Fairness in Assessment

Fairness in assessment means that an assessment should allow for students of both genders and all backgrounds to do equally well. All students should have equal opportunity to demonstrate the skills and knowledge being assessed. The fairness of the assessment is jeopardized if bias exists either in the task or in the grader/ teacher.

The concept that assessment should be fair covers a number of aspects. Ideally an assessment should not discriminate between students except on grounds of the ability being assessed, so cultural differences (for instance) should not have an impact on the assessment although in some instances this cannot be achieved (for instance essay writing generally seeks to test the ability to write grammatical English among other things and a non-native English speaker is inherently at a disadvantage in this situation). Ideally an assessment should not distinguish between students with different backgrounds although in some cases this is impossible to achieve.