Pilot survey to ascertain Grade Six preparedness
Kenya National Examinations Council will this week conduct a Competency Based Assessment pilot study in preparation for Grade Six summative assessment.
KNEC chief executive David Njeng’ere yesterday said the assessment, to commence today and end on Friday, will be conducted in 215 schools drawn from all 47 counties.
“Purpose of the assessment is to establish suitability of the assessment tools, difficulty in level of items, appropriateness of language, discrimination index of items, adequacy of the duration of the test and reporting format for learners’ competencies,” said Njeng’ere.
According to Knec, the pilot will be conducted in both public and private schools.
Also to be included in the maiden assessment are special needs schools, where five are for visual and physical impairments respectively while 10 others are for children with hearing impairment.
Special needs
Another 10 schools are for learners specific to special needs pathways, which means they are not following the regular curriculum because of the nature of multiple or severe disabilities.
Knec CBA Coordinator, Anne Ngatia yesterday said initiative is being conducted in effort to understand areas the council needs to improve and plan better for future assessments.
“CBA is largely formative so we have 60 per cent of School Based Assessment, which is purely at the school level with standardised tools spread across Grades Four,Five and Six.
We then have a summative assessment at the end of Grade Six that covers 40 per cent, which is purely developed, administered and scored by Knec,” she explained.
She also said in School Based Assessment, Knec is giving assessment in all 14 learning areas but in summative, the subjects are condensed into five papers.
“What we are doing is to pilot the final assessment scheduled for next year in December.
We want to find out the adequacy of assessment, time of each paper, if learners access all questions as well as feedback from subject specific teachers who will answer questionnaires on these details,” she added.
She also said under piloting, Knec will be seeking to understand a reporting mechanism on how best it will report on learners’ outcome and challenges teachers may face.
Ngatia said Knec had already issued assessment guidelines to Sub-County Directors of Education, so that the exercise can be conducted harmoniously across schools to be sampled.
She said the learners to be assessed this week will neither be ranked nor get individual feedback.
Supervisors and invigilators to oversee the exercise will be drawn from neighbouring schools of those being sampled.
Implementation of Competency Based Curriculum is currently in Grade Five, who will also form the first cohort of learners to sit their exams in Grade Six and move to Junior Secondary in 2023.
The 60 per cent scores of the final mark to transit to junior secondary will be obtained across Grades Four, Five and Six with each contributing 20 per cent.
