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The Education and Manpower Bureau (EMB) today (December 8) received from the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority (HKEAA) the 2005 Territory-wide System Assessment (TSA) results and encouraged schools to make systemic use of the results for further enhancement of teaching and learning effectiveness.
The Deputy Secretary for Education and Manpower, Mr Chris Wardlaw, said, "I am pleased to note that there is an indication of modest but improved performance of Primary Three students this year compared to last year. This is encouraging and we urge schools to keep the momentum."
The percentages of students reaching basic competency levels in Chinese, English and Mathematics at Primary Three level are 84.7%, 78.8% and 86.8% respectively, or a two to three percentage improvement over last year. The respective percentages at Primary Six level are 75.8%, 70.5% and 83.0% in Chinese, English and Mathematics. This is the first year performance data have been provided for Primary Six level under TSA.
"The percentages of Primary Six students reaching the expected basic competency in Chinese, English and Mathematics are within our expectation. We know that schools must provide intensive and timely support to students; or else the gap at Primary Six between the better students and those students who are struggling at Primary Three is bound to be widened."
"This is the reason why we introduced the assessment system progressively in 2004. TSA results can provide both the Government and schools with meaningful and measurable evidence so that we can work harder with specific targets to narrow the gap as far as possible by identifying early those students who need more intensive learning support," he added.
"We expect teachers and school management to progress further in consolidating the improved performance at Primary Three, and to improve on the teaching and learning in Key Stage II through to Primary Six."
Mr Wardlaw said that EMB would study the assessment results carefully together with last year's data, so as to adjust where needed the training and other learning and teaching support for schools.
On concerns over the absenteeism rate during the administration of TSA, HKEAA confirmed that the higher student absenteeism rate reported by individual schools had not impacted on the validity of the overall performance data. While EMB is still clarifying records with a small number of schools which returned a high absenteeism rate, the apparent irregularities in nearly all cases have resulted from inexperience in managing this assessment rather than deliberate attempt to manipulate results.
Like last year, EMB expects that the assessment data be used for and only for school improvement purposes. School management has to follow protocols which set out how stakeholders should use the data while avoiding unnecessary and invalid between-school comparisons.
The Territory-wide System Assessment was introduced in 2004 and was conducted at Primary Three and Six levels in 2005 in the areas of Chinese, English and Mathematics. The results serve to inform the community of the overall performance of students in Hong Kong against the professionally defined basic competency standard in the three subjects.
The assessment will be conducted at Secondary Three in 2006. 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 studentsˇ¦progress in the three subjects.
Ends/Thursday, December 8, 2005
Issued at HKT 16:14
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