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Annual National Assessments kick off - admin - 07-02-2011
Pretoria - More than six million learners throughout the country's public schools will on Tuesday sit for their Annual National Assessments (ANA).
The assessments, which have been set by the National Basic Education Department in order to provide a benchmark for all schools in the basic education sector, will be conducted from Grades 1 to 9.
The assessments are one of the key strategies that have been put in place by the department to improve learner achievement by 2014.
It is intended to provide regular, well-timed, valid and credible data on learner achievement in the education system.
According to the department, unlike examinations that are designed to inform decisions on learner promotion and progression, ANA data is meant to be used for both diagnostic purposes at individual learner level and decision-making purposes at systemic level.
"At the individual learner level, the ANA results will provide teachers with empirical evidence on what the learner can and/or cannot do at a particular stage or grade and do so at the beginning of the school year.
"At systemic level, ANA provides reliable data for policy decisions related to provision and support required at various levels of the system, the ANA will make it easier for district offices to determine where support is most urgently needed and by allowing principals, teachers and parents to plan in a more informed manner how to improve performance," the department explained.
The assessments will be administered and marked by teachers and moderated by districts. At national level, the department will also sample scripts for moderation (limited to Grades 3, 6 and 9) to check if marking was done consistently across districts and provinces.
"Schools will then report individual learner results to the learners' parents in March and the schools that shall be sampled for independent external verification of ANA at Grades 3, 6 and 9, marking and reporting to the Minister will be done by an independent agent," said the department.
Motshekga is expected to report on the performance of Grade 3, 6 and 9 in ANA by March of every year.
In the Foundation Phase (Grades 1-3), learners will write the tests in the language of learning and teaching of the child, which could be any one of the 11 official languages. In the Intermediate Phase (Grades 4-6), learners will write in one of the languages of learning and teaching (English or Afrikaans).
In the Senior Phase, only learners who were in Grade 9 in 2010 and who are now in Grade 10 will write the assessments as a pilot project and 50 schools in each province have been selected to participate.
"In 2011, Grade 9 tests will be piloted on samples of Grade 10 learners in 50 sample schools in each province. In subsequent years, Grade 9 ANA will follow the same pattern as the other grades.
"These learners will write the language test in either the Home Language or the First Additional Language and the Mathematics test," the department explained.
A timetable can be found on the department's website education.gov.za - BuaNews