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KANGAR, Dec 19 (Bernama) — The School Based Assessment (PBS) is a suitable indicator to evaluate the true capability of students holistically, says Perlis Education director Izmi Ismail.

He said the system which was introduced since 2014 was showing good acceptance and had boosted the academic and curriculum performances of students and schools.

“This balance is what is hoped for, by the ministry in moulding the students because the PBS components are comprehensive in nature involving the school assessment and centralised assessment, namely Form Three Assessment (PT3), Physical Activity Assessment, Sports and Co-curriculum (PAJSK) and Psychometric Assessment (PPsi),” he said.

Izmi was talking to reporters after a ceremony to announce the PT3 results and excellent students at Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Agama Perempuan Alawiyah (SMKAP Alawiyah) here today.

According to Izmi, schools generally showed very good development and many recorded improvements in terms of PT3 results which were announced today, as compared to the previous year.

Meanwhile, SMKAP Alawiyah principal Shabariah Othman said the performances and acceptance of students at the school for PT3 were very positive and they had more fun seeking to better themselves academically, and in terms of co-curriculum, besides being more creative and prominent in a balanced manner.

Meanwhile, the mother of a PT3 student from Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Syed Hassan, who wanted to be known only as Ainul Karim, said although her son was not among the excellent PT3 students, he had shown positive development.

“Since the PBS system was implemented, I can see my son has better confidence and no problem in his study pattern. It was different previously, when he was lazy about attending school and easily giving up.

BERNAMA.

Read more @ http://education.bernama.com/index.php?sid=news_content&id=1313052

BATU PAHAT, Dec 9 (Bernama) — The Education Ministry will be gathering feedback on the proposal to implement the School-Based Assessment (PBS) system to replace the existing Primary School Achievement Test (UPSR), from parents and teachers by next year.

Its minister Datuk Seri Mahdzir Khalid said the PBS implementation would also see the abolition of UPSR and PBS assessments would be based on three factors, namely, academic performance, sports and co-curricular and psychometrics, similar to the Form Three Assessment.

“We will start to meet Parent-Teachers Association (PTA) beginning next year and hope to collect the feedback within the next six months,” he told reporters after launching a “Back-to-School” programme for the Parit Sulong constituency at Maktab Rendah Sains Mara Batu Pahat here today.

Mahdzir said that according to the present UPSR system, students are assessed purely on academic performance only, while for the PBS system, other aspects would also be emphasised.

“If students are academically good, and equally good in co-curricular and sports and having good personality, PBS will evaluate all elements together to form a complete assessment for the students,” he said.

When asked on the time frame that the PBS system was expected to replace UPSR, he said it might be implemented within the next five years.

“We do intend to abolish UPSR and replace it with PBS to reduce the pressure on students as well as giving them a more comprehensive assessments.

BERNAMA.

Read more @ http://education.bernama.com/index.php?sid=news_content&id=1310519

BANGI: The Ujian Pencapaian Sekolah Ren­dah (UPSR) may be abolished in favour of a totally School-Based Assessment system, said Education Minister Datuk Seri Mahdzir Khalid.

Mahdzir said that if he had his way, he would do away with the UPSR.

“Constant exams are not the way. In develop­ed countries, you get assessed only when you are at the end of your high school term,” he said after addressing more than 800 counsellors from government schools on Wednesday.

He stressed that this was his personal opi­nion and not the official ministry position.

“It is still early and the ministry is studying the matter. It will not be implemented yet as it may cause an uproar among parents,” he said.

Under the new system this year, pupils in national schools would sit for six papers with a second paper for English while those in vernacular schools would sit for eight papers.

Read more @ http://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2016/10/28/mahdzir-id-do-away-with-upsr-an-assessment-system-should-be-the-way-to-go-for-msia-says-minister/

United we stand: Muhyiddin greeting Mohd Sabri (second left) and union officials.

WHILE the school-based assessment system aims to produce holistic students, teachers’ unions say that more need to get behind this goal in the first place.

