Abstract

School-based assessment (SBA) approach in evaluating students’ academic progress was officially introduced by the Ministry of Education Malaysia and implemented in-line with the Standards-based Primary School Curriculum, in stages starting in 2011 as part of Malaysia educational reform. Under this approach, teachers are given greater responsibility to design quality assessments that align with their students’ learning outcomes Hence, the objectives of this qualitative case study is focused on how the newly introduced assessment approach has benefits the teaching and learning process in evaluating Year 1 academic progress in three urban Chinese primary schools. Data collected from interviews involving three Year 1 Chinese language teachers found that teachers have very positive perspectives towards SBA and that overall both teachers and students have benefited from this system. However, there are also weaknesses that need to be acknowledged and improvements to be made. The findings implicate that for SBA to be successful, teachers need to be creative, using varying strategies in their teaching and exploiting repertoire of methods in assessing their students. Further study on the matter is inevitable in ensuring the success of SBA’s implementation.

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