Tests And Exams In Singapore Schools: What School Leaders, Teachers And Parents Need To Know

Tests And Exams In Singapore Schools: What School Leaders, Teachers And Parents Need To Know PDF Author: Kay Cheng Soh
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9813227087
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
Assessment, mainly in the form of tests and examinations, plays a critical role in the schooling of Singaporean students. The results are often used to make irrevocable decisions on the students' future education careers.This book is written with school leaders, teachers, and parents in mind, with the view of helping them to better understand the processes and products of assessment via tests and exams. It is written in simple terms, using minimal technical terms, and introduces school leaders, teachers, and parents to essential concepts and principles of educational measurements which are relevant in the school context in Singapore.While existing books on educational measurement are academically-oriented and meant for formal training courses, this book makes self-study simple by using practical examples couched in layman's language. In addition, this book uses concrete examples and analogies to make the text reader-friendly.

Tests And Exams In Singapore Schools: What School Leaders, Teachers And Parents Need To Know

Tests And Exams In Singapore Schools: What School Leaders, Teachers And Parents Need To Know PDF Author: Kay Cheng Soh
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9813227087
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 184

Get Book Here

Book Description
Assessment, mainly in the form of tests and examinations, plays a critical role in the schooling of Singaporean students. The results are often used to make irrevocable decisions on the students' future education careers.This book is written with school leaders, teachers, and parents in mind, with the view of helping them to better understand the processes and products of assessment via tests and exams. It is written in simple terms, using minimal technical terms, and introduces school leaders, teachers, and parents to essential concepts and principles of educational measurements which are relevant in the school context in Singapore.While existing books on educational measurement are academically-oriented and meant for formal training courses, this book makes self-study simple by using practical examples couched in layman's language. In addition, this book uses concrete examples and analogies to make the text reader-friendly.

Tests and Exams in Singapore Schools

Tests and Exams in Singapore Schools PDF Author: Kay Cheng Soh
Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company
ISBN: 9789813227064
Category : Educational tests and measurements
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Assessment, mainly in the form of tests and examinations, plays a critical role in the schooling of Singaporean students. The results are often used to make irrevocable decisions on the students' future education careers. This book is written with school leaders, teachers, and parents in mind, with the view of helping them to better understand the processes and products of assessment via tests and exams. It is written in simple terms, using minimal technical terms, and introduces school leaders, teachers, and parents to essential concepts and principles of educational measurements which are relevant in the school context in Singapore. While existing books on educational measurement are academically-oriented and meant for formal training courses, this book makes self-study simple by using practical examples couched in layman's language. In addition, this book uses concrete examples and analogies to make the text reader-friendly.

Secondary School External Examination Systems

Secondary School External Examination Systems PDF Author: Barend Vlaardingerbroek
Publisher: Cambria Press
ISBN: 1604976004
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
Summative assessment has been a contentious issue in educational circles for several decades, particularly high-stakes assessment events which arise at various junctures of the school cycle, especially those at the end of it. The French Baccalaureat and English A-Levels and their numerous clones throughout the francophone and anglophone worlds are household names and represent milestone events in people's lives, as their outcomes are principal determinants of young people's future prospects. These examinations are external--they are devised, conducted and processed by agencies outside the schools, usually ministerial examination units. As such, they act as 'blind' arbiters of student achievement, providing the proverbial 'level playing field' which ensures the comparability of outcomes. In the pyramidal school structures of yesteryear, examinations acted as filters, regulating the progression of pupils to subsequent tiers of formal education. Exit points occurred from primary school level up, from where unsuccessful candidates could enter the labour force and/or embark on occupationally specific further education and training. With the modernisation of the labour market and an ever-higher social demand for access to higher levels of formal education, the filtering function of examinations at lower levels of schooling has been gradually eroded, while burgeoning numbers of students at the upper secondary level have brought about reforms that include curricular diversification and sometimes radical overhauls of terminating assessment systems (including the modification and, in some instances, abandonment of external examinations). This edited volume brings together the experiences of twenty examination systems from around the world to show how these dynamic entities have adapted over time to the changing context of schooling. Following an introduction by Stephen P. Heyneman of World Bank repute, there are sixteen chapters presenting Country Case Studies, which have been written up under common subheadings, thereby highlighting the comparative nature of the work and facilitating cross-referencing. The subsequent four chapters elaborate on the theme of 'external examinations beyond national borders', including a contribution by the International Baccalaureate Organisation. A defining feature of the work is the attention it pays to what it calls the 'nuts and bolts' of external examinations, from question-setting to grading procedures. These are, it is argued, instrumental in nurturing and maintaining public confidence in external examinations. The book will be of immense value to people involved in educational policy studies, especially strategic educational planning, as well as those directly concerned with formal assessment. The work has been written to appeal to a wide audience of informed persons--it is accessible to teachers and interested laypeople, as well as to academics."

