In this article, Mario Sylvander, Co-founder of ISN partner 3Dethos, highlighted how assessment approaches differ between North American and British schools, and considers the difference between continuous performance evaluation and standardized exam results
Having worked in international schools of North American orientation and British orientation, I’ve observed how the two educational cultures differ in their approach to assessment, in particular as regards the lead-up to university entry. The differences boil down to transcripts vs. exam scores. And those two respective linchpins of university applications indicate the difference in approach and value in the two systems of education.
For North American-oriented schools, U.S. mainly, the transcript represents assessments by teachers/schools and is based on aggregated evidence of performance and achievements over time (trimesters, semesters, or the academic year). This is to say, grades are based on accumulated results of internal assessments, often of different types, including quizzes, tests, exams, projects, and perhaps effort and participation. The grade represents a weighted average of varied inputs from performance achieved during a period leading up to the grade. A grade thus represents a result of process.
For UK-oriented schools, a transcript and its process-based grades can be a foreign concept. Universities focus on scores from one or both of thorough standardized examinations that occur twice–once mid-way through secondary school ([I]GCSEs), and once at the end of secondary school (A-Levels or perhaps IB). What happens between or separate from examination scores is not a significant factor in decision-making toward university offers. Indeed, for secondary teachers to give grades themselves is to ask them a challenging task whereby they want to simultaneously take past performance into account while also divining future potential scores on the summative standardized exams to come. The assessments of value in this system are the results of learning over time.
Arguments in favor or against both are possible. For those of us in international education with students learning in respective systems and applying to universities of both persuasions (often simultaneously), to the greatest extent possible when we have our own leanings, we must exercise bilingualism.
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