South Africaâs performance record in the international arena together with reports of
national quality assurance bodies released in recent years have highlighted the
alarmingly poor results in the educational accomplishments specifically amongst
learners in the further education and training school sector. An analysis of school
learning achievements compared to national and international benchmarks has
indicated that an improvement in the quality of learning output remains one of the
biggest challenges facing the South African educational system. Finding means to
improve the performance of learners as well as the quality of the education learners
receive is a major priority for all stakeholders. Despite vigorous attempts of the national
department (DoE) to develop initiatives and programs aimed at improving learner
achievements, minimal progress has been achieved. Umalusi, the quality assurance
body for Further Education and Training (FET), intends to address this problem as one
of its top priorities.
Existing literature indicate that strengthening the assessment practices currently
employed could result in improved teaching, learning and assessment whilst
simultaneously enhancing quality assurance in schools. There is a marked variation in
performance of schools throughout the country. An attempt was therefore made to
identify constraints leading to the different performance levels of schools. Schools for
the research were selected from different categories: good, average and low performing
schools based on the performance of their 2009 grade 12 results.
The goal this study pursued was to provide a theoretical underpinning of assessment at
school level from a quality assurance perspective. Information assimilated from
contemporary literature, was utilised to develop a questionnaire with the aim to
investigate teachersâ awareness of quality assurance measures that should be
implemented during assessment practices in schools. Additionally, it aimed to determine
whether teachers assess learners in totality and also to investigate the extent of quality
assurance measures being employed. A qualitative study was also conducted to
strengthen the quantitative findings. Results indicated that various constraints impeding the implementation and application of quality assurance were present and that these
constraints affected the performances of the learner. This was made evident in the data
analysis where teachers of the different school groupings were compared in respect of
their awareness and understanding of assessment and quality assurance measures.
Findings of what were considered good assessment practices in the study were
compared with those in the existing literature review which enabled the researchers to
make recommendations pertaining to the improvement of assessment practices and
enhancement of quality assurance.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ufs/oai:etd.uovs.ac.za:etd-05172013-094334 |
| Date | 17 May 2013 |
| Creators | Brown, Stephen Pieter |
| Contributors | Prof GF du Toit, Dr ER du Toit |
| Publisher | University of the Free State |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | en-uk |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.uovs.ac.za//theses/available/etd-05172013-094334/restricted/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University Free State or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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