Facing the challenges of the new assessment culture

This presentation focuses attention on structural and conceptual changes at the policy and classroom levels in assessment in the 334 education reform. In policy terms, new approaches to assessment were designed to be more formative, criterion-referenced, school-based, and learning-oriented, as compared to summative, norm-referenced, and evaluative public examination in the colonial period. These changes in assessment take place against the backdrop of major structural reform of the Hong Kong education system and the associated curriculum reform. This presentation will report on how new assessment policies have been taken up and implemented by the profession, and what progress has been made in achieving reform objectives.