WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:17.940 Good morning ladies and gentlemen and welcome again and I'd like on behalf of myself and of 00:00:17.940 --> 00:00:22.400 Cambridge International Examinations to thank you again for some of you made a long journey 00:00:22.400 --> 00:00:28.340 some flights of four or five six hours to come here. I know many of you are here are friends 00:00:28.340 --> 00:00:32.380 from Malaysia and I know that you'll make all the rest of us extremely welcome. 00:00:32.380 --> 00:00:36.100 no welcome like a Malaysian welcome so thank you very much for already doing 00:00:36.100 --> 00:00:40.060 that I'm going to say a little bit about the practicalities of the seminar and 00:00:40.060 --> 00:00:43.900 then I'll introduce the thinking that we're going to be doing today and our 00:00:43.900 --> 00:00:49.240 first speaker now my first happy duty is to tell you where the toilets are so I 00:00:49.240 --> 00:00:54.040 shall do that and if you go out the door there on the right you go along to the 00:00:54.040 --> 00:00:59.140 end of the corridor and there is a sign there and that's where they are the next 00:00:59.140 --> 00:01:01.080 one is to say what to do if the place 00:01:01.080 --> 00:01:03.280 goes on fire. I've got a script 00:01:03.280 --> 00:01:04.760 here given me by the hotel 00:01:04.760 --> 00:01:10.520 saying do not be alarmed it says so I've told you not to be alarmed but if there 00:01:10.520 --> 00:01:14.400 were any problem with a fire alarm there would be an announcement that would come 00:01:14.400 --> 00:01:18.400 over the loudspeakers you'd go out the doors and the big doors to exit are just 00:01:18.400 --> 00:01:23.420 on your left opposite and now that's that bit done and the other bit is that 00:01:23.420 --> 00:01:27.980 and many of you will be familiar with this this is an exam series for quite a 00:01:27.980 --> 00:01:31.680 lot of us at the moment and you're very used to telling the students to turn off 00:01:31.680 --> 00:01:37.140 their mobile phones and then you find that most of the students have about four mobile phones and one of 00:01:37.140 --> 00:01:41.800 them's in their pocket here and another one is here. And each year when I was the regulator of 00:01:41.800 --> 00:01:46.320 exams in England, there were hundreds of cases of students whose phones went off in the middle of 00:01:46.320 --> 00:01:52.160 the exam. So can I ask you very politely if you could do that? Mr. Ungs has already gone off in 00:01:52.160 --> 00:01:56.640 the middle of the DG speech. So please, if you could switch them off or put them onto silent 00:01:56.640 --> 00:02:03.740 mode now, that'd be much appreciated. Thank you for that. Now, as you've heard from Ben and from 00:02:03.740 --> 00:02:05.440 others. There are a lot of people here. 00:02:05.580 --> 00:02:07.600 We actually turned people away because we were 00:02:07.600 --> 00:02:09.520 full up. And we've got people 00:02:09.520 --> 00:02:17.040 from many countries who've come. This topic of school-based assessment has certainly hit the 00:02:17.040 --> 00:02:22.720 mark with many of us here. And it's not just in Asia. There's a lot of interest in Europe and 00:02:22.720 --> 00:02:29.260 America as well. Why is that? Why are we all here? Why is it that this topic is of such importance 00:02:29.260 --> 00:02:34.480 and such interest? Some of the reasons you heard from the Director General, it was to do with 00:02:34.480 --> 00:02:40.740 feeling that assessment needs to be more integrated into the best teaching and 00:02:40.740 --> 00:02:41.900 learning for the 25th 00:02:41.900 --> 00:02:48.040 first century. But how is the experience in comparison with that aim? As you'll have seen 00:02:48.040 --> 00:02:55.000 from your program, the title of today's seminar is School-Based Assessment, Prospects and Realities 00:02:55.000 --> 00:03:01.740 in Asian Contexts. And if you unpack this a little bit, first of all, we're going to be thinking 00:03:01.740 --> 00:03:07.840 today about school-based assessment. And it's important to think about what we actually mean 00:03:07.840 --> 00:03:11.980 by that and when you're talking to people