Equal Opportunity, the Right to Education, and Just Educational Assessment

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child obliges the States Parties to recognize the right of the child to education, and in order to achieve this right progressively and on the basis of equal opportunity, they shall make different forms of secondary education available and accessible to every child. One of the relevant criteria which is usually used for determining access to some selective secondary schools is educational achievement. However, not every form of educational achievement used as a criterion for access is in accordance with the principle of equal opportunity. If this principle is understood as an application of the classical principle of justice (equals must be treated equally, and unequals must be treated unequally) in the circumstances when two or more people are in competition with each other for achieving something that only some of them can achieve, then it seems that educational achievements can be in accordance with the principle of equal opportunity only on condition that all achievements are the result of just educational assessment. This means that all students who belong to the same category (class, school) should be assessed using the same criteria. If teachers violate this rule, they commit an injustice. This does not happen only when one teacher uses different criteria of assessment in one class but also when one of two or more teachers who use the same criteria in their classes or schools (and therefore assess their students justly) uses criteria that are different, if we compare them among themselves. In the first case, injustice in assessment is committed on the class level; in the second case, it appears on the school or national level. In both cases, students do not have equal opportunities to enroll in a selective secondary school if enrolment depends on exam grades.