Exploring the practice of alternative assessment during Covid-19 of Bangla Medium Secondary Level Teachers and students in Bangladesh

Abstract

There has never been any successful implementation of alternative assessments previously in schools in Bangladesh (Podder, 2020 as cited in Podder & Mizan, 2020). During the coronavirus pandemic, Bangladesh has taken alternative (weekly assignments) initiatives to assess students instead of yearly exams (Alamgir, 2020). Hence, this study aims to find out the state and the factors of alternative assessments of English language during the lockdown at the secondary level of Bangla medium (Bangla version) public and private schools in Dhaka, and gauge to what extent CLT-principles are followed, if at all. A qualitative approach has been used to collect data through teachers’ and students’ interviews, and documents collected (assignments) from the students have been analyzed thematically through coding the written texts. Though the document analysis reveals that writing activities (the only focus of the English assignment) carry the features of the tasks of CLT – which is the NCTB-mandated English language teaching approach – findings show that the practice of alternative assessments of English is not effective among the public and the private school students and teachers because of significantly negative washback of the SSC exams which is a public summative assessment that follows the traditional assessment structure. Additionally, the teachers of both public and private schools are found to be using GTM, practicing topics, activities, exams (traditional assessment) important to the SSC exam and remained negligent toward the practice of the NCTB-given English assignments, though NCTB has prohibited the practice of any other assessments (Hasan, 2020). This is mainly due to the lack of teacher training and unfamiliarity with the new assessment system. In this paper, significant measures to improve the practice of alternative assessment have been recommended, such as increasing the value of alternative assessments to be as highly heralded as the SSC exam.