WORKLOAD, TEACHER COMPETENCY AND FUNDING AS CORRELATES OF SCHOOL-BASED ASSESSMENT PRACTICES IN THE 21ST CENTURY.

Abstract

The study; evaluation of school-based assessment practices examined the problem confronting school-based assessment practices in Obio\Akpor Local Government Are of Rivers State. Descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. There are three (3) research questions and three (3) hypotheses that guided the study. The target population for this study was 7, 576 teachers’ population of the study consisted of all the public senior secondary school in Obio\Akpor Local Government Area, Rivers State. Taro Yamame was used to select a sample of two hundred (200) teachers for the study. Simple random sampling by balloting was used for selected the teachers from different schools for the study. A self-constructed instrument titled Problem Confronting School-Based Assessment Questionnaire (PCSBAQ), which was used to collect data the teachers (respondents). Test-retest method was used to determine the reliability of the instrument while the reliability of the instruments was determined using A reliability coefficient of 0.88 (88%) was obtained using the Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation Coefficient. In other words, the reliability index of 0.88 shows that the instrument was reliable enough for the study. The researcher and two-research assistance administered the two students in their various schools. Mean and standard deviation was used to answer the research questions while independent t-test was used to test the hypothesis at 0.05 level of significant. The result shows that there is a significant influence of workload on school-based assessment practices in Obio\Akpor Local Government Area, Rivers State, and the result also shows that there is a significant influence of funding on school-based assessment practices in Obio\Akpor Local Government Area, Rivers State. The result equally shows that there is significant influence of teacher competency on school-based assessment practices in Obio\Akpor Local Government Area, Rivers State. Based on these findings, it was recommended that; Government should employ more teachers to reduce teacher’s workload to enable the teacher to have time for school-based assessment and government should provide enough funds to the school management to provide school-based assessment materials to enable teachers prepare effective and efficient assessment items for school-based assessment.