Towards a Better Future

Chapter Four: Assessment: Primary and Junior Cycle
sharing assessment data among school classes and year groups, and as a source for the development
of school-improvement strategies. School policies and the outcomes of assessment are also of interest
to the Inspectorate and to the DES in evaluating the effectiveness of the wider education system.
Parents have an immediate and direct interest in the performance of their children and in this case,
the reports of their school assessments form a basis for linking home and school in the learning
progress. Elsewhere, assessment results, particularly summative assessments, are used as a basis for
planning further study and by further education institutions in planning admission policies and
programmes. Employers also have an interest in the certification provided on the basis of terminal
examinations for employee selection purposes, while prospective parents use assessment findings as
part of a strategy for the selection of schools for their children.
Although it may seem obvious that any one mode or technique of assessment cannot adequately
capture the range of achievements of students, assessment reports are of interest to so many audiences
that it can sometimes be difficult to change policies in this area, even when it is demonstrated that
these changes are designed to improve the quality of education and the quality of the information
which can be provided to the various audiences, particularly the students.
ASSESSMENT AT PRIMARY AND JUNIOR CYCLE
The abolition in 1967 of the Primary Certificate examination, which had had a significant negative
influence on the implementation of the curriculum (Madaus, G. and Greaney, V, 1985), and the
introduction of the new primary school curriculum in 1971, later updated in 1999, were significant
policy decisions that supported new initiatives in teaching, learning and assessment. Up to this stage,
assessment practices at primary level, apart from the terminal examination, were largely informal. As
assessment practice was no longer dominated by a terminal external examination in Irish, English
and Mathematics, schools were provided with greater latitude to concentrate on assessment strategies
more closely geared to the on-going development of their pupils.
Assessment of this nature is described as having four main features: formative, summative, diagnostic
and evaluative (NCCA, 2007, p.3). The discussion here is mainly limited to formative and summative
assessments, as these are the forms more commonly used by teachers across the system. Formative
assessment is defined by Black and William (quoted in Constant and Connolly, 2014, p.34) as:
all those activities undertaken by teachers, and/or by their students to be used as
feedback to modify the teaching and learning activities in which they are
engaged.
— 61 —