VICTORIA -
According Tony
Cook from the Office for Education, Policy and Innovation, assessment within
Victoria involves a loop which incorporates ‘establishing where students are in
their learning; clarify where students need to go and help students to achieve
their goal’ (Office for education policy & innovation, 2015, p.17). All
assessment and school culture should be based on the individual learner; the
Victorian Government assessment policy identifies what challenges lie ahead in
relation to curriculum, teacher capability, equity and assessment (p.22).
The
Department of Education and Training (2015) argue that assessment should
improve student learning by integrating a range of assessment practices. There
are 10 principals for assessment outlined which include characteristics of good
practice for assessing student learning (Department of Education and Training,
2015). The 10 principals for effective assessment include; the primary purpose
is to improve learning, understanding how students learn, integrated within the
course structure, provides critical information for parents, has a clear
outlined statement of purpose, contains a variety of measures, should be;
valid, reliable and consistent, requires attention to outcomes, ongoing and
involves feedback and reflection (Department of Education and Training, 2015).
FINLAND –
Helena
Kasurinen (2005) who is on the board of the Finnish National Board of Education,
states that there are a number of principals which incorporate assessment from
a teacher perspective and self-assessment from a student perspective in
Finland. Victoria has NAPLAN which is a national assessment in certain year
levels, Finland have the ‘National Evaluation System’ which is completed by
students at the end of their high school years to determine whether they have
assimilated the required knowledge and reached an adequate level of maturity
(European Agency: for special needs and inclusive education, 2015).
According to
the Finnish National Board of Education (2015) the focus for the Finnish
education system is specifically on learning, not on testing. In Finland,
teachers are responsible for assessing their students’ learning and development
as there are no national tests for these assessments (Finnish National Board of
Education, 2015). Julie Nightingale (2014) from the Chartered Institute of
Educational discusses that in Finland the goal of assessment is simply, to
improve learning. An interesting fact of the Finnish system is that they are
one of the top performers in international tests such as PISA, but at a
national level high stakes tests are absent from the education system.
SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE SYSTEMS:
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