The Guide on School-based Assessment in Primary Education was developed with a purpose to contribute to raising the quality of assessment of students in primary schools in the Republic of Macedonia, in compliance with the Conception of Nine Year Primary Education. Its’ starting basis are the professional findings about the great influence of the quality of assessment on students learning and the level of their achievements in the instruction. On the other hand, it should be taken into consideration that the assessment of students by their teachers, is, basically, a process of making professional judgement that could be improved if it meets certain standards in quality assessment. The term assessment, in its widest meaning, denotes a process of collecting and interpreting information about learning and achievement of students that are used.

            To provide information to students and their parents about the progress in acquiring knowledge, skills and attitudes, to provide support to teachers to modify their instruction and the learning activities of their students, and to provide information to other stakeholders that make decisions about educational policy related to students (for example, decisions about promotion of students, decisions about students involvement in particular educational programs and types of practices). The Guide on School-based Assessment provides guidelines on how the practice of quality assessment in the schools should be. The Guide should be considered, primarily, as a document that could provide shared understanding among professionals and practitioners about school-based assessment that is quality and fair. It refers, first of all, to formative assessment, i.e. monitoring students’ learning and achievements during instruction aiming to improve the teaching and to a best possible extent provide help to students to make use of their own potentials in learning. It gives directions for high quality procedures in the process of assessment in schools, but do not specify the limits to which they should be achieved. It is expected that the Guide would primarily be used by schools and teachers in planning assessment, providing quality assessment that would contribute to improvement of teaching and assessment and in self-assessment of the their own assessment practice. It might be used by the Bureau for Development of Education in providing support in raising the quality of assessment in schools. By improving the system of policy decisions on school-based assessment it is expected that this Guide will be further developed and transformed into Standards for school-based assessment, which will be used for developing indicators to measure the quality of assessment in schools.