10.1.4 Teachers as assessors

Teachers as assessors

In many countries, assessment (both formative and summative) is still carried out by teachers, assessing knowledge and skills learned in the curriculum, but there is a trend towards independent assessment of learning outcomes for summative assessment. Teachers may still be involved, although they would not be considered independent and objective if they assess their own students. In recent years we have seen that representatives from the world of work have started to play a more important role in summative assessment.

Formative assessment remains essential in teaching and learning. A competence-based approach focuses on the assessment of learning outcomes, giving more importance to self-assessment by learners, assessing key competences and transversal skills, promoting greater integration of practice and theory, and assessing collective and digitally supported learning and non-standardised learning. This is leading to new assessment approaches being introduced which in turn affect the assessment requirements for teachers. It takes time to move away from testing the taught curriculum towards evaluating expected learning outcomes in the standards. In this reference tool, we are focusing on the learning rather than on assessment, which we are not elaborating. However, assessment remains an important role for teachers, as assessment is an essential tool to keep track of students’ progress.