THE 12TH SOUTHERN AFRICA ASSOCIATION FOR EDUCATION ASSESSMENT (SAAEA) CONFERENCE

1. THE 12TH SOUTHERN AFRICA ASSOCIATION FOR EDUCATION ASSESSMENT (SAAEA) CONFERENCE THE IMPACT OF STAKE HOLDING ON EFFECTIVE ASSESSMENT PRESENTED BY KUNDA KUKU (EXAMINATIONS COUNCIL OF ZAMBIA)

2. 1.0 IntroductionBackground • Continuous Assessment defined: A form of educational examination that evaluates a student's progress throughout a prescribed course. • Major Stakeholder • The major stakeholder in the assessment of the child is the parents. • Parental involvement - key element to providing what is now considered best practice in the field of early childhood education (Copple & Bredekamp, 2009; Dunst, 2002; Sandall, Hemmeter, Smith, & McLean, 2005).

3. Introduction (cont) • Within the mandatory preschool component in Zambia, there are expectations of parental involvement throughout the child’s education and services. • Underscoring such mandates is the knowledge that involving parents as full partners or stakeholders throughout the range of their child’s education must include the assessment process. • Theories and philosophies explain how adults and children are motivated by what is important to them in the local context, and how the family is the expert on their child. • However, parents often play limited (if any) roles in the assessment process.

4. Statement of the Problem • The implementation of continuous assessment has become a big challenge in many African countries. • Classroom teachers as stakeholders in the process try their level best to give tasks to learners but these tasks are not done by the learners due to the home environment, the immediate local context of the learners. • Parents as major stakeholders have been left out of the process of designing and implementing of the continuous assessment, hence the difficult in implementing the continuous assessment in most schools in Zambia.

5. Purpose of the study • To find out whether the involvement of parents as major stakeholders in the assessment of learners can contribute to better academic performance. • Objectives of the Study • To find out the relationship between parental involvement in assessment process and  academic achievement of learners. • To investigate the differences in performance of learners with high parental involvement in assessment process with those with low parental involvement.

6. Research Questions • What is the relationship between parental involvement in assessment process and learners academic performance? • Are there differences in performance between learners with high parental involvement in assessment with those with low parental involvement? • Significance of the Study • The study will help school managers and teachers on how best they can involve parents in the designing and implementing of learners’ assessment. • It will further be useful in promoting the collaborations between the school and the parents

7. 2.0 Literature Review • Reviewed literature indicates that CA helps to collect information about the knowledge, attitude, or skills of the learner or group of learners. (Greaney 2001) • The reviewed Literature also deliberates on three overlapping environments that fulfil the needs of the child in terms of development, growth and learning. These three environments are the family, school and community and, above all, they are intertwined and interlinked. (Epstein, 1995) • students with high levels of parental involvement are better in reading and mathematics than those with a low level of parental involvement(Shaver and Walls, 1998)

8. Literature Review Cont.. • Furthermore Literature reviewed that parental involvement makes a positive contribution to students’ academic achievement by affecting their academic self-concept which is of considerable importance in academic success(Gonzalez-peinda et al. 2002) • Kalleghan and Greany (2003) noted a deficiency in the practice of continuous assessment in Africa where Zambia is part. This therefore may account for the variance in performance among schools and students in most schools

9. 3.0 Research Design and Methodology Methodology • Mixed method design, which saw the use of qualitative and quantitative approaches Target Population • all the teachers and pupils from the selected schools in Kitwe District. Sample Size • 12 teachers from the three (3) selected schools. • Of the three selected schools, two (2) were Government schools while one was a private school. • Additionally, 60 pupils (20 from each school) were also used Research instruments questionnaires, interview schedules and Focus Group

10. 4.0 Findings • From the responses obtained from the 36 Teachers that participated in this study, it was clear that the majority strongly agreed that CA improved the teaching-learning process, which in turn enables students to perform well in Final Examinations. • From the responses from students it was clearly observed that majority of the students felt that CAs done with the guidance of the parents contributed to their good performance. • CA helped them to revise more effectively and to also gain confidence and become ready for the final examinations.

11. Findings, cont. • Many students also indicated that when their parents get involved in their projects done at home, they were able to fully understand the concepts and therefore they made efforts to improve • It was very clear from the findings that CA done with the help of parents in the home environment arouses students desire to pay attention and concentrate because parents were taking their time to explain the concepts in a relaxed environment • A number of respondents show that students whose parents were not involved in their CA at home did not perform well in their final examinations

12. Teacher’s Responses

13. Students’ Responses

14. 5.0Discussion/Conclusions/Recommendations • The study shows that involving parents in assessment : • increases the likelihood of selecting tasks or projects that are meaningful to the child and the parents. • increases the likelihood of the parents addressing the tasks within their local context by using strategies that are developed from the information gained in the assessment process. • The study discovered that Learners from one school which only explained some processes in Needle work and parents selected the article for the child to work on, did far much better than learners who were given articles to work on by the class teachers

15. Conclusions/Discussion/Recommendations, cont.. • Research also establishes that parental involvement has a significant effect on children’s achievement and adjustment even after all other other social factors have been taken out of the equation between children’s aptitudes and their achievement, agrees with(Epstein, 1995) • Differences in parental involvement have a much bigger impact on achievement than differences associated with the effects of school in the primary age range. • In addition the study noted that improved outcomes, using parent-centered practices such as including parents in assessment, leads to feelings of empowerment

16. Conclusions/Discussion/Recommendations, cont.. • It was observed that parents who were involved in assessment process were eager to monitor the progress of their children and the attendance of such children was better than their counterparts. The study also revealed that parental involvement is: • strongly related to family social class- the higher the class the more the involvement agrees Shaver and Walls (1998), • strongly related to the level of mothers’ education- the higher the level of maternal educational qualification the greater the extent of involvement. • The interaction between factors in the child’s immediate family, environment, and the society in which they live steers their development

17. Conclusions/Discussion/Recommendations, cont.. • Recommendations: • The Study recommends including parents as active participants in the assessment process. • Also teachers to take the time to encourage parents to become active participants in the assessment process serving as informants, team members, and advocates. • Carry more research on the nature of assessment which can fully involve parents • Conclusion: • By involving parents in the assessment process we can empower families, increase family involvement, and improve the functionality of outcomes of the assessment process.

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