A Transformative Approach to Admissions Assessment: The South African Case

School-leaving and higher education admission assessments in South Africa are typically summative and normative, comparing students for admission into university. However, we argue that these assessments need to be transformative, impacting the curriculum and empowering students to explore their own agency. This study is a reflective contribution based on over a decade of development and administration of school-leaving and higher education assessments. It adopts a literacies perspective, distinguishing between the ‘autonomous’ view of literacy (focused on competencies) and the ‘ideological model’ (viewing literacy as social practices). The ideological model values diverse literacy practices and challenges normative approaches that assume homogeneous student populations and stable disciplines. While normative approaches focus on identifying academic conventions and teaching proficiency within these norms, transformative approaches a) situate these conventions within contested knowledge traditions; b) elicit writers’ perspectives on these conventions; and c) explore alternative academic meaning-making that considers students’ diverse resources. At present, school-leaving and admission assessments rely on candidates’ cultural capital and socioeconomic status. As such, these assessments may disadvantage poorer students and perpetuate inequities. To transform higher education, assessments must shift from normative, summative practices to transformative, inclusive, and empowering approaches, integrating feedback that fosters student agency and acknowledges diverse literacies. Such transformative assessments, we conclude, should not merely rank students but provide input for development of curricula and provide for feedback to and from students to understand and improve their learning, thus enabling self-reflection and growth.