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A spokesman for the Education Bureau (EDB) said today (December 16) that the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority (HKEAA) has submitted the report of the 2015 Territory-wide System Assessment (TSA). The HKEAA will provide school-level data to schools shortly for school improvement in learning and teaching.
"Some 156,000 students at the Primary 3, Primary 6 and Secondary 3 levels took part in the TSA this year. Their performance in the three core subjects of Chinese Language, English Language and Mathematics is steady," the spokesman said.
Introduced in 2004 at Primary 3 and extended to cover the Primary 6 and Secondary 3 levels in the two subsequent years, the TSA aims to help schools understand students' performance in attaining basic competency, and their strengths and weaknesses, in the three core subjects at various key learning stages. Individual schools could make use of the school-level report to devise suitable curriculum plans as well as learning and teaching strategies that could enhance students' learning effectiveness.
In 2014, the EDB announced a series of enhancement measures to alleviate the pressure on schools and students which included not disclosing the percentage of students achieving basic competency in the three core subjects to individual schools, conducting the Primary 6 TSA and the Pre-Secondary One Hong Kong Attainment Test in alternate years and providing an interactive reporting platform in phases to facilitate teachers' analysis of student performance.
The spokesman said, "Basic competency is the knowledge and skill level which students should attain at the end of the learning stages of Primary 3, Primary 6 and Secondary 3 in order to progress effectively to the next learning stage without extra support. The TSA is a low-stakes assessment. It serves the function of promoting Assessment for Learning by providing reliable data for enhancing learning and teaching to promote learning. The data is not for ranking or selecting schools/students. Nor is it used as an indicator for school performance or a basis for imposing measures on schools to cease operation. To enable more effective use of the assessment data, we launched the Interactive Online Item Analysis Report in 2014. The most updated version provides student performance figures over the past three years on each basic competency/question intent/learning unit so as to enable schools to perform better."
The EDB provides different support strategies to help schools incorporate curriculum targets into daily learning activities, make effective use of different student learning evidence collected (including evidence not from tests or examinations) and facilitate teachers' drawing up of plans for the next stage of learning and teaching. The strategies include making effective use of Web-based Learning and Teaching Support, professional development programmes and targeted on-site school-based support services. They aim to promote the sharing of good teaching practices among schools. The EDB will maintain communication with parents. Information on the value and benefits of the TSA will also be disseminated to parents through seminars, promotional videos, leaflets and other appropriate channels with a view to clarifying public misunderstandings about the TSA. The leaflets and promotional video have been uploaded to the related website (www.bca.hkeaa.edu.hk/web/TSA/en/Introduction.html) for viewing.
As regards the follow-up and support service, the EDB is working in close partnership with schools. Following the release of the 2015 TSA report, theme-based seminars on promoting Assessment for Learning to introduce effective ways of using assessment data and information to promote learning and teaching will be held from mid- to end-January in 2016. Teachers can sign up via the EDB training calendar.
The territory-wide percentages of students achieving basic competency in the three subjects of Chinese Language, English Language and Mathematics from 2004 to 2015 are shown in the Annex. Details of the TSA and this year's results can be found on the HKEAA's website (www.bca.hkeaa.edu.hk).
Ends/Wednesday, December 16, 2015
Issued at HKT 17:15
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