Summative Assessment

According to Moss (2012, p. 235), “assessment is a process of collecting and interpreting evidence of student progress to inform reasoned judgments about what a student or group of students knows relative to the identified learning goals” and the process by which the assessment is carried out solely depends on the purpose of the assessment. In order to carry out a quality assessment, Clarke (2014) states that five key points must be considered when constructing an assessment and include clear purpose, clear targets, sound design, effective communication and students involvement. When planning an assessment the first key point, clear purpose, is of significant importance as understanding the types of assessment processes and the results they

Dunn & Mulvenon (2009, p. 3) describe it as an assessment designed to “determine a students’ academic development after a set unit of material” while Moss (2012, p. 235) defines it as determining “the student’s overall achievement in a specific area of learning at a particular time”. Regardless of how summative assessment is defined, it is considered to be generally evaluative as results may be recorded as scores or grades. Summative assessment occurs in many forms but the current Junior Certificate falls into that of standardised testing. In research carried out by Shiel,Kellaghan and Moran (2010) for the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA), they suggested placing standardised testing into three different contexts. Firstly classroom use, where the individual achienvements of the students were of main concern. Secondly, national use, such as the Junior Certificate and Leaving Certificate, where students achievements are used to acquire information about the education system and thirdly, international use, acquiring information that allows the comparision of students achievements in a number of different

(2010) states that while there are some positive attributes to standardised testing such as improving test scores, encouraging higher-level thinking and providing feedback to students, there are also a number of negative effects. These negative effects involve narrowing of the curriculum so that the focus is mainly on test content causing teachers assessments to become more summative rather than formative, incresed stress and anxiety on students and incresed dropout rates amoung lower achieving students.

While this form of ‘achievement’ test can have very negative effects on students in lower secondary education, Moss (2012) suggests that older students in secondary education respond positively to summative assessments as they are able to learn during the assessment process and they also find the work motivating. It appears that the main issue with standarised testing lies within lower secondary education and the impact it has on students not just within the classroom and nationally but also