Congress of Unions of Teachers in Education Services president Datuk Mohd Sabri Mohd Arsad said residential schools for instance, should change their entry requirements to reflect the new assessment system.

“Although now students sit for the Form Three Assessments (PT3), the minimum requirement (of 6As) for boarding schools is still based on PMR-style expectations.

“The school based assessments were implemented to move away from focusing on just examinations.

“But if the entry requirements do not reflect this, then parents will still be clamouring for straight As just like before,” he said.

Residential schools should instead take a more holistic view of students’ performance, or carry out a special entry examination, he added.

Mohd Sabri was among the representatives present at a meeting between teachers’ unions and Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, held at the Education Ministry in Putrajaya last week.

Among the suggestions made to Muhyiddin, who is also the Education Minister, were on safeguarding teachers’ welfare and improving their career prospects. This includes a proposal to upgrade teacher education institutes so that they can award postgraduate qualifications.

“Right now, teachers spend up to five years at the institutes to get an undergraduate degree – we believe that these institutes can be further expanded to award masters and postdoctoral degrees as well,” said Mohd Sabri.

He added that the ministry was looking at enabling non-graduate teachers to be promoted to the DG42 grade.

“So these teachers who couldn’t get their degrees, those aged 50 and above, have the chance to go on to DG42 by completing short courses.

by PRIYA KULASAGARAN.

Read more @ http://www.thestar.com.my/News/Education/2015/02/01/DPM-to-look-into-teacher-requests/

In classrooms around America, hands go up every day with the question, “Is this for a grade?” But perhaps a more pressing question would be “what is a grade for?” Today, the grades on a child’s report card reflect not only a grasp of academic subjects, but also a variety of other factors such as attendance and behavior. Do traditional grading systems tell us what we really want to know about a child’s learning?

What’s wrong with traditional grading?

A lot, according to many experts. Under traditional grading, extra credit, late work, class participation and non-academic assignments (returning a signed progress report, for example) can influence a student’s score. These factors represent life skills which, while important, don’t necessarily reflect a student’s content knowledge.

Ellis Middle School teachers Eric Harder and Curtis Bartlett saw issues with this firsthand at their Austin, Minnesota school, where a hard-working student with good life skills might earn a passing grade and yet fail a standardized test, but a student with sub-standard life skills and relatively poor grades might ace that same test. And if a substantial portion of a student’s grade consists of these non-academic factors, then grade inflation (the awarding of higher overall scores for lower quality work) can become an issue. Bartlett and Harder came to see traditional scoring as potentially misrepresenting a child’s success in class.

The two 8th grade math teachers decided to study the problem of grading as part of a grant partnership with the Hormel Foundation, the University of Minnesota and Austin Public Schools. Their studies introduced them to Ken O’Connor’s book A Repair Kit for Grading: 15 Fixes for Broken Grades. O’Connor, an expert on assessment and evaluation, says that traditional grading—which takes into account many non-academic factors such as behavior and participation—isn’t necessarily a true representation of what kids really know.

Through O’Connor’s work, Harder and Bartlett saw a solution to this disparity: increase evaluation accuracy by splitting students’ grades into more accurate component parts. What began as an experiment by two curious teachers four years ago has since branched out into a new assessment philosophy called Grading for Learning. Grading for Learning separates the two elements of traditional grading by assigning each student a content knowledge grade and a behavioral life skills grade. “We believe that it is impossible to give a student one letter grade to help parents, teachers, colleges, and even the students themselves to get a hold of what they have learned,” says Harder, a veteran math teacher.

Knowledge grades . . .

Knowledge grades are letter grades based on both content knowledge and local, state and national standards. These grades are “based on students’ performance on preset standards,” according to a Grading for Learning overview, “not on students’ achievement compared to other students.” Grading for Learning introduced some big changes in knowledge-based assessment at Ellis:

• Students who complete all their practice work (commonly known as homework) can retest
• Students whose quarter percentages fall below a 50% will be adjusted to a 50% to give struggling students a better chance at passing a class

by Merry Gordon.

