English Teachers’ Voices on the Challenges of the School-Based Assessment (original) (raw)

Today's educational demand no longer focuses on academic merit alone as one needs to have skills and competencies required in the current competitive world. This also leads to the need for different ways of assessing the learning process. In line with this, Malaysia has implemented the School-Based Assessment (SBA) since 17 December 2010.However, there has been a hue and cry over this assessment because of several challenges in implementing it. This article reports and discusses the findings of a small scale study on teachers' perceptions towards the SBA in an attempt to understand the uproar. Seventeen teachers from three established public schools in Seremban district were purposively chosen as participants. A semi-structured interview method was used to collect the data. Findings revealed that although the motives of the SBA are positively perceived by the teachers, its implementation in schools is still unfavourable because of the numerous challenges in implementing the SBA.