Educationists in Nepal began to question the school education assessment system that currently exists here. The current assessment system is still based on a structured paper-pencil test, which requires pupils to sit in for a formal test or examination for one and a half hours to three hours at least three times a year. The question arises here: is the assessment system in Nepali school education preparing pupils to face a test or examination, or is it helping them to enhance their life skills and learning by identifying their potential areas for improvement?
Let’s look at this in comparison to the assessment system in Ireland.
Does this system help pupils become critical thinkers?
Pupils hardly become critical, or they are not expected to be so, in answering the questions asked during a test. Rather, they regurgitate what they have memorised during the preparation of a test.
Some questions close to the ones that would appear in tests are vehemently discussed in the class as if these are weapons to be carried by pupils to fight during a soon-to-be war. This practice can raise exam-related fear in pupils, and in the meantime, these pupils who may require some counselling during their study can be psychologically tormented due to test-based pressure.
These pupils are graded a minimum of thrice a year, and their test performances are reported largely based on numbers or grades that hardly accompany formative comments.
The test becomes a standard yardstick to judge their potential, which categorises them into pupils doing well or poorly in their studies, and it can subtly indicate pass or fail. And when the result is disseminated to parents, at this point, the baton is transferred to them. These poor parents treat their children the way they want to treat them on the basis of their test results.
To a large extent, what happens in the current assessment system is the majority of these children are reprimanded and lectured by their parents as there is always a possibility of not performing well in one of the subjects in a test.
Prem Phyak, a Nepali educationist, claims that this kind of assessment system makes the children accustomed to competition rather than cooperation in learning, and this practice is closely linked to the neoliberal framework that promotes the marketisation of pupils’ grades and enhances competition in this world.
This system has also a strong influence on teaching and learning, which is called the washback effect of assessment. During regular teaching and learning, pupils try to look for clues to prepare for exams, and also teachers are under pressure to complete a designated syllabus for the exams. Thus, in general, preparing pupils for life and promoting their skills to critically assess the contents/situations are overshadowed in regular teaching and learning in Nepal’s current assessment system.
The difference between the Nepali and Irish assessment systems
Recently, I talked to one of the Nepali pupils who is in an Irish secondary school but is familiar with the Nepali assessment system as she underwent it before she joined the Irish school in 2020.
She says she takes only one test at the end of an academic year in Ireland. They are asked very limited questions, and the time they sit for a test is one and a half hours for each subject. She does not feel any pressure at all. In her result sheet, she gets detailed comments that clearly mark the areas that she can improve further.
These comments are not only based on her test performance but also based on her overall participation in the course that year. Those who do not perform well in a test get extra support another year, so the test is essentially linked to the formative aspect. Interestingly, she says that she felt like crying while sitting for exams in Nepal, but in Ireland, she does not feel any pressure.
This brief anecdote from a Nepali pupil who is in the Irish education system prepares the ground to question the Nepali assessment system in school education, and it also subtly indicates the need for changes in the current assessment practice.
This does not mean that the Nepali education system should completely be transformed but it shows that there are a large number of takeaways if one closely analyses the anecdote of the Nepali pupil mentioned above.
What’s next?
The list of questions that emerge here are: what are the objectives of a test or an exam? How should tests or exams be defined? How does a particular form of assessment influence teaching and learning? What are other repercussions that pupils can encounter due to such a formal test conducted numerous times every year? Do we really require several formal structured tests or exams every year? At whose benefits are we conducting tests or exams?
No doubt, the recent pandemic gave an opportunity for the educational institutions in Nepal to have some flexibility in assessing the pupils. The assessment was also done based on learners’ participation in their regular instruction that including submission of pupils’ homework and project works.
Even the pandemic educational policies such as Student Learning Facilitation Guidelines 2020 provided room for a continuous assessment system. However, as formal structured test or exams is deeply rooted in Nepali education, traditional structured assessment is not completely dropped yet.
Is not it the time now to transform the assessment practice and prepare pupils to gain and enhance life skills instead of preparing them to face a test?
