Formative and Summative Evaluation in the Education process.

In the previous article we discussed the philosophy and psychology of the educational evaluation process now lets have a look at the formative and summative evaluation ,the pros and cons of this two major types of evaluation done by the teachers in the learning process.
Formative evalution aims at the acquisition of development of knowledge and skills of learners.In this evaluation teachers identify pupils' need so that they can guide them towards set educational goals.
Through this evaluation process teachers identify pupils' difficulties and enables them to apply appropriate remedial measures.
The teacher usually do formative evaluation during the process of instruction .It is an on-going process ,such that the evaluation of one lesson helps to plan the next lesson.
The teacher can also give the learners an exercise which determines whether the learners had mastered the the concepts taught.
The teacher's main concerns is to check the progress of the teaching and learning towards the achievement of the behavioural objectives of the lesson taught.
The suggestions from this lesson taught help to plan the next course of instuction.Ogunny (1984:15)points formative evaluation as an attempts to the following:
Identifying the content (knowledge /skills) which have not been mastered by pupils and appraise the level of cognitive abilities of the pupils ,such as acquisition of knowledge ,comprehension ,application ,analysis ,synthesis and evaluation of learning.
It also specify the relationship between content and levels of cognitive abilities.
Formative evaluation identifies pupils' need and provide first aid treatment to simple problems and leads to rmedial instruction ,as it also ensures summative evaluation to come out positive.
Advantages of formative evaluation are that
it identifies problems in teaching and learning and helps to correct it.
By being formative it diagonise weaknesses at an early stage for the purpose of remediation or individual teaching ,for instance ,the teacher is failing to read the teacher can quickly find remedy.Thus keeps pupils on toes and even in the track of progress and gives immediate feedback which is motivating.
Formative is also ideal for future planning in terms of changing teaching methods and pupils' activities through resetting objectives ,use of effective media ,regrouping and assessment methods as it helps to plan also extension work for the excelling students.
Disadvantages of formative evaluation,it is time consuming if done regulary like on daily,weekly or monthly basis.
Being formative is one of the tiresome exercise for both teachers and pupils in terms of planning and exercises.Some of the recommendations may never be truely implemented.
Summative Evaluation is carried out at the end or conclusion of a programme of instruction.It is very useful to determine whether or not the broad aims,objectives or goals of the programme have been achieved.Summative evaluation is judgemental in nature and is offered as class tests ,examinations set up like termly,yearly and external examinations like 'o' levels,'A' levels.The examinations used to design course grades and certify the learners
Advantages of summative evaluation is judgemental in nature ,hence it shows the worth or the value of a programme.
It can can be used for decision making so that learners can easily selected into placement streams such as pupils are put into classes according to their test results.
Summative evaluation is useful for communicating with other stakeholders like parents ,NGOs or church organisation who need to assist in the education sector.
It is a useful tool for guidance and counselling.Above all it is done to evaluate the effectiveness of teachers.
Disadvantages of summative evaluation comes rather too late at the end when learning difficulties can no longer be rectified.It is only concerned with the end results