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How performances are aligned with the balance between formative and summative assessment?

The advent of competency-based curriculum has declared less of summative and more of formative assessment. This has come with challenges and opportunities; challenges on the competencies a teacher needs to perform authentic assessments, expected balance between formative and summative assessment and opportunities such as evaluating learners continuously as well as offering information on the learning outcome. This paper explores the balance between formative assessment and summative assessment, evaluating the issues emerging, rebalancing and the role of the assessor’s competency and its effect on the balancing vs. emerging issues. It analyses the established balance and how it authentically evaluates the performance. Data was collected from 470 schools across 47 counties in Kenya and analyzed to test the weighting between formative and summative and its effect on the final performance. The outcome of the data indicated that there were deviations across the submitted scores based on the mode of assessment. The deviations in outcomes were well pronounced across the learning areas as well as across different teachers. However, across board there was a positive deviation above the average in favor of formative assessment. Challenges were also noted on; the timing of assessment, consistency of assessment across learning areas and choice of assessment modes. This leads to conclusion that as much as we are transiting to formative assessment there is need to prepare the teachers on formative assessment as this will have implication on the quality at which it measures learning outcomes. The balance between formative-summative assessment and the timing of the assessment needs to be mapped onto the learning areas, teacher’s qualification and length of practice to authentically measure the learning outcomes and establish the alignment between formative assessment performance and summative assessment performance.
Key words: Assessor’s competency, summative assessment, formative assessment, authentic assessments, consistency of assessment.

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