Continuous assessment is one of the important ways of assessing learners in the basic schools but it comes with its own difficulties and some of the reasons why is should be terminated in basic schools in Ghana include the following.
Laziness among students and wrong reflection of student true performance:
Laziness among students and wrong reflection of student true performance: Most students when they give them work to do at the comfort of their homes; they may not be the real pupil behind the actual solution of the work.
Their relatives or neighbors who understands the content very well do most of these works, which is later submitted to teachers for higher score meanwhile that is not the pupil actual knowledge about the what was been thought.
In this situation, most student will not even bother themselves to ask how the assignment was done all they are concerned with is scoring everything.
After students score assignments, the teacher will have wrong interpretation of his teaching and may think he has achieve his lesson objectives.
Some students also finds assignments, projects works, presentations etc. as a disturbance and will participate in some of them, which affects their final grades therefore student true performance will be affected.
Again, Continuous assessment does not sometime reflect the true performance of students: Students may get advantage of marks in areas such as assignments and group works, which they might have not participated. In this case, the student may not understand the content of the subject.
In addition, there is risk of plagiarism of content; if homework’s and assignments becomes vibrant in the basic school system, students may feel secure to copy other materials that will impress teachers and in so doing, they may end up plagiarizing other people content to secure good score.
Personal interest of teachers:
Personal interest of teachers: Some basic schoolteachers may develop a form of interest for students depending on their relationship with him/others.
Some teachers may dislike nor like some students, which he/she may easily be favored or un-favored, when scoring a test especially during presentations and other form of assessment that involves physical interactions.
Some teachers too use this as an opportunity of having unhealthy relationships with students such as dating and having affairs with innocent students.
Some male teacher’s ends up defiling their female students, which we hear in most of our local news channels. Last year in 2019, cases of teachers defiling little girls was all over the media, which involved videos and images.
All these pupils are usually entrap by teachers who threaten them to accept their dirty mentality or else face the consequences.
Some teachers also promise to pass students when infusing their bad mentality in them just for their personal gains such as sex and others. Teachers may also dash marks to some set of students of interest leaving others behind.
Laziness on the part of teachers:
Laziness on the part of teachers: Some teachers are very lazy to the extent that they have to be forced by supervisors before they give work to students, so they end up manufacturing marks for students, which may degrade good students, and vice versa.
In this situation, the teacher is not being just to his pupils. This is the point that Favoritism, tribalism etc. comes into play.
In addition, other teachers may conduct class test, exercises, assignment, projects etc. and will not mark it, they guess and score students randomly.
Others after marking student’s script, they give it out to some group of students to record marks of their friends, in this point they may decide to give low marks to some people and give high marks to others.
They may also encounter many errors because they are not professionals. It does not make the assessment reliable.
Other teachers after administering class test/exercises, they ask students to exchange their books and score themselves.
Students can still favor each other or cause others downfall during the process. Expected number of class test, assignments, projects, homework’s, etc. may not be administered. Therefore, student normal performance can be affected.
Large class size:
Large class size; Most of the Ghanaian schools have large number of pupil occupying a single classroom. There are some classrooms that is overcrowded and some pupil have to sit on the floor to learn, well, that is not my main focus here, the issue concerning this is how the students are going to be accessed based on presentations, assignments, class exercises/test and project works.
When the teacher administer work such as exercise, assignment, etc. to students, He/she may find it difficult to mark script of pupils because of their large number and may end up manufacturing marks for students.
Administering the test, marking of script, recording marks and writing necessary remarks is another tough work for the teacher.
Teacher may not be able to conduct the required number of test in the term, teachers may conduct only one or two exercises and when a student fail in either of them because of sickness or other reasons, he will score less or no marks in that subject.
In addition, carrying out presentation and project work is a difficult task to the teacher and the students because time may not permit everybody to do their individual presentations.
Project inspection is a hindering factor too. Sometimes studying student’s behavior for assessment is also very difficult.
Pressure on teachers:
Pressure on teachers; some teachers receives their assessment books very late to input records of pupil they are usually busy with end of term examinations and other issues.
During the compilation of results, each teacher has to record and convert marks and putting the required remarks using the same assessment book.
This therefore could lead to errors during the process of results conversion and compilation because of limiting time factor and pressure on the part of the teacher.
Because of the nature of the assessment, teachers have to wait on a roll for other teachers to finish entering student result before they can also enter theirs, which is frustrating and time consuming because every teacher is expected to deliver results within a specified time limit.
In addition, some lazy teachers may slow the process thereby putting pressure on others during result compilation.
