The meaning of evaluation in academic development is:

Concept. Evaluation in education is the systematic process of collecting evidence about a learner and judging that evidence against the objectives that were set for that learner, so as to state how far those objectives have been realised. Ralph Tyler's classical formulation puts it in exactly these terms: evaluation is the process of determining the extent to which educational objectives are actually being realised. The object of the judgement is therefore the learner's growth over time, and its purpose is to guide the next step of teaching and learning.

Applying it here. The stem places evaluation inside academic development, and the entity that develops is the student. Evaluation in that setting must therefore be a continuing judgement about the student's movement towards the learning objectives — where the learner began, what has since been gained, and what still needs support. Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation uses the word in precisely this sense: an ongoing, all-round appraisal of a learner's progress covering scholastic as well as co-scholastic areas of growth.

Contrasting the other values.

• “The assessment of class records” takes documentation as its object. Verifying registers, mark sheets and diaries is a record-keeping audit about a class, and nothing in it is a statement about how a learner has developed.

• “The assessment of task-performance” takes a single assigned task as its object. It yields evidence at one point in time, whereas development can only be read from many such observations compared across time.

• “The assessment of knowledge power” takes recall of subject matter as its object. Knowledge is one domain among several in which a learner grows — skills, attitudes, interests and habits develop too — so a knowledge-only measure is narrower than academic development.

Result. Evaluation in academic development means the assessment of the progress of students.