over lunch as well as listening to 00:03:11.980 --> 00:03:14.280 the sessions you'll find that there's a lot of 00:03:14.280 --> 00:03:21.900 types of activities going on under that broad label. What kinds of tasks or tests 00:03:21.900 --> 00:03:27.720 or task or activities are being assessed and who decides that? Is the assessment 00:03:27.720 --> 00:03:33.720 based on observations of the day-to-day classroom with a teacher taking off 00:03:33.720 --> 00:03:38.700 various things they can see the student doing? Or is it a collection of records 00:03:38.700 --> 00:03:43.660 of activities or an album of some kind or a portfolio which is then assessed 00:03:43.660 --> 00:03:46.660 separately or is it a test that 00:03:46.660 --> 00:03:50.440 sat in the school under what we call test or exam conditions, 00:03:50.860 --> 00:03:53.160 perhaps in a special room that you have tests in. 00:03:53.700 --> 00:03:57.560 And if it is that, does it feel any different for the student 00:03:57.560 --> 00:04:00.000 from an ordinary exam that they're used to? 00:04:00.400 --> 00:04:05.200 Maybe it feels just the same, in which case that's not going to reduce the stress of examinations. 00:04:05.500 --> 00:04:07.000 So there's lots of different things. 00:04:07.620 --> 00:04:10.740 Ben mentioned that I have worked myself in medical education, 00:04:11.240 --> 00:04:14.560 and one of the important things there was to be able to assess a doctor 00:04:14.560 --> 00:04:19.040 actually treating patients, not just sitting in an exam hall doing anatomy 00:04:19.040 --> 00:04:22.700 and physiology and it's very important for us that our doctors know how to 00:04:22.700 --> 00:04:27.360 treat patients so we had various portfolios and observed practices that 00:04:27.360 --> 00:04:32.360 we had to assess for those and they all had lots of problems as well but then 00:04:32.360 --> 00:04:37.140 you've got the sitting of the task and then there's the marking of the task who 00:04:37.140 --> 00:04:42.560 does the marking and what kind of judgment are we asking them to make you 00:04:42.560 --> 00:04:47.300 were hearing about the work with people in year one in Malaysia what kind of 00:04:47.300 --> 00:04:51.420 judgment is involved by the teacher. Is it an observation judgment 00:04:51.420 --> 00:04:55.860 about whether the child can do a particular task or not. 00:04:55.860 --> 00:05:00.100 Can he pronounce a sentence or recognize a word or something? 00:05:00.100 --> 00:05:04.220 Or is it about a value judgment about how well 00:05:04.220 --> 00:05:06.060 the student does that? 00:05:06.060 --> 00:05:07.860 And you'll hear from our Malaysian colleagues 00:05:07.860 --> 00:05:09.920 in the afternoon about different standards, 00:05:09.920 --> 00:05:12.580 including different degrees of excellence, 00:05:12.580 --> 00:05:15.900 and how can the teachers make those kinds of judgments? 00:05:15.900 --> 00:05:18.120 And I think we'll also be hearing from Val Klonowski 00:05:18.120 --> 00:05:21.140 about some of the judgment issues involved for teachers 00:05:21.140 --> 00:05:23.800 how to equip teachers to do that. 00:05:23.800 --> 00:05:30.020 And then there is a question of the training and guidance that teachers need to make these judgments. 00:05:30.660 --> 00:05:34.160 And what is our experience of that? Have they found it difficult? 00:05:34.760 --> 00:05:38.240 How much has this needed to be reinforced as time goes on? 00:05:38.460 --> 00:05:43.620 And again, we'll hear more about this, particularly from Val Klanowski. 00:05:44.260 --> 00:05:50.440 As you heard, you heard the timing of introduction of some programs of school-based assessment in Malaysia, 00:05:50.440 --> 00:05:52.820 starting in 2011. 00:05:52.820 --> 00:05:56.180 You'll hear from Kerry Kennedy about experience in Hong Kong, 00:05:56.180 --> 00:06:03.300 going back to 2007 but before that. But for more than 30 years now, in the state of Queensland 00:06:03.300 --> 00:06:10.660 in Australia, there have been high stakes use of school-based assessment. And through that period, 00:06:10.660 --> 00:06:16.700 a degree of support and control activities have been set in, and you'll hear a bit more of those 00:06:16.700 --> 00:06:23.920 from Professor Kranowski. Now, throughout today's discussions, I think it will be very important for 00:06:23.920 --> 00:06:28.560 us to distinguish as clearly as we can between the kind of 00:06:28.560 --> 00:06:34.500 assessment that we're talking about, the form of the assessment and its purpose. 