Assessment resource banks and other approaches to school-based assessment in New Zealand

This conference paper overviews the nature of the ARBs and other standardized tests available within New Zealand for school-based and formative uses.

The levels-based structure of the curriculum and the need for teachers to assess to levels presents a challenge for all school-based assessment, particularly for assessing students' writing. One recent innovation in the English ARBs has been to develop level based scoring guides, and link these to exemplars of writing that illustrate major hallmarks of writing at particular levels.

Paper presented at the Association of Commonwealth Examination and Accreditation Bodies (ACEAB) conference, Malta, 18-22 March 2002.