Most of the developed countries and a few developing countries use two methods to assess the potentialities, skills and the level of achievement of the students at secondary level.

The methods are

1. External assessment

2. Internal assessment

External assessment is generally done by an authority not connected with the school. Each individual student’s level of achievement is assessed by this external authorised group. Public Examinations like GCE O/L and GCE A/L, are good examples of this external assessment.

Internal assessment is always done by the student’s own teacher. This assessment is moderated by a process developed by the external authority. The scores of the assessment may or may not count towards the final results of the public examinations.

The internal assessment is also referred to as School Based Assessment (SBA) or Continuous assessment (CA). Although SBA was introduced in western countries in the 1960s it was introduced here only in 1998.

Educationist say that the skills and level of achievement of a student cannot be measured by the conventional paper and pen examination. They also stress that various assessment modes should be adopted in assessing students abilities and standards.

The assessment system should be so designed that the full range of a student’s achievements can be captured and recognised so that students at different levels have opportunities to perform through good assessment design. For example - standard reference reporting would assess what students are able to do at different levels.

Students’ SBA scores, recorded in their school report card, serve as a track record when they seek a job or return to study in the future. It enables the students to recognise their strengths and weaknesses. The feedback of the teacher helps them to improve continuously.

SBA has the following benefits.

* Teacher’s closeness to the pupil and to his learning process.

* Openness - learning outcome, marking scheme and the marks being made know to the students and parents.

* Wider participation of teachers, students and parents.

* Recognition of the competency of the Principals and teachers will result in a further enhancement of their responsibility and trustworthiness.

* Widescope for the realization of educational objectives

* Effective feedback and meaningful remedial action.

* Scope for masterly learning.

* SBA is directed towards reaching achievement standards.

Some weaknesses as manifested in the SBA are

* Inadequate conceptualization

* Doubtful utility.

*Inadequate structural and administrative support

* Teacher lacks experience and expertise in SBA

* Quality of the assessment design may be less

* Workload is excessive for the teacher because of maintaining records.

* Teacher can be biased towards students

* Absentees

* Transfer

* Easy access for information for wealthy students.

When SBA was introduced in the UK, there were wide differences in the scores between SBA and public examinations and consequently many teachers were warned by the Educational authority.

Although SBA was implemented in Sri Lanka over 10 years ago, it still has many inadequacies and also it is a million dollar question, whether SBA is successful in Sri Lanka?

Sri Lankan teachers receive low salaries in comparison to their south east Asian counterparts, hence they don’t which to work extra hours in school.

Though educational officers say that SBA is not a additional work load to the teachers, the teachers believe that it is.

There is a wider gap in the educational environment as seen between the developed and developing countries. School curriculum of the developed countries seems simple and contain only a few units of a subject. In a particular subject, each student has to study a basic unit and can select a few optional units. Their public examinations assess the level of achievement of the student rather than testing their memory power. The Sri Lankan curriculum of a particular subject has three times more content than the UK curriculum.

Sri Lankan teachers are expected to complete a vast curriculum and also expected to do the SBA. New educational theory states that not to teach students but to facilitate their learning. Most of the Sri Lankan students do not have access to well equipped libraries and internet facilities and other audio visuals to learn on their own. Therefore teachers are compelled to follow the old way of teaching with the help of the blackboard and chalk to complete the syllabuses. Parents of students often pressurise the teachers to complete the syllabuses in time.

Sri Lankan students who don’t get through the A/L Exams often receive merit passes in the London, Cambridge A/L Examinations.

In Sri Lanka many schools conduct SBA only as a mere formality. This is because the majority of the teachers want to satisfy educational officers when they visits schools to check the SBA records.

Students also don’t show much interest on SBA because they know their future is going to be decided by the results of the Public Examinations. In developed countries, some percentage of the scores of the SBA is included in the final results, thus the student take SBA seriously. In Sri Lanka one cannot consider the SBA marks for the final results because this will lead to corruption since teachers are bribed to influence the SBA marks. Everybody knows that in Sri Lanka the educational sector is the most corrupt. Another aspect of SBA in Sri Lanka is that assignments given to the students are often done by parents. This way it is clear the SBA is definitely helping the parents than the students.

According to the new system, GCE A/L students were asked to do two projects, One an individual project and the other a group project. Students feel that these projects are not helping them at all since often they submit projects which have been already done by others.

Projects may be very helpful for the student but since students have to face a competitive university entrance examination they feel that doing the projects is a waste of time.

SBA is currently implement from Grade six to GCE A/L classes. SBA scores for grade 10 and 11 are given to the students separately with the GCE O/L results; for A/L students, SBA scores are given separately with their A/L results and also in the student record book.

In developed countries valuable for the students to obtain jobs and also to get entrance to higher educational institutes, but in Sri Lanka, institutions, including government institutions, do not consider SBA marks four jobs and also no higher educational institutions consider its validity because these scores, they believe, are not trustworthy.

If SBA is useful in identify the weakness of the students and rectifying it, public examination results should have increased over the past few years after the implementation of SBA.

According to table - 1 There is no significant increase in the percentage of student’s qualified for the GCE A/L. We can (1st attempt) see a 1-2 percent increase which is a normal increase rectifying can expect in a developing country, also we should note that during the last 5 years. The number of students who sat for GCE O/L (1st attempt) is around 250,000.

If we see table (2) the percentage of students who passed the main subjects, like mathematics, science & technology and English language is not significantly increased. The number of students that sat for the GCE O/L for the past three years is around 500,000.. We can see a slight increase in subjects like mathematic and English but there is a 7% drop in science and technology.

The number of students eligible to gain admission to Sri Lankan universities also remain same over the last three years. Table 3 even though the number of students sat for GCE A/L over the past 3 years not increased.

When analysing the above statistics, it is obvious that objective of SBA has not reached in Sri Lankan schools and also there are barriers which are blocking the progress of SBA in reaching its objectives. The people responsible in designing the education plan should recognise SBA and also should redesign the Sri Lankan curriculum and the Quality of the public examinations to improve the standard of education in Sri Lanka.