Education in Singapore

Education in Singapore PDF Author: Yew-Jin Lee
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811699828
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
This edited book is a comprehensive resource for understanding the history as well as the current status of educational practices in Singapore. It is a one-stop reference guide to education and educational issues/concerns here. There are three sections: Part 1 provides a sectorial overview of how education has been organized in this country such as preschool, special needs, primary and secondary, and adult education divisions. In Part 2, contributors critically delve into issues and policies that are pertinent to understanding education here such as underachievement, leadership, language education, assessment, and meritocracy to question what Part 1 might have taken for granted. Part 3 contains the largest number of contributors because it offers a scholarly examination into specific subject histories. This section stands out because of the comparative rarity of its subject matter (history of Physical Education, Art, Music, Geography Education, etc.) in Singapore.

Learning from Singapore

Learning from Singapore PDF Author: Pak Tee Ng
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317404599
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
Learning from Singapore tells the inside story of the country’s journey in transforming its education system from a struggling one to one that is hailed internationally as effective and successful. It is a story not of the glory of international test results, but of the hard work and tenacity of a few generations of policy makers, practitioners and teacher trainers. Despite its success, Singapore continues to reform its education system, and is willing to deal with difficult issues and challenges of change. Citing Singapore's transformation, author Pak Tee Ng highlights how context and culture affect education policy formulation and implementation. Showing how difficult education reform can be when a system needs to negotiate between competing philosophies, significant trade-offs, or paradoxical positions, this book explores the successes and struggles of the Singapore system and examines its future direction and areas of tension. The book also explores how national education systems can be strengthened by embracing the creative tensions generated by paradoxes such as the co-existence of timely change and timeless constants, centralisation and decentralisation, meritocracy and compassion, and teaching less and learning more. Learning from Singapore brings to the world the learning from Singapore—what Singapore has learned from half a century of educational change—and encourages every education system to bring hope to and secure a future for the next generation.

Examinations In Singapore: Change And Continuity (1891-2007)

Examinations In Singapore: Change And Continuity (1891-2007) PDF Author: Hong Kheng Chow
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9814471577
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
The first book to explore the development of Singapore's much-talked-about education and examination system, this volume juxtaposes examinations with its immediate context of education and wider context of politics, economy and society. The study covers three broad historical periods: Examinations in Singapore from 1891 to 1945; The Post-War Years from 1946 to the 1970s; and Charting Our Destiny from the 1980s to 2007. In the British period up to 1941, the local examinations were conducted by the vernacular schools, and external examinations by the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate. There was a lack of systematic effort to establish a uniform system of education and examinations. During the Japanese Occupation, examinations were conducted by the Japanese authorities and, unexpectedly, the Cambridge examinations continued in the Sime Road Camp. In the post-war period and particularly after Singapore was granted self-government, the establishment of a national education system was followed by the emergence of national examinations: the Primary School Leaving Examinations and the Singapore-Cambridge GCE N/O/A Levels for every school-going child in Singapore. Thereafter, the nature of national examinations evolved with the changing needs of education and the nation. At the turn of the century, with the Ministry of Education's decision to take greater control of examinations, the Singapore Examinations and Assessment Board was established, to oversee new developments in examinations.Unlike most literature on education where examinations are often mentioned as an outcome of educational goals and objectives, this book focuses on examinations per se. Examinations have gained a momentum of their own, and it is interesting to note the development of examinations against the backdrop of the broader history of Singapore and of education in Singapore.