00:06:34.500 --> 00:06:40.120 The familiar distinction between formative and summative assessment is I 00:06:40.120 --> 00:06:45.480 believe mainly about the purposes for which assessments are put rather than 00:06:45.480 --> 00:06:50.400 the actual kind of assessment that it is. The formative purpose of feeding back 00:06:50.400 --> 00:06:54.280 and shaping ongoing teaching and learning and you heard a bit about that 00:06:54.280 --> 00:06:58.180 from the Director General compared to the summative purpose of presenting a 00:06:58.180 --> 00:07:00.940 picture of the student's level of achievement at a 00:07:00.940 --> 00:07:06.340 particular time and as we know we want that picture to be both valid to be a 00:07:06.340 --> 00:07:09.340 true picture to measure what it's supposed to measure and what has been 00:07:09.340 --> 00:07:14.860 taught and learnt rather than measuring something else and also reliable if it 00:07:14.860 --> 00:07:18.580 were repeated there'd be a broadly similar outcome and the information 00:07:18.580 --> 00:07:23.180 provided is fit for the use for which it is to be put which could be an 00:07:23.180 --> 00:07:26.800 important use like selection for university and you'll hear more about 00:07:26.800 --> 00:07:33.320 that from Professor Kennedy. Now the seminar talks about prospects and reality 00:07:33.320 --> 00:07:38.060 and that rightly alerts us to the possibility of differences between the 00:07:38.060 --> 00:07:42.000 intentions behind introducing a school-based assessment and the 00:07:42.000 --> 00:07:47.840 realities of the experiences of those involved assessments which are intended 00:07:47.840 --> 00:07:51.940 to measure the achievements of students might for example be seen by the 00:07:51.940 --> 00:07:56.720 teachers as really measuring the teachers and the teachers might see that 00:07:56.720 --> 00:08:00.320 as a threat and I think some of you will have experience of that kind of 00:08:00.320 --> 00:08:03.980 discussion among teachers they might wrongly perceive it that way but it 00:08:03.980 --> 00:08:05.700 the perception may be there all the same 00:08:05.700 --> 00:08:11.580 also and I found this particularly in some of the experience in the United 00:08:11.580 --> 00:08:14.920 Kingdom the outcomes of those assessments have been used to make 00:08:14.920 --> 00:08:19.880 judgments about a school about how effective the school is and hence has 00:08:19.880 --> 00:08:23.640 been enormous pressure on the teachers to get good outcomes to protect the 00:08:23.640 --> 00:08:27.940 school from being marked down or to be put on what they call special measures 00:08:27.940 --> 00:08:33.240 in England which means being sent extra people to improve them so that puts 00:08:33.240 --> 00:08:38.080 additional pressures on the outcomes of those assessments. 00:08:38.080 --> 00:08:46.660 And there is also the question of the reality of the views of parents and families and the wider community about assessment. 00:08:47.060 --> 00:08:50.260 And about the judgments that we're asking teachers to make. 00:08:50.800 --> 00:08:55.140 Are parents happy for teachers to make these judgments about their children? 00:08:55.940 --> 00:09:01.640 Now you might think that's a very odd question for me to ask because teachers make judgments about children all the time. 00:09:02.260 --> 00:09:06.140 But I'm sure that we will find out in the discussion and in the question and answer 00:09:06.140 --> 00:09:10.460 session and in your conversations over lunch, examples of concerns by 00:09:10.460 --> 00:09:17.140 parents and pressures by parents on teachers to give their children good marks. I have certainly 00:09:17.140 --> 00:09:23.600 heard examples told to me of a teacher who was accused of racism by a parent because she had 00:09:23.600 --> 00:09:29.920 marked down that parent's child. And if any