3. Dissemination of assessment policy in the teaching practice

3. 1. Maintainer’s assessment

• Evaluation of schools as institutions is the task of the maintainers in Hungary. There are no reliable methods and processes formed yet to be able to assure and permanently upkeep the quality of public education under decentralized conditions. This is also valid for the schools external evaluation: namely, there is no quaranty for carrying out institution evaluations on acceptable professional level in given time periods in all of the schools resulting in convenient orders of leaders or maintainers. Systematic maintainers assessment is ordered by the modification in 2003 of the law of education.
• Assessment and evaluation activities of the maintainer self-governments in the great majority of the cases is strictly restricted to the economy (financing) and keeping the legal orders. Assessment and evaluation are applied by the self-governments often as tools without any will of professional development in the background. This character of the assessment and evaluation of this kind is indicated by a study made in 1999: keeping financial regulations were evaluated in 87%, that of legal orders in 78%, but the assessment of professional teaching work was done only in 38% of the cases.

3. 2. Institutional self-assessment

• Schools’ self-assessment is a widely applied method among others also in Hungary, being the most common method in the elementary and high schools as well (data of a research in 2001-2002).
• Development of the system of tools of school assessment and self-assessment and standardization of criteria applied in such assessments became a priority also in educational policy. Development of the standardized institution assessment system was published in 2003 in the medium-range public education strategy of the Ministry of Education and in the relevant Quality Development Programme.

3. 3. Initial and In-service Trainings

• The growing interest in quality and effectiveness, and professionalisation of activities targeting the development and assessment of these are indicated by the growing number of active participants and tools, as well as the training courses serving the preparation to tasks connected to these.
• Training of educational assessment experts is going on at university level since 1991 in Hungary. Preparation of tasks of institution assessment an development is carried out also in the training of public education leaders.
• In 1999 and 2000 among others, there were eleven accredited teacher training programmes dealing with different kinds of educational assessment (e.g. educational assessment, internal self-assessment system of the leadership and schools, achievement analysis or external assessments).
• The sphere of quality development experts is dealing with the development of the professional field on its yearly thematic conferences helping the dissemination of relevant international and national knowledge.

3. 4. Acceptance and realisation level of aims

Pre-assumptions

• The attitude of the participants towards the inclusive evaluation of the teaching and learning process was examined indirectly. Accepting students with special educational needs to mainstream schools is still in the crossfire of societal and pedagogical debates, also the introduction of assessment in report form for students in the first years of primary school, consequently the collected opinions regarding inclusive evaluation can only be educed by reviewing the viewpoints related to these two factors.
• The standpoints of parents, students and teachers appearing in publicity are still about the "necessity and un-necessity" of integration and evaluation without grades and in connection with partial topics such as inclusive evaluation no standpoints have been made yet.

• Integrated education and acceptance of assessment in report form by the participants of education

  Attitude of teachers in mainstream schools

  • In 2003 the Ministry of Education put the ’unofficial professional draft’ of the newest amendment of the Law on Public Education up for professional - public debate. The assessment in report forms of students in their first years in primary school was one of the fundamental points in the amendment. The teacher trade unions and their organisations representing and promoting professional pedagogical interest gave their written opinion about the draft.
  • The doubts of teachers regarding assessment in report form can be summarised in the following points (http://magyartanarok.fw.hu): They do not agree that the change is necessary and reasonable. Their opinion (concern) is that students will not study if no grades are given. They are afraid that teachers will have less tools for evaluation if no grades can be given anymore. They are worried what parents will have to say about all this.
  • In 2004 assessment in report form was made compulsory and was introduced in the first year of primary schools. Practical experience shows that a positive change in attitude can be felt since. Teachers define as positive that the evaluation system does not highlight what the students do not know but rather emphasizes the abilities they have. The system of assessment in report form encourages teachers to more in-dept evaluating work and more tolerant attitude. It is perceivable that after tryout the emphasis was shifted from why to how in connection with introducing assessment in report forms.

  Attitude of parents

  • There has been legal possibility since 1996 for schools to decide regarding their own scope of authority if they wish to utilise assessment in report forms. Shifting to assessment in report forms had not been properly prepared professionally so the majority of parents got negative experiences which they projected to the entire assessment in report forms thereby openly opposing doing away with giving grades in the first years of primary school, too.
  • In the opinion of several parents there are cases when teachers cannot yet substitute giving grades with assessment in report forms , so the parents eventually do not get any feedback about the performance of their children at school for months.
  • Most parents became active participants in the social debate on assessment in report forms. Parents have personal experience of evaluation without grades from the evaluation of their children’s behaviour and diligence at school.

  Opinion of the parents of students with special educational needs attending integrating institutions

  • The parents of students with special educational needs emphasize the responsibility of teachers in assessment, they primarily blame them for their children not being successful in the integrating school. As they explained the evaluation of the performance of their children is problematic for teachers because they are not aware of what they can expect from students with disabilities therefore they do not have appropriate assessment criteria.
  • The parents often consider teachers indifferent to the learning and social problems of students with special educational needs. They do not feel responsible for the failures of their children and are not willing to accept external help, co-operate with the parents and special teachers.
  • Many think that the active participation of parents is of key importance in keeping contact with the integrating school, but there are parents who almost completely “withdraw” because they feel that their children will suffer if they try to represent their interests. Other parents, learning form long years experience, try to co-operate with teachers so that they do not feel like being lectured to but helped. According to them the successful integration primarily depends on the attitude of teachers and not their professional training. If the attitude of teachers in this question changed and they were more sensitive and flexible with children with special educational needs, the attitude of the classmates would also change.

  Opinion of the students with special educational needs in integrated education

  • As it turned out from a survey in 2004 done with 12th grade secondary school students 68% of the students questioned said that grades are by all means necessary because they create a situation of competition in the class community, therefore they have an incentive effect. They also consider grades important because it becomes visible on what level they are and everybody can compare their performance to that of their peers.
  • In the opinion of the students asked, the roots of shortcomings in the system can be traced back to teachers. They consider evaluation of oral repetitions the most subjective and it hurts their self-esteem that teachers do not measure all students the same way. They think that the grades from 1 to 5 are inadequate to express minor differences.
  • The majority of students who were asked (70%) would not like assessment in report forms applied in their school instead of grades and 73% has the opinion that their parents would by no means accept this method because they think grades are very important to their parents. It has become the measuring unit of school performance and both the students and the parents insist on this tradition. They think parents would sooner or later yield to the system of assessment in report forms but they would still benchmark against grades.
  • As per children, teachers have a very significant role if a student with special educational needs settles in and acquires the material successfully. Students attending mainstream schools emphasize that they do not expect the teacher to be more permissive with them and they do not expect allowances in their school performance either, merely to understand their problem.