The impact of continuous assessment on the academic performances of students

Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject Pedagogy - School System, Educational and School Politics, Ahmadu Bello University (Department of Educational Psychology and Counselling), language: English, abstract: This work explores the impact of continuous assessment on the academic performances of students with the help of a survey that questioned 120 secondary school teachers in Ilorin Metropolis. Over the years, the practice of continuous assessment has been the pre-evaluation process of the academic success of students before their final examination period. Nowadays, however, it appears that teachers are not using continuous assessment to prepare students for examinations. In view of this, the study investigates the impact of continuous assessment regarding the academic performance of students. The descriptive survey design was employed for the study and a random sampling technique was used to select 120 teachers in ten different secondary schools in Ilorin Metropolis. The instrument used was a self-designed questionnaire entitled "Impact of CA Academic Performance Questionnaire (ICAAPQ)". The study reveals that continuous assessment helps students to remember what has been learnt, to concentrate on difficult areas of a subject, and help to identify their areas of strengths and weaknesses. The author recommends that teachers should work with school counsellors to critically examine students performances in continuous assessment in order to understand their areas of weaknesses.