Why BCATs?
The reason for this is because the School Based Assessment (SBA) over-assessed the students. For SBA, we calculate classworks, homeworks, mini tests and then we have topical tests. After finishing year 8, most of the students obtained lower marks in Maths because of their c/w, h/w and mini tests. So this affected their year 9.
We complained.... so CDD came up with SBAfL (School Based Assessment for Learning), this is when they came up with the idea of creating tasks and assessing students using RUBRICS (will blog about this in detail next time.. for now you can google rubrics). At first, they let the teachers come up with their own tasks and rubrics. --> it didn't work because some of the tasks might be too simple or too hard and some school didn't even bother to do it because it is difficult to come up with the appropriate rubrics.. so it is not fair to be used as an assessment.
which is WHY they come up with BCATS.
BCATs = Brunei Common Assessment Tasks.
The title itself is self-explanatory.
Brunei = whole of Brunei Secondary school will participate.
Common = standardised or the same for all the school.
Assessment = assessing the students abilities in terms of Knowledge & Understanding, Thinking Skills & Problem Solving, and Communication Skills.
Tasks = activity based tasks which can range from investigating LCM, arranging a picnic, climbing mountain, measuring angles using map of Jerudong Park. The tasks are currently designed by CDD (Curriculum Development Department). The activities are designed to measure students' abilities.
We use rubrics for assessing the tasks and they will only be given grades and feedbacks instead of marks.
Personal comment:
I have done BCATs1 which consist of task 1 and task 2. Task 1 was on investigating LCM of consecutive numbers. It was a bit difficult and students didn't really enjoy doing that. Task 2 was on organizing a night at Serasa Beach. Students' enjoy planning the trip. Some of them even use powerpoint presentation. It was quite impressive.
Currently, we are planning on administering BCATs2 which also consist of task 1 and task 2. But i can't reveal the tasks here... not yet :) will update more with photos and maybe some videos of students doing BCATs 2.
Done by,
Rosie.
Interesting story about the evolution of the BCATS. Only comment really is that initiatives such as BCATs usually need to be carefully planned and a change strategy put in place to ensure that teachers are provided with the training and resources they need to be able to succeed. This is a long term evolutionary process that is constantly evolving. This being said, the rubrics and tasks will hopefully have been trialed and refined in a few schools before being provided to all schools. Tasks that are of no interest to students would then be filtered out before lots of students are asked to do them. Hopefully, your evaluation is ongoing, and your comments are sent to CDD so that they can continue to refine what they have sofar created.
ReplyDeleteMike
I find BCAT stupidness galore as a student of yr 7 in St. Andrews. It'd be a ton more better to go with the normal education shit rather than this just to create STRESS for students. I know a few students who have decided to turn to suicide cos of how hard this stupid BCAT is
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