Abstract
M.Ed.
The South African Education system has been in crisis for a number of years. This crisis is evident in non-functioning schools, mass boycotts, teacher strikes and the lack of facilities and resources. Examinations have been the focus of this crisis. Assessment to determine whether pupils are competent for the next grade in school has often been neglected. There have been accusations in the past few years of fraudulent, incompetent and often corrupt examination papers. Evaluation reform and an in-depth look at evaluation activities are very important. Educators cannot escape the responsibilities of assessing their learners' work. This research is about
assessment of learners as an aspect of school management and its implications for whole school development. It is particularly important that educators be aware of the consequences, varying validity and fairness of different approaches to assessment. Chapter one introduces the research topic and provides the background of the research. It also describes the problem to be analysed, the method to be used in the research, a clarification of the concepts used, and the demarcation of the investigation. Chapter two deals with the literature study undertaken to discuss assessment of learners as an aspect of school management and its implications for whole school development. The topics discussed are comparative perspectives of educational assessment, the importance of assessment in the classroom, and types of tests — and to ascertain whether educators were assessing learners holistically. Chapter three deals with the design of the research instrument as well as the empirical investigation. A questionnaire was developed to gauge the perceptions that educators hold with regard to assessment of learners as an aspect of management and its implications for whole school development. Chapter four explains the series of univariate and multivariate statistical tests that were done in order to test the various hypotheses regarding the responses from educators' perceptions about
whole school development.