of you have any experiences of that kind that you want 00:09:29.920 --> 00:09:34.820 to share with us, please feel that this is a free environment that you can do so. Because these 00:09:34.820 --> 00:09:36.660 realities of parents' views 00:09:36.660 --> 00:09:38.760 and the wider community views are very 00:09:38.760 --> 00:09:41.000 important for us. And the last 00:09:41.000 --> 00:09:42.840 bit of the title is In 00:09:42.840 --> 00:09:50.120 Asian contexts and that is very important for today's discussions. We are not sitting here in 00:09:50.120 --> 00:09:56.320 Kuala Lumpur watching a video of a talk by UK academics from the Assessment Reform Group about 00:09:56.320 --> 00:10:02.700 assessment for learning, although they are very good and I myself have been greatly influenced 00:10:02.700 --> 00:10:07.820 by their writing as I know many others have been as well. What we are doing is thinking about 00:10:07.820 --> 00:10:15.220 assessment in the context of the cultures in which we in this room live and work. Many of our 00:10:15.220 --> 00:10:21.760 cultures of a deep-rooted respect for external examinations as major and trusted life events 00:10:21.760 --> 00:10:30.200 and a fit basis for meritocratic choices, for our children to find their place in a meritocratic 00:10:30.200 --> 00:10:36.140 society. And that's very deep-rooted. Now, Professor Kennedy is going to say more to us about this, 00:10:36.140 --> 00:10:41.360 and he will talk particularly, I think, about some of the implications of Chinese culture. 00:10:42.060 --> 00:10:43.600 But I think we all need to think, 00:10:43.880 --> 00:10:46.640 beyond the countries with Chinese populations, 00:10:47.020 --> 00:10:47.600 how these countries... 00:10:47.600 --> 00:10:51.760 cultural effects are felt in our own countries. 00:10:51.760 --> 00:10:54.740 What are the feelings about assessment 00:10:54.740 --> 00:10:57.640 in the deep-rooted cultures in Malay countries, 00:10:57.640 --> 00:11:01.880 in Pakistan, and also more widely, 00:11:01.880 --> 00:11:04.660 you're going to hear a bit more about Australia as well. 00:11:04.660 --> 00:11:07.600 So these are all important issues for us to think about 00:11:07.600 --> 00:11:10.140 because there is a cultural context. 00:11:10.140 --> 00:11:15.140 None of these reforms to education take place in a vacuum. 00:11:15.140 --> 00:11:18.380 Now, that's just some thoughts for me to start us off, 00:11:18.380 --> 00:11:19.980 to think about assessment 00:11:19.980 --> 00:11:26.540 in an Asian context and comparing the prospects with the realities, always being clear that we 00:11:26.540 --> 00:11:32.500 know what exactly we're talking about and distinguishing what it is with what its purpose 00:11:32.500 --> 00:11:40.720 is or is supposed to be. So that's enough from me. It now gives me great pleasure to introduce our 00:11:40.720 --> 00:11:46.800 first keynote speaker, Professor Kerry Kennedy. Professor Kennedy is from the, now, at the National 00:11:46.800 --> 00:11:49.440 of the National Institute of Education at Hong Kong, 00:11:49.440 --> 00:11:52.340 and he has an impressive group of titles there 00:11:52.360 --> 00:12:01.360 He's the Dean of the Faculty of Education and Human Development, Associate Vice President, Quality Assurance, and Director of the Centre for Governance and Citizenship. 00:12:01.360 --> 00:12:09.360 He's a Chair Professor of Curriculum Studies and has written extensively about curriculum and also about citizenship education. 00:12:09.360 --> 00:12:15.540 and if there's anybody better to help us to understand the background of the 00:12:15.540 --> 00:12:21.600 cultural setting for assessment in the context of policy on curriculum and also 00:12:21.600 --> 00:12:24.740 our national culture and our approach to citizenship 00:12:24.740 --> 00:12:29.420 it is Kerry. He is originally from Australia and has also an impressive 00:12:29.420 --> 00:12:33.240 record of work there so there couldn't be somebody more fitting to start us off 00:12:33.240 --> 00:12:36.860 so I'd like you to join with me in welcoming Professor Kerry Kennedy. Thank 00:12:36.860 --> 00:12:38.980 you. 00:12:54.740 --> 00:13:24.720 Thank you.