1. Assessment should be relevant.
Assessment needs to provide information about students’ knowledge, skills and understandings of the learning outcomes specified in the NSW syllabus documents. That is, it needs to be directly linked to the syllabus standards. Syllabus standards are defined at: https://www.det.nsw.edu.au/policies/ curriculum/schools/curric_plan/ policystandards161006.pdf 2. Assessment should be appropriate.
Assessment needs to provide nformation about the particular kind of learning in which we are interested. This means that we need to use a variety of assessment methods because not all methods are capable of providing information about all kinds of learning. For example, some kinds of learning are best assessed by observing students; some by having students complete projects or make products and others by having students complete paper and pen tasks.
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For of© State of New South Wales through the NSW Department of Education and Training, 2008 3
Assessment principlesare not influenced by the choice of a specific assessment task). Assessment also needs to be objective so that if a second person assesses a student’s work, they will come to the same conclusion as the first person.Assessment will be fair to all students if it is based on reliable, accurate and defensible measures.5. Assessment should provide useful information.The focus of assessment is to establish where students are in their learning. This information can be used for both summative purposes (the assessment of learning), such as the awarding of a grade, or formative purposes to feed directly into the teaching and learning cycle (assessment for learning).
Assessment information that is useful for formative purposes needs to focus in part on the depth of a student’s understanding, not just on the accumulation of knowledge. That