Teachers’ Use of Assessment Data in Secondary Schools in Kenya: Opportunities and Threats

Abstract

Governments around the world are pushing educators to adopt assessment data as an objective basis for initiating changes in curriculum and instruction. Recent research findings indicate that teachers' effective and consistent use of assessment data in planning curriculum, implementation and monitoring of teaching improves the learner's overall academic achievement. This paper is a product of a desktop review of the limited cognate literature present in Kenya on the utility of assessment data for decision making in secondary schools. Although findings reveal that Kenyan teachers use assessment data to among others; identify weak learners for individual remediation programs, inform parents of their children’s academic progress and for career selection, the instructor’s intensive use of data in classrooms to drive meaningful positive change faces pervasive bottlenecks. Teachers need to exploit the available opportunities created by the government, such as in-service training on information communications technology, to enhance the use of assessment data to promote learning.