MD. MASUM BILLAH

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Assessment is an integral part of any kind of learning. It determines the progress of the learners. It also determines the degree of the progress made by a teacher in respect of making his/her pupils understand the topic or subject he/she teaches. Assessment guides or tells him whether he should change the course of his action, way of delivering things and art of teaching. So, assessment is a very important part of the whole teaching and leaning process.  Most teachers only think that the main aim of assessment system is to measure student’s performance. It measures a teacher’s performance as well. The more a teacher is expert in assessing his students, the more he enters the depth of his profession. Until and unless a teacher knows well how to assess his students, he cannot be a good teacher as teaching and assessing go hand in hand. A teacher should also know what kind of assessments he/she should do. Which one stirs the students and gives them benefit. Usually two kinds of assessments are practiced in our educational institutions such as summative and formative assessment. Formative assessment is very important and it can be done with almost reality but the summative may not always give the exact figure. However, this assessment is done mostly in our public and international examination. It takes less time but formative assessment takes time. It is not always easy to conduct such kind of assessment.

Assessment has a major impact on teaching and learning. The assessment of student learning has often been seen a tiresome and harmful necessity. Tiresome is in the sense that a teacher is to examine a lot of scripts employing his/her physical and mental labour.  Students are to remain busy mentally, physically and even psychologically. It is said harmful   because it seemed to encourage cramming and superficiality. In most cases students prefer selective learning which somebody considers it a commercial learning. It is very practical that learners want to have commercial benefit from their learning and reading. Whatever tiresome or troublesome it is, assessment is a must as without it learners will hardly feel encouraged to read and learn. Teachers will have no exiting game or work with the student if there is no assessment system. Students’ future, career, life, development, encouragement are determined by the assessment. Whatever, pain they have to bear special kind of taste and pleasure they derive from the examination. As assessment reinforces learning, so, it must be an integral and planned part of the whole learning process. A program may have excellent curriculum and materials, but if its assessment component is not well designed and integrally aligned with both of these, the entire program may ultimately fail to achieve its objectives. In this case I like to cite the example of our communicative English syllabus.  Our communicative curriculum is excellent but the examination system still does not fully or appropriately reflect CLT.

GAZI MAHBUBUL ALAM, PhD

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Apprenticeship process was introduced in Bangladesh in the 1850 through an act designed by the British Administration. Given the nature of the 1850's act, it was found to be inadequate to function properly these days. This resulted in a new ordinance in 1962. Through this ordinance, 54 candidates received apprenticeship in 2008 under the umbrella of BMET.

While the developed countries mainly depend on formal provision of apprenticeship, Bangladesh covers this through informal provision, albeit the country has invested a significant amount of fund for formal provision. Aprenticeship can help a country to increase worker productivity. The increase of worker productivity always provides a higher salary potential. This higher salary packages affect 'Money market' if the proper banking system takes place and this is how country gains more sustainable development.

The apprenticeship is about helping people learn new skills and improve their existing ones. Some trainers are employed within an organisation to run training programmes for new recruits, or to assess the needs of existing staff and help them develop their skills. There are also consultancy companies that offer specialised training programmes, such as computer skills or management techniques. Direct training and support targets people with a specific training need. This type of training teaches clients how to do something, and then supports the learning process until the client is confident enough to do it independently. After receiving this Advanced Apprenticeship, anyone can choose between learning and development or direct training and support. The area of expertise will depend on the employer - but it would be sensible to go for a specialism that interests the apprentice. Whether working one-to-one or with a big group of people, trainees need confidence, patience and creativity. Within the apprenticeship process, Bangladesh needs to respond to following issues with due importance.