New assessment system helps motivate students

Experts are calling for efforts to change the concept of education and look for new models in evaluating the performance of students.

In recent years, the reform of students' academic performance has been given wide attention across the world, and some countries have also accumulated some good experiences.

In China, education authorities have also actively worked to promote the reform in this field. Educators have been exploring new assessment systems, which focus on students' learning abilities and promoting students' comprehensive development and growth.

Tang Shengchang, a member of the National Curriculum and Materials Committee for Basic Education under the Ministry of Education, says that educational assessment should not only need to pay attention to students' academic ability but also be able to help students improve their personalized learning and development.

In recent years, some education organizations in the country have already started to introduce the formative assessment system, which can provide more feedback and related information for educators to guide their teaching activities.

Contrasting with summative assessment, which mainly monitors educational outcomes, the new system mainly involves qualitative feedback that focuses on the details of content and performance rather than students' scores.

"With the development of education in China, various evaluation methods have developed well. Many of them, by using information technology and big data, can quickly provide feedback to students and teachers. Such assessment method can better evaluate students' personality, and help teachers to better guide students' development and growth," says Liu Lian, head for primary and middle school at Shanghai High School International Division.

"Under such assessment system, students can adjust their learning plan in the next stage based on the data-supported analysis report. This is a process where students can act from their own imitative. One goal of our education is to allow students to become more motivated to learn and make decision. I think in this part, it has indeed played an important role," Yang Yongzhen, director of international division at the High School Affiliated to Fudan University, said at the 2017 International Forum on Formative Assessment, which was recently held by Northwest Evaluation Association and Beijing-based education technology company Metrics China in Shanghai.

Northwest Evaluation Association is a global nonprofit educational services organization which works to create new ways to measure an individual student's academic level and growth. It aims to help maximize every student's academic potential through the resulting data. Its assessment system has been used in more than 160 countries.

So far, more than 60 schools in China have adopted its assessment system.