10th August 1997

Aptitude testing: Is it necessary?

A pathway for University admission as proposed through setting a National Scholastic Aptitude Test rather than through the GCE A/L examination. Does this suggest that the GCE A/L examination may not be working to produce a wholly satisfactory degree of comparability and validity or is it an attempt to explore the aptitudes of qualified students for various courses? In order to understand how this will operate in Sri Lankas, it is vitally important, to discuss it in its national context.

That means a child who enters the education system in Sri Lanka has to encounter five hurdles in order to enter the University. They are admission to a good school, fifth standard scholarship examination, G. C. E. (O/L) Examination, G. C. E. (A/L) Examination and the Aptitude Test. The frightening aspect of even the existing procedure is that only 1.8 per cent of students succeed in entering the Universities. The majority of these entrants who graduate excepting the doctors are unemployable. Since 1993 there are nearly 35,000 graduates who are unemployed.

The sense of frustration generated by blocked access to future opportunities, mediated in part by selective assessment in Sri Lanka, has resulted in two youth insurrections over the past 25 years. These tragic revolts have cost nearly 100000 lives of youths in our country.

During the past two decades the demand for educational qualifications has intensified and the Sri Lankan population certainly has became more educated.

But although there was a marked economic growth there remained serious imbalances between the number of job seekers and job opportunities. The composition of the imbalances changed. Between 1970-1984 unemployment of G. C. E. O/L qualified decreased from 63% to 43%, unemployment among G. C. E. A/L qualified almost doubled from 27% to 52%. An increase in absolute numbers was from 9000 to 43000. Hence, the great demand for higher qualifications. Tuition is also rampant in the island. A research study confirms that 92% of G.C.E. A/L and 75% of G.C.E. O/L students were following tuition classes, for an average of just over 9 hours a day. Participation of school age population in examinations increased from 300000 in 1971 to 528381 in 1992 for GCE O/L; GCE (A/L) candidates increased from 48,000 in 1975 to 168827 in 1992. These figures suggest that there exists an incredible demand and faith for examinations.

Any selections system for higher education should meet certain criteria (i) fairness (ii) predictive validity (iii) economic efficiency (iv) no negative backwash effect on the earlier education (v) be practicable.

The role of the GCE (A/L)

The selective GCE (A/L) examination has a highly structured opportunity level. The efficiency of selection by examinations can be supported by extensive and intensive research. In this field the work of MacClelland and also of Yates and Pidgean is of special value and their findings are supported by many other studies. MacClelland's results show that no method of selection based on examinations and tests, however efficiently and carefully the tests are constructed and conducted, is completely accurate. Nevertheless, the correlation of intelligence tests and examinations with later success reached .7 and over and a combination of several techniques greatly reduced the number of errors of selection. Thus examinations results are as good as an intelligence test.

The predictive value can be assessed by the method adapted by MacClelland. Those who enter the university pass out successfully. There is convincing evidence to show high predictive value of the G.C.E (A/L) examination for selection to the universities, although these examinations are likely to have less reliability. This result is not really surprising. Inspite of ill-informed popular criticism, the G.C.E. (A/L) examination does its job well. This prediction is by no means perfect. Researchers find a trend of graduate achievement from 1972-1993, based on the results of the GCE (A/L) examination. Employers who recruit graduates always consider the GCE (AL) results as good predictors.

If we are to change the selection methods in education existing today, we should propose realistic alternatives. By introducing an aptitude test can we overcome the insoluble problems - selection and the prediction of educational success? Where only a small insignificant proportion can be given places in the universities, as against the pressure of much larger numbers who clamour to enter some form of selection is inevitable. Such selection may be along one or two lines.

The first kind as Eyesenck names it, is called natural selection or selection by successive hurdles. The child passes through a successive series of examinations and his success is assessed by the results of these examinations. This natural system may not be universal. Even by this natural system the country has outrun the capacity to absorb its products. The combination of people without jobs, and jobs without people to fill them should stir up new interest among the policy makers. But do the policy makers argue that an Aptitude Test would be academically superior to our present arrangement.

In Sri Lanka the students experience very selective pressures, whereas those with successful and developed economies such as USA, Britain, Western European Countries, have systems which while they may be quite highly competitive, generally do not place so much pressure on their students.

Aptitudes + Aptitude Testing

The aim of aptitude tests is to give predictions for different educational courses or jobs. Aptitudes depend upon personality and motivational factors, organic and social drives, curiosity and interests, and they are channeled by family, cultural and educational pressures. The groupings depend entirely on what cultural and educational pressures dictate.

