implementation of SBA.
3. Teachers abilities and roles to meet all the SBA requirements.
4. The filling needs to be update, and there are lacks of space to keep all the evidence for
references.
5. Teacher tend to focus more in completing the students assessment, thus pay less
attention to the student development in classroom.







Issues of SBA in other country
1. Issues of reliability and comparability of result.
According to Broadfoot (1995) state that, in a high stakes environment in which
to a very significant extent, test results determined life chances, it was inevitable that
there should be an overwhelming emphasis on reliability so that the assessment might
seem to operate fairly and consistently. Wood (1991) emphasis that the examination
bodies are running an examination and therefore have to care about reliability. Tedious it
may be to have to observe this dictum, but it is simply no use having the most wonderful
examination in the world if it cannot be marked and graded reliably. However, the issues
of validity given less importance and Broadfoot (1995) state that the question of validity
whether the test does measure what it is intended to measure has arguably been
subordinated to the overwhelming need for comparability of results. In addition, as
Raivoce and Pongi (2001) suggest the validity of SBA depends to a large extent on the
various assessment tasks students are required to perform.

There is some overview for effective SBA system. Burton (1992) has provided the
following five rules of the thumb for evaluating different approaches:
1. The assessment should be appropriate to what is being assessed.
2. The assessment should enable the learner to demonstrate positive achievement and
reflect the learners strengths.
3. The criteria for successful performance should be clear to all concerned
4. The assessment should be appropriate to all persons being assessed
5. The style of assessment should blend with the learning pattern so it contributes to it.
According to Raffan (2001) the keys to improving reliability and meeting the other
challenges in a summative school-based assessment are probably:
1. Providing teachers with sufficient, appropriate advice in booklets, videos and training
meetings and assessor networks
2. Giving sufficient time and attention to moderation procedures.


The responsibility of providing teachers with sufficient information lies with the
awarding body. In the UK, for example, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority
(QCA) publishes a Code of Ethics for the main examinations held at ages 16 and 18.
This states that the Awarding Bodies must:
1. Set down explicit parameters and instructions for the setting of coursework
tasks and must publish detailed marking criteria.
2. They must also normally provide a portfolio of exemplar tasks and marks
schemes that meet the defined parameters and criteria.

2. Record keeping system
The issues of efficient record keeping systems are also critical. Recording and
reporting on students progress and achievement takes time and needs particular skills.
Hence, teachers and students need to be organized in order to keep meaningful and
complete records and for the process of learning to be apparent in these records.
Furthermore, the evidence on which decisions are taken needs to be selected very
carefully. Portal (2003) explains that the experience of profiling in the UK was frequently
that teachers ended up keeping large collections of pupils work without having the
opportunity or in some cases the expertise to make any clear use of it. It may help
matters to focus on what is used to be known as significant steps in the pupils progress
and concentrate on keeping only the documentation that exemplifies these.

3. Networking among teachers

Furthermore, there is a need for networking among the teachers in different
schools. This becomes more pertinent the smaller the number of subject teachers in
individual schools. Wolf (1995) emphasizes the importance of inter-assessor networks
for helping reliability of assessments by teachers. This system may be put into place by
twining of schools or the organization of regional professional development meetings
where teachers of the same subject have the opportunity to work together, sort out
difficulties, and help each other become efficient in this form of assessment. A network
on the Internet may be a possible additional support system. It may also be the main
support system in places where distance creates problems for teachers to meet
regularly. This system is in use in Scotland where teachers who are voluntarily
participating in a project on formative assessment communicate mainly via the Net
although they then have annual group meetings as well. Wolf (1995) explains that this
valuable process of collaboration between assessors in schools which provides them
with mutual support may break down or become impossible if the system introduces
competition between institutions.


















Interview question
1. Do you have any problem with the implementation of SBA?
If yes, what are the problems that you have faced?
2. Do you have difficulties in assessing students? Why?
3. Since the online system has been improved, do you have any problem to key in data
students?
4. Is there any different between the old system and new system? Why?
5. Do you have any suggestion in order to overcome the problem faced in SBA?