Teacher perspectives of school-based assessment in a secondary school in Kuala Lumpur

AbstractSchool-based assessment is a new policy venture in the highly centralised education system of Malaysia. One area that has been subjected to this change initiative is the Oral English Assessment (OEA). A qualitative study was conducted to explore teacher perspectives of the implementation of school-based OEA among the Form 1 (Year 7) students in a secondary school. Semi-structured interviews were conducted on two English Language teachers and their oral English assessment sessions were observed. Data were coded, clustered, and categorized into themes. Analysis indicated that both teachers generally agreed that school-based assessment is the way forward in assessment provided the fundamentals are in place. Issues such as grading guidelines and implementation procedures must be ironed out before successful implementation can happen. Cross-case analysis revealed three major themes: insufficient guidelines on the implementation process, lack of teachers’ knowledge base, and lack of external monitoring of school-based OEA. The inherent implication of the themes is that greater attention is required in the implementation of educational policies with effective alignment of the relevant tools. School-based assessment, teacher competency, policy implementation, Malaysi