Assessment Examples and Comment

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Running head: ASSESSMENT EXAMPLES AND COMMENT
Assessment Examples and Comment
Name
Institution

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ASSESSMENT EXAMPLES AND COMMENT
International Baccalaureate was formerly known as International Baccalaureate
Organization. It has several educational institutions in more than 100 countries around the world
(Saxton and Hill, 2014). The students of IB are assessed and evaluated to ensure that they
achieve the set learning objectives. Faria International School is one of the institutions which
offer the educational program of IB.
Nugent and Karnes (2002) say that students in Faria International School are assessed
using pre-assessment, formative assessment as well as summative assessment. Pre-assessment is
done before the start of the unit in order to guide the teacher in the teaching and learning process.
Formative assessment is done in the progress of the unit where the teacher is given an
opportunity to understand the students with special needs, what the learners know and develop a
plan on the areas which need to be emphasized on in the teaching and learning process. The
summative assessment is done at the end of the semester where the general and overall
performance of a student is demonstrated. In this summative assessment, the IB examiners and
moderators are the ones who are responsible in assessing the students.
In Diploma Programme, assessment reports are given two times in a year, implying that
each year has two semesters. In each semester, a final report is issued independently from the
other semester. This means that the grades of one semester do not carry over to the next
semester. This is because many universities including Faria International School require
independent transcripts from each student for each semester. The grades are assigned on the
basis of the student’s closeness to the achievement of the set objectives and benchmarks (Saxton
and Hill, 2014). The subject teachers are responsible for providing anecdotal comments which
are concerned with the behavior of the student as well as progress in the specific subjects.

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ASSESSMENT EXAMPLES AND COMMENT
The final report combines both internal as well as external assessments where the internal
assessments are done by the subject teachers while the external assessments are done by the IB
moderators. The IB has set a standardized and logical assessment rubric which is used to assign
grades to students. The points of the marks range from 1 to 7 in each subject (Nugent and
Karnes, 2002). 1 is the lowest point while 7 is the highest point awarded in each subject. Each
semester has five subjects which need to be accomplished at the end. Additionally, the
assessment is done on the basis of three aspects which include Theory of Knowledge, Creativity,
Action and Service as well as Extended Essay. All these three aspects contribute in the final
grade which is awarded at the end of every semester.
Some scholarly sources argue that there are five subjects in each semester while others
argue that there are six subjects in each semester. However, most sources claim that the highest
possible total points in each semester are 42 with additional 3 points, which total to 45 points.
This is arrived at by multiplying the 6 subjects with the highest possible points which is 7,
resulting to 42 points. The Faria International School in the Diploma Programme has set a
minimum of 24 total points for a student to proceed to the next semester. This implies that a
student who scores less than the 24 points is not given the authority to proceed with the
education system. However, IB has certain criteria which look at single subject points. This
implies that a student may have more than the minimum 24 points but then may not be allowed
to progress due to the failure of a particular subject. The IB, therefore, encourages students to do
their best in all the subjects in order to realize a balanced performance in all the subjects.
Comments
Firstly, I comment that the system of Faria International School which is part of
International Baccalaureate is complicated in the way the students are assessed. It is in my own