Comparative Sociology of Examinations

Comparative Sociology of Examinations PDF Author: Fumiya Onaka
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429881045
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
Contemporary societies are constructed, constricted, and constrained by various series of examinations. Governments of both Western and non-Western countries tend to conduct detailed, multi-layered and continuous systems of tests or examinations. International tests, such as PISA and TIMSS, have also been introduced to compare the relative performances of learners within diverse educational institutions across different countries. Examinations therefore provide a methodological pivot for comparing a range of societies. They enable us to contrast the West and the East; the North and the South; tribal and mass society; ancient and postmodern civilization; and so on. Comparing parallel societies from across Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and North America, this book proposes fundamental transitions in sociological research from system to process and from communication to composition through intensive studies on examinations. It uses ethnographies, interviews, questionnaires, documents, statistics, and big-data analyses to make comparisons on broad scales of time and space. In so doing, it suggests hypotheses encompassing different kinds of societies in human history, including those in the Axial Age and the Modern Ages.

Beyond the Bubble Test

Beyond the Bubble Test PDF Author: Linda Darling-Hammond
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118456181
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
Performance assessment is a hot topic in school systems, and educators continue to analyze its costs, benefits, and feasibility as a replacement for high-stakes testing. Until now, researchers and policymakers have had to dig to find out what we know and what we still have to learn about performance assessment. Beyond the Bubble Test: How Performance Assessments Support 21st Century Learning synthesizes the latest findings in the field, and not a moment too soon. Statistics indicate that the United States is in danger of falling behind if it fails to adapt to our changing world. The memory and recall strategies of traditional testing are no longer adequate to equip our students with the skills they need to excel in the global economy. Instead teachers need to engage students in deeper learning, assessing their ability to use higher-order skills. Skills like synthesizing information, understanding evidence, and critical problem-solving are not achieved when we teach to multiple-choice exams. Examples in Beyond the Bubble Test paint a useful picture of how schools can begin to supplement traditional tests with something that works better. This book provides new perspectives on current performance assessment research, plus an incisive look at what’s possible at the local and state levels. Linda Darling-Hammond, with a team of leading scholars, bring together lessons learned, new directions, and solid recommendations into a single, readily accessible compendium. Beyond the Bubble Test situates the current debate on performance assessment within the context of testing in the United States. This comprehensive resource also looks beyond our U.S. borders to Singapore, Hong Kong, and other places whose reform-mindedness can serve as an example to us.

The Testing Charade

The Testing Charade PDF Author: Daniel Koretz
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022640885X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
For decades we’ve been studying, experimenting with, and wrangling over different approaches to improving public education, and there’s still little consensus on what works, and what to do. The one thing people seem to agree on, however, is that schools need to be held accountable—we need to know whether what they’re doing is actually working. But what does that mean in practice? High-stakes tests. Lots of them. And that has become a major problem. Daniel Koretz, one of the nation’s foremost experts on educational testing, argues in The Testing Charade that the whole idea of test-based accountability has failed—it has increasingly become an end in itself, harming students and corrupting the very ideals of teaching. In this powerful polemic, built on unimpeachable evidence and rooted in decades of experience with educational testing, Koretz calls out high-stakes testing as a sham, a false idol that is ripe for manipulation and shows little evidence of leading to educational improvement. Rather than setting up incentives to divert instructional time to pointless test prep, he argues, we need to measure what matters, and measure it in multiple ways—not just via standardized tests. Right now, we’re lying to ourselves about whether our children are learning. And the longer we accept that lie, the more damage we do. It’s time to end our blind reliance on high-stakes tests. With The Testing Charade, Daniel Koretz insists that we face the facts and change course, and he gives us a blueprint for doing better.

Handbook of Asian Education

Handbook of Asian Education PDF Author: Yong Zhao
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136721282
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 815

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Book Description
Comprehensive and authoritative, this Handbook provides a nuanced description and analysis of educational systems, practices, and policies in Asian countries and explains and interprets these practices from cultural, social, historical, and economic perspectives. Using a culture-based framework, the volume is organized in five sections, each devoted to educational practices in one civilization in Asia: Sinic, Japanese, Islamic, Buddhist, and Hindu. Culture and culture identities essentially are civilization identities; the major differences among civilizations are rooted in their different cultures. This framework offers a novel approach to capturing the essence of the diverse educational systems and practices in Asia. Uniquely combining description and interpretation of educational practices in Asia, this Handbook is a must-have resource for education researchers and graduate students in international and comparative education, globalization and education, multicultural education, sociocultural foundations of education, and Asian studies, and for educational administrators and education policy makers.