Laura Clothier, Annamaria Fratini , Martina Mathew, and Angela Winder

Education is a fundamental aspect for student development. In turn, assessment is also vital for student’s academic improvement and the enhancement of their knowledge skills – but is occasionally overlooked or not implemented correctly to benefit the students. As teachers, it is imperative for them to be able to teach and assess their students from a neutral standpoint, providing fair and adequate feedback so their students can improve and excel academically.

            As academic expectations are constantly changing, reliable assessment practices must also be implemented correctly and relevantly.

 We believe that the important issues to consider for best practice in assessment are:

•    Ensuring reliable assessment – The assessment should be marked equally, and (pending on the type of assessment and year level) repeatedly by various markers, based on the same assessment rubric until a general consensus is reached by both parties.
•        Periodic assessment – Instead of leaving all the assessment to the last minute, a teacher should provide students with ample time and spacing between assignment tasks so they are provided with feedback and not faced with ‘Sudden Death Syndrome’ where unnecessary stress is placed on the students.
•        Fair assessment plans – Teachers should set multiple assessment tasks (in terms of assessment design ie. Posters, essays, orals etc.) to enable students to use their initiative and play to their strengths. This will allow students the opportunities to use their various skills to reach their full potential whilst still letting them be challenged by assessment guidelines which they might not be used to.
•        Promote deep learning – In addition to fair assessment plans, students should feel challenged at times with assessments and be able to go beyond the set task. From this, they should be able to use their knowledge they have gained from previous assessments to help them understand later assignments.

At times, teachers seem to forget that assessment plays a massive and influential part in a student’s academic process and normally assess with out-dated assessment practices. Through utilising these practices, teachers should be able to provide helpful feedback to their students – be it through general comments, positive affirmations or official reports at the end of the assessment or term.