repetition is high the introduction of automatic promotion is one of the most effective
ways of improving internal efficiency and may, incidentally, reduce the propensity to
drop out.
2.6.3 Assessment and examinations
Considerable research has been conducted on examination systems and their impact on
teaching and learning. This can only be referred to briefly here. A central theme
running through this work is that expressed in the Diploma Disease (Dore 1976),
namely that the later a country develops, the more likely educational qualifications will
be used as the dominant mechanism to allocate jobs, and that this will have deleterious
effects on the quality of education. Learning to do a job may be replaced by learning to
get a job. Interest and curiosity may be stifled by the narrow demands to learn for the
examination, curricula will only stress that which is examinable, and students teachers
and parents will sacrifice inordinate amounts of effort, time and money to maximise
their chances of passing examination tasks which may have tenuous relationships with
useful life skills. The successful will be blighted by socialisation towards instrumental
patterns of motivation and learning for the test alone. The failures will suffer the double
jeopardy of being certified incapable and of having experienced an educational diet of
little use to them since its form has been determined by the narrow demands of
academic selection.
The basic evidence supporting these kind of propositions is widespread. Little's 1978
analysis of IEA data illustrated that the four developing countries (Iran, Chile, Thailand
and India) in the sample ranked amongst the first six out of 15 countries on an
indication of the frequent use of tests. An analysis of examination papers from most
East and West African countries in the early 1980's (ILO/JASPA 1981) showed that the
quality of examination papers was very variable, many being unlikely to satisfy
technical criteria of reliability and validity. It also illustrated that much that was tested
consisted of the recall of information with little emphasis on higher order skills, even in
subjects in like science where much curriculum material stressed the acquisition of
reasoning skills. A synthesis of studies from five developing countries (Ghana, Mexico,
Shri Lanka, China, and Malaysia) showing how assessment practices affected teaching
and learning and how patterns of use of educational qualifications in labour markets
could result in qualification escalation and inefficient selection practices was provided
in Oxenham (ed) 1984. The SLOG project (SLOG 1987) reports the results of a six
country study (India, Malaysia, Nigeria, Shri Lanka, Japan and England) which begins
to chart the relationships between various types of assessment orientation and the
possible negative long term effects of this on interest, motivation, innovativeness and
the use of problem solving skills. Expenditure on private tuition in many countries has
been rising rapidly sometimes to levels comparable with or greater than public
expenditures per child. This is an indication of growing levels of concern with