Monday 2 January 2012


MULTIPLE REGRESSION ANALYSIS OF ASSESSMENT OF ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF STUDENTS  IN THE GHANAIAN POLYTECHNICS
BY
G.K. Abledu
(School of Applied Science and Technology)
A PAPER PRESENTED AT THE KOFORIDUA POLYTECHNIC’S THIRD (3RD) APPLIED RESEARCH CONFERENCE: - 17TH TO 20TH  MAY, 2010


ABSTRACT
One of the challenges of the educational reform introduced in 1987 was the introduction of continuous assessment as a component of students’ final assessment in educational institution.  The main purpose of having a continuous assessment scheme as an internal component of assessment procedures was to eliminate/minimize the element of risk associated with a single examination, and to give a valid indication of students’ achievement, because it was felt that no student who worked conscientiously should fail.
The National Board for Professional and Technician Examinations NABPTEX besides other functions performs the role of an examination body for professional and technical institutions including the Polytechnics. The Board provides the necessary administration of the final examination and the certification of students. The Board ensures that standards are comparable in all the professional and technical institutions that they provide such service.
However, problems of comparability arise in situations where examinations are conducted by the individual schools. The issue of who takes the overall responsibility of assessing the work of students,- the teacher or any accredited examining body- has, in fact, received more attention than any other matters of relevance in education worldwide.  There is widespread agreement about the difficulty in measuring student learning outcomes (Hearn, Griswold, and Marine, 1996). This difficulty, in turn, makes it very challenging, if not impossible, to design coherent and effective outcomes assessment policies. The question that comes to mind is:  How have the polytechnics dealt with this difficulty?
The objective of this study was therefore to find out whether administrative and technical problems existed in the assessment and certification of students in the Ghanaian Polytechnics and to find out the causes and the extent to which such factors brought about weaknesses in the conduct of continuous assessment and final examination. It was hypothesizes that the assessment processes and the weighting of continuous assessment in the various Polytechnics were similar. The population for the study was Polytechnics in Ghana, and a convenient sample of six polytechnics was used for the study.
The results of the study revealed that the assessment of students’ academic performance was conducted using a variety of available instruments and methods, and these instruments and methods varied from polytechnic to polytechnic.


Keywords: continuous assessment, final examination, student learning, weighting, academic performance.

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