Evaluation and Education Essay

Evaluation and Education Essay

Education and evaluation are inter-related processes. Evaluation is as old as the process of education itself. Education in its wider sense implies not only acquisition of knowledge, but also development of abilities, skills, personality qualities which are important in individual's personal and social life. The function of evaluation in education is to provide a systematic assessment of the development of these qualities as an outcome of educational endeavour. Since population education is also an educational process aiming at inculcating rational attitude and responsible behaviour among the learners towards population and development issues and helping them to take informed decisions, role of evaluation is of utmost importance. Without the benefit of evaluation, one is unable to determine how well the programme has achieved its goal. Evaluation also serves as the basis for the improvement of the way activities are carried out. Evaluation is also an effort at discovering whether certain activities have led to desired effects or outcomes.

Evaluation in education means describing something, in terms of selected attributes and judging the degree of acceptability or suitability of that which has been described. The something which is described can be any aspect of the educational scene. In broadest sense, the term evaluation is defined as a systematic assessment of the value or worth of 'something'. This 'something' could be a programme or a segment of a programme, a technique or strategy used, educational materials or a situation prevalent in a particular community. It is also defined as the collection and use of information to make decisions about an educational programme like population education programme. Principles of evaluation in population education are essentially principles of evaluation in education. It is true that evaluation in population education is difficult because population education aims at effecting