According to the Jamaican Education Transformation Commission Report 2021, one crisis in which Jamaica’s education, as an institution, has become entangled is unaccountability. Accountability in education is important as each year, the Jamaican education system is allocated the nation’s largest non-debt budgetary allocation. Accountability is especially important in the higher education system, given its role in the development of Jamaica’s human resources. One crucial claim for which the system must be held accountable is its claim that graduates possess the competencies that make them ready for meaningful contributions to the workforce. Assessment results are an important data source that can be used to support this claim.
     The purpose of assessment used in a system that prepares people for work is to protect the public from incompetent practitioners. However, many believe that higher education assessment does not serve this purpose. In defence of this view, the argument generally is that a graduate’s good grades are frequently not reflected in their job performance. There is the view that for this to change, tests used in the assessment process should include more items requiring critical-thinking skills and other essential skills necessary for effective on-the-job performance. However, in any discussion about assessment, we must first understand that assessment is not an entity by itself. It exists in a network of activities that work together to achieve its purpose. The curriculum is a critical component of that network, so a conversation about assessment must consider the curriculum issues.
     The curriculum is the pedagogical contract between a higher education institution (HEI) and its students. It communicates the competencies a graduate will possess at the end of a course of study. The competencies are broadly communicated as outcomes at the program level and more narrowly defined as outcomes at the course and instructional levels.
To be certified, a person must first have completed a course of study guided by a curriculum designed to develop the necessary job competencies. At the end of some pre-defined period, tests are administered to determine how much a student has achieved the curriculum outcomes. In this way, assessment and the curriculum are inextricably connected. Therefore, a conversation about assessment must consider the curriculum issues. A sound assessment system cannot test for critical thinking or other essential skills if the curriculum is not designed to develop those skills. To protect the public from incompetent practitioners, the curriculum and assessment must work together to ensure that students have an opportunity to learn work-ready competencies. Assessment results should then be a reliable data source on which to base work-readiness claims. Among the requirements of an assessment system that produces reliable data is that the traditional tests must assess the underpinning skills needed for competent practice, and the performance test must mirror the practice domain. This means that students are assessed on their ability to apply their knowledge in a context similar to what they will experience on the job. The curriculum must have enough content so that tests in the assessment system can produce reliable scores.
     Such a fit-for-purpose system requires a team of competent practitioners, including experts in the field to be served by the curriculum. The team should also include experts in certification testing design and development. However, while degree-granting HEIs may employ these experts, others are challenged to do so, as the current organisational structure does not allow it. The latter includes community and teacher training colleges that also prepare people for workplace practice. These colleges, recognising the need for curriculum and assessment expertise, assign each to a faculty member as extra responsibility in addition to their teaching duties. The faculty is generally not required to possess advanced training or experience in the new specialist roles they are expected to perform. Rather, they rely on the teacher training that prepared them for classroom practice, a domain that requires competencies different from those required for their new role.
     The Jamaican Education Transformation Commission Report 2021 acknowledges the challenges in meeting the labour market needs and the challenges of limited data to inform HEI policy decisions. The report communicates an urgent need for a Higher Education Policy to set the sector's development framework.
     Plans for the reform of higher education are currently underway. It is envisioned that the sector's development will result in HEIs being able to develop, implement, and continuously improve a sound assessment system that is aligned with its curricula. Such a system should be a reliable source of data to support the work-readiness claims made by higher education institutions. That data should also be appropriate for contributing to accountability decisions in the higher education sector. Until then, the assessment system will remain an unreliable source of evidence to support the claim that a HEI graduate is work-ready.

Sandra Richards is an MPhil/ PhD candidate in Educational Measurement
Email: sandramrichards@gmail.com