Educational enterprises hope to produce changes in knowledge, skills or attitudes, preferably all three. The ultimate aim of such enterprises is to produce the truly autonomous, responsible student Such hopes will, however, remain unfulfilled if we are unable to set in place procedures that help us determine whether such aims have been realised. Thus evaluation is essential.
Evaluation is essentially a political act.
People differ about evaluation because they differ about what society is, what it can be and what it ought to be. We believe quite strongly that the primary purpose of evaluation is to benefit the student. A secondary and ancillary purpose is to convince administrators and faculty that the student has performed creditably. It is instructive to reflect on how our perceptions of success and failure are affected by the context of evaluation. Given below is a table showing the cumulative failure percentages of 5 individuals.