OECD Reviews of Evaluation and Assessment in Education: Georgia
Georgia has made remarkable progress in expanding education access and improving education quality. Nevertheless, the majority of children in Georgia leave school without mastering the basic competencies for life and work. Moreover, students’ background is becoming a greater influence on their achievement. This review, developed in partnership with UNICEF, provides Georgia with recommendations to strengthen its evaluation and assessment system to focus on helping students learn. It will be of interest to countries that wish to strengthen their own evaluation and assessment systems and, in turn, improve educational outcomes.
Improving learning outcomes and equity through student assessment
This chapter looks at how student assessment in Georgia contributes to student learning. In Georgia, the concept of assessment is understood as giving summative marks to students in order to judge their performance. Using classroom assessment to improve student learning is not widely practiced by teachers. This understanding and approach to assessment is also reflected in the country’s recently reformed high-stakes examinations system, which previously tested students in over a dozen subjects across two examinations spanning two grades. This environment motivated students and teachers to become focused on achieving high marks rather than on acquiring key skills. This chapter suggests that Georgia should re‑focus student assessment so it is designed to help students learn. For this to occur, teachers and the community will need to be supported to fundamentally change their understanding of assessment and the examinations system will have to be reconfigured to reflect a more formative approach towards student assessment.