Aligning Learning Certification Patterns with the Academic Calendar in Benin’s Secondary Education: A Requisite for Ensuring Fairness in EFL Student Evaluation (Published)
The official school calendar in Benin, governed by the Law on Education (2003-17) and the annual joint ministerial decree, is inconstantly implemented, leading to two various evaluation patterns that affect differently private and public schools learning scores and decision-making, including English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students. This research aims to assess the current evaluation patterns in terms of impacts and recommend aligning the learning certification mechanism with the academic calendar to ensure fairness in EFL student evaluation. A mixed-methods approach is employed with 80 participants from secondary schools in the Cotonou region. The results, analysed using descriptive statistics, content analysis (Neuendorf, 2017), and thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Krippendorff, 2018) techniques, show that 65% of participants are dissatisfied with the evaluation device and organisation in public secondary education for violating the law, the decree and the norm of fairness in evaluation. NVivo software (Version 12) was used to facilitate the coding process and the organisation of emerging themes. A significant positive correlation was found between the school calendar implementation’s constancy and students’ EFL academic performance (r = 0.45, p < 0.01). The recommendations include unifying the school calendar, developing clear evaluation criteria, establishing transparent decision-making processes, and continuous monitoring, evaluation, and technology integration.
Keywords: Conforming to the official school calendar, EFL student evaluation, Secondary Education, fairness in evaluation science, unifying learning certification pattern