The four components
Since the 2019–20 session the board has split the 20 internal marks in Classes 9 and 10 into four equal parts. The curriculum document for the year and the board's circulars are the authority for the split and for any subject-specific variation; check them each session, since the board revises the scheme.
- Periodic tests — short written tests during the year, with the marks converted to the component's weight. Schools have typically held three and counted the best two.
- Multiple assessment — assessment through means other than a pen-and-paper test: quizzes, oral tests, concept maps, group work, exit cards, whatever shows understanding in another form.
- Portfolio — a selection of the student's work over the year with the student's own reflection on it, assessed for quality and growth rather than volume.
- Subject enrichment activities — the practical or applied strand of the subject: laboratory work in science, projects in social science, speaking and listening in languages, lab practice in mathematics.
What Classes 11 and 12 do differently
The senior secondary classes do not use the four-component scheme. Each subject has its own internal or practical component with its own weighting, set out in that subject's syllabus: practicals and records in the sciences, project work in the humanities and commerce, internal assessment in languages. The board sets the marks and the format per subject, and the year's syllabus document is the authority. The principle is the same: assessment carried out in the school, evidenced, and uploaded by the board's date.
Running it across the year rather than at the end
The scheme is designed to be continuous, and a school that treats it as a set of marks to generate in February defeats it and produces marks it cannot defend. A working rhythm:
- Term start — publish to teachers and students the components, their weights, the dates of the periodic tests and what will count for the portfolio and the enrichment activity in each subject.
- Each term — one periodic test per subject, marked and recorded within the fortnight; at least one multiple-assessment activity recorded with its evidence.
- Continuously — portfolio pieces chosen with the student, with the student's reflection written at the time of the work, not at the end of the year.
- Subject enrichment — the practical or project run and assessed in the term it belongs to, with the record book or product kept.
- Before upload — marks totalled per component, converted to the weight, reviewed by the head of department for outliers, and uploaded by the board's date.
The records the board expects
The board can ask a school to produce the basis for any internal mark, and the inspection of records is part of how it keeps the internal component honest. A school should be able to show, for any student and any subject:
- The periodic test papers, the marking scheme and the marked scripts or their record.
- The multiple-assessment activities, what each assessed and the record of each student's performance.
- The portfolio itself, with the student's reflections and the teacher's assessment against stated criteria.
- The subject enrichment record: practical records, project reports, oral assessment sheets, with marks.
- The conversion from raw marks to the component weight, and the totals uploaded, so the two can be reconciled.
Where marks become indefensible
The board's concern with internal assessment is inflation, and the patterns that produce it are consistent.
- Full marks for every student in a component, which tells the board the component was not assessed.
- Portfolio marks with no portfolio, or a portfolio assembled in the final week.
- Multiple assessment recorded as a mark with no record of what was assessed.
- Periodic tests with no papers or marking schemes kept.
- Marks uploaded that do not reconcile with the school's own records when a parent or the board asks.
Telling students and parents how the 20 marks work
Students work harder on internal assessment when they know what counts and when. A one-page explanation at the start of the year, per subject, with the test dates, what the portfolio should contain and what the enrichment activity is, removes most of the disputes that arrive in February. Parents should be told the same thing, and told that internal marks are evidence-based and reviewed, so that a request to revise a mark is a request to look at the evidence together.
