Tuesday 30 August 2011

PNG FAILS OBE

The Outcome Based Education has failed in Papua New Guinea. We need to understand that assessment has always had two components - internal and external assessment. Internal assessment for the Grade 10 exam started in grade 9 with tests set by the teacher and collated to pass to Measurement Support Unit.

Test instruments and results for every teacher in every grade were made ready for inspection by the school inspector. He made sure that there was no faking of exams and results by the teacher. It worked well.

The difference with OBE is that the internal assessment was expanded to research projects. This had to be a nightmare for teachers who set projects knowing there was not enough resource material in the library. Even with the donor supplies of books, it may be that there are no multiple copies.

Not enough resource material was available. Sixty students in the class had to share one library book that did not really cover the topic anyway. There was no access to Google. The students had to collaborate on the assignments. That could be called cheating, especially when they copied the assignment of another student.

As well, students had no experience in research, analyzing issues and presenting arguments. Many just copied out of library books. It is called plagiarism. This is poor preparation for university studies. Tertiary students plagiarize in their assignments too. They failed in Australian university studies.

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So the answer now is to have students assessed mainly by external exams. The nation has gone backwards. But at least it will stop the requirement for self-education through projects and research. Education is not ready for that. Failure of OBE is not the fault of teachers. The whole system is not ready for research study.

I have two daughters in Grades 6 and 7. I have never seen them research from a book. The best that they do is copy from what the teacher writes on the black board. A problem in external assessment is that cheating is widely done by advance copies of external exam papers passed among students who pay good money.

PNG cannot win with OBE. Introducing OBE was a step backwards. Cancelling OBE is another step backwards.

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