The African Foundation for Educational Development (AFFED) has raised concerns against the impending National Standardized Assessment Test (NSAT) scheduled to be written on December 17, 2021.

Education Minister Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum had explained the purpose of the test saying “The test is to evaluate the primary 4 students on whether they can read or not and this will also help the government to see the challenges that are confronting the country’s education sector.”

“So after the conduct of the 2021 national standardised test by the West African Examinations Council (WAEC), we expect over 90% of primary four students in the country to be proficient in English,” Mr Adutwum said this month.

But AFFED in a statement isgned by its Executive Director Ernest Kwame Adade said “The general purpose of the National Standardized Assessment Test(NSAT) is to identify among many things the strength and weaknesses of learners for remediation purposes and resource allocation, but the current mode of its implementation may defeat this purpose.

AFFED have identified some concerns regarding the implementation of the NSAT and wish to state that the assessment test may not reflect the true performance of learners and the data which the GES seeks to acquire.

The NSAT to be administered does not take into consideration the various learning abilities of learners as enshrined in the National Pre- tetiary Learning Assessment Framework (NPLAF).

The current guidelines given by WAEC neglects a high number of the competencies that must be assessed per the Standards Based Curriculum.

The NSAT does not recognise the paradigm shift from Objective Based learning to a Standardised Based learning procedure.

The test to be administered does not observe the assessment that corresponds to the standards based curriculum that is currently in use and again, the domain of learning is used disproportionately.

It is therefore misleading for our education assessment system to still attach itself to an objective mode of assessment amidst the use of a standards based curriculum.

Source: 3news