OECD Reviews of Evaluation and Assessment in Education: Student Assessment in Turkey
How can assessment and evaluation policies work together more effectively to improve student outcomes in primary and secondary schools? The country reports in this series provide, from an international perspective, an independent analysis of major issues facing evaluation and assessment policy to identify improvements that can be made to enhance the quality, equity and efficiency of school education.
Turkey’s education system stands out internationally as a success story. In recent decades, participation has been vastly expanded, becoming universal at lower levels of schooling and outperforming other middle-income countries in upper secondary education. However, the education system is also marked by disparities, with only around half of 15-year olds acquiring the essential competencies they need for life and work.
This review, developed in co operation with UNICEF, suggests how student assessment can be used more effectively to better support all students to do well. It provides recommendations for enhancing teachers’ classroom assessments, assessing a broader range of skills through national examinations and using the new national assessment to support improvements in learning and teachers’ assessment practice.
Using the evaluation system to promote better assessment and learning
This chapter looks at how the evaluation system – teacher appraisal, school evaluation and system evaluation – interacts with practices for student assessment. While Turkey’s evaluation system encourages teachers and schools to focus on student achievement, achievement is frequently measured by numeric marks. This encourages a perception that it is high marks which are most important for learning. It also means that policymaking decisions around student outcomes are not based on reliable and valid data, since marks from classroom assessment can vary significantly across classrooms and schools. This chapter suggests how teacher appraisal, school evaluation and system evaluation frameworks can be revised to encourage the kinds of quality assessment practices that research shows are most effective for learning.
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