The Perceived Correlations between Continuous Assessment and Examination Scores among History Students in the University of Abuja, Nigeria

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The National Policy on Education identified the need to bring changes into the methods of assessing student’s performance in the university system in Nigeria. The introduction of the `practice of continuous assessment combined with examination as a criterion for assessing such performance was received by many lecturers as a good development. (Iketuonye 1994) Many believe that such practice gives opportunity for lecturers to assess their student’s performance in all areas of the domains. However, the question often asked is whether high performance in continuous assessment necessarily means high performance in examinations, and whether or not there are positive correlations between students’ performance in continuous assessment and examinations. This study tries to answer these questions. According, a total of twenty-seven (27) under graduate degree courses in history were sampled for the study. The study made use of the Pearson’s product moment correlation coefficient to determine if there is a correlation between performance of students in continuous assessment and examination. The study revealed a significant correlation between continuous assessment and students’ examinations in most of the cases analysed, with P ≤ 0.05. As can be seen during the first academic session, 71.4% of the courses analysed revealed a significant correlation, with P ≥ 0.05 in the remaining 29% of courses. In the case pf the second session, the results significantly differ with what was found during the first session, with 71% of courses found not to be significantly correlated (P ≥ 0.05). Similar result was obtained in the thirteen (13) courses analysed in the third session with 61.5% of the courses not significantly related. Accordingly, 15 of the 27 courses correlated were not significant, with P ≥ 0.05, while the remaining 12 were significant at the 5% level with P ≤ 0.05. The results further revealed that mean (%) of continuous assessment is higher than that of exam in all the given courses analyzed. However, a negative correlation was obtained in respect of His 204 (Africa in the 19 th and 20 th Century). Also, a generally below 50% mean percent was observed in students’ examinations except in His 204. The likely area of concern with this study which kept recurring in the analysis is the below average percentage observed constantly. This calls for extra efforts on the parts of students and their lecturers. While students used to work harder in examination questions should be regularly subjected to reliability tests before they are put to use. It should be noted also that some experts (Iketounye 1994) believe that if continuous assessment and examination scores correlates positively, then there is no need to combine the scores while assessing students’ performance. This opinion prejudiced the advantage continuous assessment has in assessing all areas of students’ domain.