Abstract

Most of the assessment activities in the past have been project driven in Pakistan. There is little institutional base either at the Federal or Provincial level to sustain assessment activities beyond the project timelines. Neither the traditional school examinations nor the external public examinations and selection tests for admission to institutions of higher education sufficiently fulfill the criteria of standardization and comparability required for a monitoring indicator. Punjab Education Assessment System (PEAS), Education Department, Govt. of the Punjab is responsible for conducting assessment tests for national and provincial purposes. Central to these efforts is the development of institutional capacity of the Departments of Education at the provincial and area levels to monitor standards of education. In 2008, PEAS conducted a large scale assessment in the subjects of math, science, Urdu, and social studies. 222 schools were included in the sample. 20 students participated in the large scale assessment. It was found that girl students’ learning achievement in Science and Social Studies was higher than boy students, which shows that girl students are more hardworking and eager to learn. A comparison of different grouped family strength shows that as the number of kids increases, the performance of students in Science and Social Studies decreases, which creates a scientific attitude and makes them think they perform better in all subjects. Whereas, on the other side, it appears that students who like Social Studies didn’t show good achievement in Social Studies. Those students who need tuition are weak in learning, and this can be viewed through their low performance in both subjects.