This document discusses continuous assessment, which involves regularly evaluating students' knowledge, thinking, character development, and skills. Continuous assessment is considered an important innovation for the Nigerian education system. It can provide early feedback on students' likely performance, help students by identifying weaknesses, and ensure teachers focus on more than just exam preparation. The document examines various definitions of continuous assessment and emphasizes its goals of holistically assessing students and using results to guide learning.

1. INTRODUCTION
The introduction of continuous assessment in our school system is regarded as
one of the most significant innovations of the National Policy on Education. It has
been used as a testing modality in many school systems adopted in many
developing countries. It is the correct assessment strategy for the educational
evaluation of students’ achievement in teaching-learning situations in the
Nigerian school system. It is also used for the evaluation of the educational
system itself.
THE CONCEPT OF CONTINUOUS ASSESSMENT RECORD
In its simplistic way, continuous assessment can be described as a systematic and
regular method or technique of determining what a learner has gained from
learning activities. These learning activities involve knowledge, thinking and
reasoning (cognitive), character development (affective) and industry
(psychomotor). The Federal Government Handbook on Continuous Assessment
(1985) defines the C.A. as: A mechanism whereby the final grading of a student in
the cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains of behavior systematically
takes account of all his performances during a given period of schooling. Such an
assessment involves the use of a great variety of modes of evaluation for the

2. purposeof guiding and improving the learning and performanceof the student. In
your course on measurement and evaluation, the cognitive affective and
psychomotor domains of objectives were discussed in details. Now, let us just
refresh your memory by saying that the cognitive domain includes knowledge,
comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. The affective
domain also includes attitudes, feelings, emotions, interest, punctuality,
attendance in class, honesty etc. It also has some hierarchical sub levels. While
the psychomotor domain deals with motor-skills such as reflex movements, basic
fundamental movement, physicalabilities among others. In his own description of
the concept of continuous assessment, Yoloye (1984) says it is a method of
evaluating the progress and achievement of students in educational institutions.
It aims to get the truest possible picture of each students ability at the same time
helping each student to develop his or her abilities to the fullest. It is a method
whereby the final grading of students takes account in a systematic way of their
whole performance during a given period of schooling. You can notice that the
emphasis here, as in other descriptions is on grading. It indicates that the
individual pupil would be seen and assessed in totality. It also implies that the
three ‘H’s – Head, Heart and Hand – relating to cognitive, affective and
psychomotor domains respectively, should be taken care of in the C.A. strategy.

3. The pupil is looked at as a whole person. Folayajo (1979), states that continuous
assessment is a system of assessment which is carried out at predetermined
intervals, usually coinciding with some identifiable units of instruction or levels of
educational system, for the purpose of monitoring the progress or otherwise of
students and the general performance of the education system. If you look at this
definition very well, you will notice that it goes beyond the assessment of the
students and incorporates assessmentof someaspects of the educational system.
Italso includes the monitoring of students’ learning with a view to improving their
performances and helping them in the areas of deficiencies as a way of ensuring
success at related to formative evaluation where by formative tests are
developed and administered to the pupils after a unit of lessons, and
remediations given in areas of identified difficulties before the next unit is taken
up. In his own definition, Bajah (1984), viewed continuous assessment as a
continuous updating of judgment about performance in relation to specific
criteria which will allow a cumulative judgment to be made about performance
upon these same criteria at any time. You may wish to bring out from this
definition, that certain criteria must be present before any assessment can be
effectively carried out. Ezewu and Okoye (1981), gave another description which
is more comprehensive and clear. They see continuous assessment within the

4. educational context as a systematic and objective process of determining the
extent of a students’ performances and all the expected changes in his behavior
from the day he enters into a course of study in a continuous and progressive
manner to the end of such a course of study and a judicious accumulation of all
pieces of information derived from this purpose, with a view to using them to
guide and shape the student in his learning from time to time and to serve as
bases for important decision about the child. From this description of continuous
assessment you can see that it is a mechanism for progressive evaluation of
changes in behavior of individual children. It is used for determining the student’s
level of achievement in a course of study. As a teacher, you are expected to
examine periodically how far your pupils learn the subject maters presented to
them in the class. The results collected from the periodic assessment will be
added and used at the final decision on each child.
WHY IS CONTINUOUS ASSESSMENT RECORD IMPORTANT
Continuous assessment can provide early indicators of the likely performance of
students, something that can be of great help to the students themselves – as for
they have some mistake in your marks then you would transfer the marks. And

5. the other hand its use to both students and the faculty. It can also provide to
exactly what has been learned by a particular stage of the course.
CONCLUSION
without the continuous assessment programme, teachers would be teaching
exclusively for examinations. This implies that pupils who are insecure or ill-
prepared for the examinations will tend to engage in some examination
malpractices in order to beat the examinations. This is not good for the individual,
the education system and for the country. Therefore, as a teacher, you should try
to discourage examination malpractices by adhering strictly to the practice of
continuous assessment for your pupils.
REFERENCES
Ezewu, E.E. and Okoye, N.W. (1981). Principles and Practice of Continuous
Assessment. Ibadan, Evans Publishers Federal Republic of Nigeria (2004).
National Policy on Education. Lagos. Federal GovernmentPress. Ughamadu, K.A.
(1994).
Understanding and Implementing Continuous Assessment. Benin City. World of
Books Publishers.