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The Education Bureau (EDB) today (October 31) received from the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority (HKEAA) the report of the 2007 Territory-wide System Assessment (TSA). HKEAA will provide school level data to schools next week. More than 1,000 primary and secondary schools and about 220,000 students took part in the assessment.
The objective of TSA is to help schools understand students' performance in attaining basic competency in the subjects of Chinese Language, English Language and Mathematics. Schools can use the data to build on strengths and address weaknesses in learning and teaching.
The Deputy Secretary for Education, Mr Chris Wardlaw, said, "The EDB encourages schools to make better use of the results to further enhance the effectiveness of learning and teaching."
"While the majority of students are progressing well in the three subjects, the data consistently shows that a group of students need extra assistance if their learning is to progress satisfactorily. Schools and EDB will work together to identify the most effective strategies to ensure these students can progress," Mr Wardlaw said.
"We will enhance training and other learning and teaching support for schools where needed to address areas of weakness in our students' learning identified in the assessment. We will continue to strengthen the support services in such areas as curriculum planning, web-based learning and teaching resources and regional level support. We will also continue to formulate school-based support services and identify good practice for sharing with teachers.
"TSA results can provide both schools and the Government with meaningful and measurable data on the effectiveness of learning and teaching in schools. We have conducted seminars and workshops to initiate schools and teachers into ways of improvement. We expect teachers and school management to use the information to further performance at all three key learning stages."
Mr Wardlaw said that he was pleased to note that most schools managed to have a good grasp of students' needs based on the analysis of the objective data. This meant that they would be well placed to formulate teaching strategies in collaboration with EDB to enhance the learning ability of students.
As in previous years, EDB expects that the assessment data will be used only for school improvement purposes. Stakeholders, including school management, must strictly follow the protocol for using the data to avoid unnecessary and unhealthy inter-school comparisons. The data cannot be used for promotional purposes.
The TSA was introduced to P3 in 2004 and was extended to P6 in 2005 and S3 in 2006. The results serve to inform the community of the overall performance of students in Hong Kong against professionally defined basic competency standards in the Chinese Language, English Language and Mathematics subjects.
It is important to obtain sufficient data points for each key learning stage to establish a firm baseline of students' performance standards. By the time the assessment is fully developed it will provide a solid baseline of standards for the community and the school sector to evaluate students' progress in the three subjects.
For details of the TSA and this year's results, please refer to the Annex and the website: www.systemassessment.edu.hk.
Ends/Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Issued at HKT 17:15
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