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Assessment in education
The Director of Education, Mrs Helen C P Lai Yu, today (Saturday) said the department is in the course of developing new curriculum, fresh teaching approaches and different assessment mechanism to cater for students with wide-ranging abilities. Officiating at the International Conference on Advances in Assessment of Student Learning, Mrs Yu said assessment must ultimately aim to promote student learning.
"Its prime concern is to give a fair, accurate and complete picture of students' knowledge, their abilities and their potential progress in learning."
"Rather than just paper-and-pencil tests, we need a variety of assessment tools based on targets and on performance," Mrs Yu said.
Assessment is no longer predominantly summative and thus terrifying, but more formative and diagnostic; it is no longer a norm-referenced yardstick, but an authentic, task-based and learner-oriented measure, she noted.
For the past few years, the department has been pursuing this line of development and promulgated a new approach: the Target-Oriented Curriculum (TOC) and its integral part, TOC assessment mechanism.
The department has been developing guidelines and support materials for schools, providing professional advice to teachers and organising training courses for them.
It aims to implement the curriculum and assessment mechanism progressively in the hope that successive and successful changes will take place gradually in the schools.
Mrs Yu said she believed that through such changes, the learning environment can become more stimulating and exciting, more enjoyable and effective.
"The potential of our young can thus develop more fully. Young Hong Kong will be better able to take up the challenges ahead."
The department is confident that difficulties and uncertainties can be overcome through experimentation and in collaboration with schools and teachers.