Read more @ http://www.education.com/magazine/article/traditional-grades/

KUALA LUMPUR: THE first examination under the new Form Three Assessment (PT3) system, which replaces the centralised Penilaian Menengah Rendah (PMR) format, will be conducted beginning next month.

Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin announced yesterday that the Education Ministry had fixed July 1 until Oct 17 for secondary schools to hold the PT3 final examination and assessment.

Muhyiddin, who is also education minister, said all secondary schools were free to choose any date within the allocated timeframe to carry out their examinations.

“The ministry has fixed July 1 to July 18 for schools to hold the final assessment for History and Geography, which would be conducted via case studies instrument.

“All secondary schools have been allocated 24 days, beginning Aug 6, to conduct oral tests (listening and speech) for Bahasa Melayu and English language.

“The ministry has also fixed Oct 12 until Oct 17 for schools to conduct written tests for Bahasa Melayu, English Language, Science, Mathematics, Islamic Studies, Living Skills, Arabic, Chinese, Tamil, Iban and Kadazandusun language subjects,” Muhyiddin said after officiating at the Bukit Damansara Charity Carnival here.

A total of 480,000 Form Three students around the country will be the first to sit for the PT3 examination.

Under the new system, the examination papers would be prepared by the respective secondary schools.

To ensure a smooth implementation of the system, Muhyiddin said the Examinations Board would assist schools in preparing questions.

“Since this is the first year for the implementation of PT3 , the Examinations Board will provide a pool of examination questions for the schools to choose from and include it in the examination papers.

“And all questions prepared by the board have the same level of difficulty,” Muhyiddin said.

He also said each school would be assigned a group of external evaluators appointed by the board, comprising teachers from other schools, for another round of checks on examination papers that have been marked.

Unlike PMR, the students’ performance transcript in the PT3 examination would be prepared by the respective schools.

“Students will be evaluated based on bands, from Band One, which indicates poor performance, to an excellent Band Six.”

Muhyiddin said since last year, the ministry had made preparations prior to the implementation of PT3, including training more than 60,000 Form Three teachers.

On doubts raised by several parents over the PT3 system, Muhyiddin assured that the new format would help to improve students’ performance and thinking abilities at secondary school level.

“The ministry is aware that some quarters have yet to fully understand the true spirit of PT3.

by ADIB

Read more @ http://www.nst.com.my/node/2934

KUALA LUMPUR: The Malaysian Examination Syndicate (MES) will use multiple channels to tell parents about the school-based assessment system (PBS) from next month, Education Minister II Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh said.

“We will be clarifying what we mean by ‘school-based’ assessment through parent-teacher association briefings, zone-by-zone updates and through the print and electronic media,” he told reporters after opening the Taylor’s Interna­tional School Kuala Lumpur here yesterday.

Idris said by the end of the month, all teachers would have been briefed on the changes.

Last month, Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin announced an improved version of the PBS and, since then, the ministry and the MES have been making efforts to ensure that information is relayed properly to schools and other stakeholders.

Under the improved system, teachers will no longer have to key in large amounts of data online.

by Ann-Marie Khor.

Read more @ http://www.thestar.com.my/News/Nation/2014/04/18/Clarification-on-PBS-via-multiple-channels/

Kota Belud: The revised School-Based Assessment (PBS) empowers teachers with autonomy to assess students holistically, said Sabah Education Director Datuk Jame Alip.

He said Sabah district education officers who had been briefed on the revised PBS would eventually enlighten teachers on its mechanism and merits.

“Those who say the PBS is not appropriate for schools do not understand that the system is aimed at raising the stature of the teaching profession and education in the country.

“It’s time that our education system to compete with that of developed countries,” he said.

On March 18, Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin announced the PBS revamp whereby teachers no longer have to go through the taxing task of keying in data online from April 1.

