Abstract
D. Phil.
School based assessment (SBA) or continuous assessment (CASS) as it is often referred to, includes
all forms of assessment conducted by the teacher, at the classroom level, which are then collated for
summative judgment purposes to feed into the exit point assessment result. Internationally there has
been a search for more authentic forms of assessment and South Africa has also explored alternative
forms of assessment so that the final assessment is not dominated by a once-off external summative
examination. SBA was officially introduced as part of the assessment regime for the award of the Senior
Certificate, in the South African education system, in 2001 and has subsequently been included as part
of the assessment requirement for the National Senior Certificate (NSC) that replaced the Senior
Certificate, in 2008.
As much as SBA allows for a broader form of assessment of learning, it reduces the reliability of
assessment and claims have been made that it impacts on the public confidence and credibility of the
certificate. This is as a result of assessment now being conducted by teachers in the classroom, who
are poorly equipped to implement SBA. Umalusi, the Quality Assurance Council, responsible for the
final standard and quality of exit assessment has raised concerns about the reliability of SBA and
therefore, to guard the credibility of the Senior Certificate and the National Senior Certificate, the
Council has statistically moderated the SBA marks using the examination marks as a benchmark. This
form of moderation has been regarded as not being the most appropriate, since it undermines the
essence and purpose of this form of assessment. Therefore this study attempts to review the current
form of quality assurance of SBA as it is implemented across all provincial education departments
(PEDS), so as to develop an improved model for the quality assurance of SBA.
In order to adequately contextualise the study, two of the key components of this study, that is, school
based assessment (SBA) and quality assurance, were explored in detail in chapter two of the study.
This chapter also evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of SBA, and then focused on the
implementation and management of SBA in South Africa, its current status and challenges. The major
challenges facing the South African schooling system, with regard to SBA, relate to: (a) the lack of a
clear understanding of the specific purpose of SBA; (b) the policies, structures and processes for the
implementation of SBA are grossly inadequate; (c) the reliance on statistical moderation of SBA has
resulted in a lack of motivation to improve the quality of SBA; and therefore there is a need for creative
thinking to ensure fairness in SBA.