CONTINUOUS ASSESSMENT IN NIGERIA: ISSUES AND CHALLENGES

The focus of this paper is Continuous Assessment in Nigeria; issues and challenges. The paper examines the meaning of continuous assessment, characteristics of continuous assessment, rational for adopting continuous assessment, implementing continuous assessment within school, phases of data collection in continuous assessment. It goes further to highlight keeping and reporting continuous assessment records, characteristics of a good continuous assessment records, implementation problems of continuous assessment, problems of assessing the non-cognitive Domain and the advantages of continuous assessment. Some of the challenges of continuous assessment include; as teachers assessment their own students, one cannot guarantee that the standards are the same across schools. That is so because the assessment instruments may focus on different topics and grading, there is shortage of assessment instruments and many teachers lack the skill of instrument construction, because the scores obtained in different assessments have to be combined, a problem arises as these scores may not be based on the same scale and it is poorly implemented because of the absence of proper monitoring programme among others. In conclusion, continuous assessment if well implemented will go a long was to minimizing the tendency and temptation to ensure success by all means orchestrated by the single final examination.