The revamp, prompted by complaints from teachers, allows teachers to keep the data offline, thus reducing their workload by between 70 and 80 per cent.

Read more @ http://www.dailyexpress.com.my/news.cfm?NewsID=89204

Plagued with difficulties from the time of its implementation three years ago, the recent review of the PBS has brought some cheer to the parties concerned.

TEACHERS’ voices and disenchantment with the school-based assessment (PBS) has finally been taken into account.

Things got so bad that a group of teachers showed up at a rally last month to protest against PBS with many saying they were not afraid of the repercussions of joining in the protest.

Now that the dust has settled, the hard work will begin. Announcements on the reduction of up to 80% of the teachers’ workload has brought much cheer.

Although teachers have been told that they can input data in their own time, there must be clear guidelines from the Education Ministry on how this data is stored.

How will the information be backed up? What happens to students’ records if systems crash? Students themselves have expressed fears of being treated like “rats in an experiment”.

Tough questions indeed, but which need to be answered. The next few weeks will be important as the ministry unveils the guidelines and makes its explanations to teachers who will need to put them into practice.

Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin had on Tuesday announced that teachers will no longer have to key in data online.

Instead, they will enter the information into an offline system for their own records, as well as for parents who request the information.

“The data will be kept in the school for the teachers and parents to see and for reference purposes,” he said.

The school-based assessment system (PBS) has been plagued with problems since it was implemented three years ago.

It was introduced in primary schools for Year One pupils in 2011 and Form One students in secondary schools in 2012.

Under the system, students will be assessed from time to time for all subjects, and will be given grades from Band 1 (the ability to recall information) to Band 6 (the ability to have higher order thinking skills and knowledge).

by Karen Chapman and Jeannette Goon.

Read more @ http://www.thestar.com.my/News/Education/2014/03/23/being-resolved/

IT is rare for teachers to voice out their work concerns in public. Even the occasional letters to the press are published under pseudonyms, as the teachers are fully aware of the consequences if they break the rules.

But their disenchantment over the school-based assessment (PBS) system reached a tipping point when some of them showed up at a public rally recently to protest against the PBS.

The issue has been brewing for some time, with stories about teachers having to burn the midnight oil just to key in data into an online system that was difficult to access.

The PBS was introduced at the Year One level in 2011 and at Form One in 2012. The planners probably did not anticipate the cumulative effect of the workload on teachers and data volume on the online system as more students come under the PBS.

Which is why there was such a palpable sense of relief that greeted the announcement by Education Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin last week that changes made to the PBS will see a reduction in workload for the teachers by up to 80%.

National Union of the Teaching Profession (NUTP) president Hashim Adnan said teachers throughout the country would be happy to hear that they no longer have to wake up in the early hours of the morning such as at “2am, 3am or 4am” just to key in data.

But technical issues aside, we must not lose sight of the purpose of introducing the PBS in the first place.

The primary role of teachers is to teach. And the self-assessment system is meant to complement this endeavour as it allows students to be assessed continuously rather than through set periodic examinations.

Teachers, therefore, must be sensitive to the performance of their students throughout the year and pay attention to the weaker students to keep them up to speed.

The intent is to create independent students with critical and analytical abilities, who are able to understand properly the subject matter of their studies rather than merely memorising and regurgitating them in examinations.

Which is why the accuracy of the data is crucial as the quality of the students will now be judged at the school level itself.

And the real test will be for this year’s Form Three student, who will no longer take the centralised examination, Penilaian Menengah Rendah (PMR), but the Pentaksiran Tingkatan 3 (PT3 or Form 3 Assessment).

Their entry into Form Four next year – including to fully residential schools, religious secondary schools, Mara Junior Science College, technical secondary schools and vocational colleges – hinges on how accurately they have been assessed.

The Star Says.

Read more @ http://www.thestar.com.my/Opinion/Columnists/The-Star-Says/Profile/Articles/2014/03/23/Ensuring-the-PBS-works-for-teachers-and-students/