The ManicaPost
Shelton Mwanyisa
Emerging educational issues
Education is the vehicle for social, economic and political transformation. Curriculum surgeries in the form of renewal and innovations are an inevitable phenomenon.
An education system that does not address the needs and interests of its recipients is wastage of state resources.
Such an education system produces graduates who are dysfunctional in society. Welcome to the column Emerging educational issues.
This week we focus on the much talked about Continuous Assessment Learning Activity (CALA).
Common questions raised when CALAs were introduced are:
Why introduce CALAs?
What is CALAs?
How do CALAs benefit the learners?
The background of CALA
The Presidential Commission of Inquiry into Education and Training (CIETT) of 1999 recommended that there be a genuine paradigm shift from examination-oriented education to one that emphasizes desirable traits and competences.
It follows therefore that the 2015 Curriculum Review process also recommended the need for a system of assessment to track learner progress.
The framework is consistent with the prescription for assessment in the Curriculum Framework for Primary and Secondary Education 2015-2022.
Against this background, the Continuous Assessment Learning Activities were introduced by the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education (MoPSE) amongst other innovations.
Continuous Assessment (CA) is an on-going system of monitoring learners’ progress with the aim of helping them improve their learning.
It is done by teachers in the school environment through daily teaching, projects, tests and observations, among other teaching strategies.
It guides the preparation of learners for appropriate roles in society from Early Childhood Development (ECD) to secondary level.
As seen from this angle CALA is part of Competence-based Education (CBE).
Competence based Education involves learners demonstrating what they know, and agreed upon learning outcomes that reflect successful functioning in life roles.
What is CALA?
A Continuous Assessment Learning Activity (CALA) is a learning activity or assessment that requires learners to perform and demonstrate their knowledge.
It requires learners to produce a tangible product and or carry out a performance that serve as evidence of learning.
Learners are presented with a situation that calls them to apply their existing knowledge in context.
An example of a CALA could be asking learners to find a solution to a problem linked to a subject (Learning Area).
In agriculture learners can be asked to design a tool rake.
The topic is extracted from a problem earlier on identified!
Learners with the help of the teacher can observe or use personal experiences to identify problems.
Through observing how often people are injured by tools left lying around in the home or school, safe keeping of tools can lead to the designing of a tool rake.
In simple terms, CALA is a mini research undertaken by learners in a given learning area.
In the given scenario the CALA is practical, although teachers can also design pen and paper research activities for learners.
A good CALA is a product of the ability to identify real problems in the environment.
Importance of CALAs
From an economic development context, CALAs are an ideal panacea for unemployment challenges as it equips learners with life and entrepreneurship skills.
Competence Based Curriculum (CBC) is a curriculum that emphasises what learners are expected to do rather than focusing on what they are expected to know.
Therefore, it caters for diversity in terms of abilities as opposed to traditional end of course examinations.
Final examinations do not adequately assess all learner competences since they are largely pen and paper examinations administered at the end of a course or learning period.
It must be appreciated that through CALAs, learners can acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, values and attitudes to solve situations they encounter in everyday life.
This is well in line with the African Traditional Education philosophy of ubuntu which emphasises the functionality of individuals in society.
The final examination model adopted from Cambridge falls short of the assessment of pertinent skills that the 21st Century political, economic, technological and social environments demand.
The model encouraged rote learning and drilling as learners wait to reproduce bookish knowledge in the exams.
Furthermore, an assessment system that ignores other dimensions of child development is deficient of the attributes of proper assessment procedures.
Non-cognitive skills are part of the curriculum and so must be assessed too.
More so, with formative assessment, teachers are now accorded the opportunity to participate fully in the assessment of their learners.
A number of factors can affect the performance of learners during final examinations.
On that basis CALAs provide an opportunity for learners to correct and be corrected before submission of work for final marking, a situation that is impossible with summative examinations!
In the process of reflecting on their learning and making adjustments, learners achieve deeper understanding.
Therefore, the holistic development of our children by supporting them to acquire the knowledge, competencies and attitudes needed to succeed in the world of today and tomorrow.
The assessment framework also embraces Information and Communication Technology as a key learning area and critical-enabler of research.
CALAs contribute to the assessment outcomes of the learner at all key exit levels, that is ECD, Junior School, Ordinary Level and Advanced Level.
This framework is, therefore, a synthesis of assessment procedures into the teaching-learning processes.
I hope myths and misconceptions about CALAs have been clarified. In our next edition, we focus on the roles of teachers, learners and parents in CALAs.
References: Curriculum Framework for Primary and Secondary Education 2015-2022.
