Overall achievement- and exam grades in English - two of a kind? A study of assessment practices in Norwegian lower secondary school.

Abstract

This study concerns the deviations between overall achievement- and exam grades in the English subject at lower secondary schools in Norway. The aim of the study is to describe and compare deviations between overall achievement- and exam grades in light of teachers’ conceptions and the Norwegian school system. As a result, the study is based on both qualitative and quantitative data. Materials from six semi-structured interviews with teachers from lower secondary schools in Norway and their assessment of an exam paper written in schoolyear 2017/2018 were used to gain a perspective of teachers’ grading practices and how they perceive deviations between overall achievement- and exam grades. Public statistics of the average overall achievement- and exam grades from the platform Skoleporten (2020) have been collected and analysed in order to see whether there are systematic deviations between the two forms of assessment. However, in order to see whether these systematic deviations were true for the majority of pupils, statistics of individual pupils and their overall achievement- and exam grades in English were also analysed. Two lower secondary schools therefore provided the present study with individual statistics in both written and oral English.

Assessment is a challenging topic for teachers, and many enlighten the need for clearer guidelines in the field. The present study found that the national average grade score was higher in oral examinations compared to overall achievements. The national average grade scores shown in written English were lower for examinations than overall achievements. Looking into particular schools show contradictory findings. A written exam paper graded by six teachers managed to receive three different grades from the grade scale, even though there are guidelines in written examinations seeing as it is centrally given, as opposed to oral examinations which are locally given. The overall goal from these materials is to shed light on grading practices in lower secondary schools in Norway and to add valuable inquiry and research into the field of applied linguistics.

Keywords: summative assessment, overall achievement grades, exam grades, teachers’ assessment, grading practices