Why must Nova Scotia assessments remain secure?

Measures are taken to ensure that Nova Scotia assessments are reliable, valid, and fair to students. By embedding assessment items from one year’s assessment in the following year’s assessment, the department is able to make a genuine comparison of student performance on those common items, independent of the overall difficulty of the assessments. Making the assessment secure allows the Department of Education to use these common items to equate forms year-over-year, and allows the department to perform longitudinal studies of student performance.