Using Assessment Results To Improve English Language Teaching And Learning

ABSTRACT

Quality education is the bedrock of national development and progress. In the course of the

history of education in Ghana, there arose the need to improve accessibility. Hence, a series of

interventions such as the Education For All (EFA), the Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education

(FCUBE), the Fast Track Initiative (FTI), and the abolition of school fees and levies which led to

the introduction of the Capitation Grant scheme (CGS), were introduced. These initiatives triggered

a surge in enrolment figures in public primary schools by about sixteen percent (16%). It became

necessary that after getting the children into school, the government should ensure that the children

receive relevant literacy skills and for that matter, academic knowledge.

As a sequel to this development, there arose the need for quality instruction in the classroom, an

issue which has become a major concern among reform movements across the world. Concern with

quality immediately gives rise to the issue of assessment. Assessment is the process of obtaining

information that is used to make educational decisions about students, to give feedback to the

students about their progress, strengths and weaknesses and to judge instructional effectiveness and

weaknesses and curricula adequacy. This is why various reforms that have dominated the education

scene in the last three decades propose the use of assessment as a critical factor to improve quality.

This research is to find out the opinions of the actual administrators and users of assessment

results. The views collated from the various stakeholders showed that there is no major attempt to

use the results of the various assessments so far conducted in the public schools in the classrooms to

target the individual testees. Also, the opinions gathered suggest that many teachers in the

classroom need a serious training / orientation on how to plan a test and how to write good test items.