It is relevant to discuss the environmental influences or causal agencies that underlie the development of different patterns of abilities. If we are to help developing non-technological Sri Lanka, we must know more about the environmental and other handicaps which retard the development of these abilities that are needed for technological advancement. Aptitude tests can assist us in selecting children who will make good professionals, teachers, commercial and political leaders and technicians.

Genetic factors are likely to be small compared with environmentally produced differences and we should agree with the UNESCO manifesto, that we cannot prove them. An enormous amount of research has helped to pinpoint the major environmental handicaps as (1) physiological and nutritional factors, mainly operating during pregnancy and parturition. Malnutrition and diseases are also important factors later insofar as they lower energy and activity level that the growing child needs to explore his environment and seek out self-stimulating experiences (2) Perceptual deprivation in the pre-school years is another factor. Conceptual deprivation occurs during school years when teachers and parents fail to answer questions, encourage curiosity and provide books and other types of experience. (3) Repression of independence and constructive play, either through overprotection, arbitrary subjection or conformity to cultural traditions (4) Family insecurity and lack of planning. In families living at the subsistance level, immediate gratification of hunger takes precedence and discourages the development of internal controls and rational thinking. The ill effects of parental anxiety, irritability, punitiveness and rejection, on later intellectual as well as social traits have been proven (5) Female dominance where the father takes little part in child rearing, and there is a lack of masculine model with whom the boy can identify (6) Defective education where it is brief or irregular, starved of materials, teachers poorly qualified - following formal and mechanical methods, discouraging any intellectual initiative, will have adverse effects on the development of aptitudes. (7) Linguistic disadvantages.

These factors prove how an aptitude test would affect a child of poor socio-economic status.

To elaborate further how well a person is educated and trained depends on many factors beyond his own control. There are 8 variables of learning, the individual, home, neighbourhood, peers, teachers, school, the principal, national policies.

It is an accepted fact that the child's chances of education are already affected before the age of 5 by the fact that good quality early childhood care and education services, which may have a marked effect on the subsequent success of children in education are very unevenly distributed. Sri Lanka has one of the lowest levels of publicity funded child care services. The majority of pre-school education centres are in appalling condition sans proper teachers, space and equipment.

Not all schools are equally endowed. At the school itself, there is a gulf in outcomes between our best and worst schools. At the primary level geographical, economical and social factors play a role in the education of children. There is the problem of disparities, which the state is trying to arrest with great vigour. At the secondary level teaching is affected by a lack of qualified teachers to teach certain subjects like Mathematics, Science, English and Aesthetic subjects.

The stressful series of examinations which students must endure is a severe burden on the student. The 5th standard scholarship examination causing student competition for admission to a highly ranked school is becoming more serious year by year. An examination mostly geared to test rote learning of school curricular has no place today.

Practicability

The only country in the world that selects students to universities by using aptitude tests is the USA. They are for the purpose of "selecting in" than for "selecting out". In Korea SAT is currently the focus of debate among educators and the public. Many educators, mainly school teachers have difficulty in understanding the test and constructing the tests scientifically.

USA Education system is enormous. An activity common to all students is the sitting for standardized tests. Standardised testing in the USA has grown in an exponential manner. The limiting and damaging effect of standardized multiple choice tests in USA has also been well documented by Shepherd. Anywhere from 143 million to 395 million tests are administered to US students annually. State and local government invest as much as 20 billion dollars annually in standardised testing programmes.

In the UK it is a highly developed system. The first is that good quality assessment is time consuming and requires resources and professional training to be committed to it by policy makers if it is to succeed says Broadfood and Comline Gripps.

In Sri Lanka assessment of varied forms are used for selecting, promoting and monitoring purposes violating all principles of scientific test construction. Ignorance of a nation appears to be bliss to the test constructor. They are not psychometricians in the true sense.

It is the writer's view that an alternative to the present model of admission should come, from cognitive and constructive psychology which shows learning in terms of networks with connections in many directions, as a process of reorganizing and restructuring as the student learns.

The present GCE A/L (Examination) is performing a selection task that has proved its predictive validity for examination success. To replace it by an Aptitude Test will make no difference, unless it is to direct the talent of youths to various vocational courses needed to society. There is no structure in the present higher education system to absorb them and achieve this objective.

"What the country needs is a restructuring of Higher Education to meet the Socio-econmic-technological and scientific needs of the country and not a change in the selection process. We need to think no amount of changing the selection procedure or an increase in the number of universities will bring about the needed changes in the education system unless the talent of many are not valued enough and not developed enough. I think it is very apt to quote Angela Little, Professor of Education for Third World countries of the University of London, who says. "As policy makers look beyond national boundaries for quick fix solutions to domestic economic problems, they should pause a while and attend to understand the context of assessment, before selecting those who might work 'back-home'."

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