The current curriculum reform of primary education in Slovakia brings many challenges for the management of primary schools, but also for all school staff. Teachers, as the main actors of this change, are exposed to the requirement to direct, but also to shape and change their own professional activities towards the fulfilment of the general goals of education and training anchored in the new state educational programme. Each new curriculum introduced seeks to improve quality in education. Quality in education is very often associated with value, i.e. the usefulness of education as a product of the educational process. It is about shifting the focus from the transmission of cognitive knowledge to the development of students' complex competencies as a support for the development of each student's potential. In this context, the transition from subject-based curricula to an integrated curriculum, which is the main conceptual basis of the currently ongoing reform of primary education in Slovakia, is desirable. The study views student assessment as one of the most challenging professional activities of a teacher. The authors of the new curriculum were careful to ensure that its content was meaningful, so that the teacher could choose a way of assessing students that answered the basic questions: who, what, how well will they do, and how and when will they measure it. In integrated thematic instruction, the teacher develops assessment tools already during the preparation for the lesson. The study deals with the analysis of primary teachers' views on the situation before the implementation of the new educational reform with an emphasis on students' assessment. For the analysis of the data collected through questionnaire, we used MS Excel and the freely available statistical program jamovi. Almost 50% of teachers expressed on a scale of more dissatisfied to completely dissatisfied with the state of education in Slovakia. As many as 75% of teachers express a lack of confidence that the new curriculum reform will improve this situation, but at the same time they perceive the need for reforms and progress in the quality of primary education. Around one third of teachers respond more positively to the need for a change in the assessment of students, moving towards verbal assessment. Up to 65% of teachers agree with the assessment of students in primary education by grading, while 73% of respondents consider it most important that the student is able to evaluate himself and that the grade alone does not provide sufficient feedback for the student. The majority of teachers do not admit that their assessment of students bears the marks of a subjective approach, although they admit that some other teachers do assess students in this way. More than 50% of teachers reported that they had not had the opportunity to participate in student assessment training. The difference in student assessment by school type between teachers from different school types was not statistically significant (p = 0.09) based on Fisher's exact test. There was also no statistically significant difference in student ratings among teachers by years of experience (p = 0.8). Considering the research results, attention should be paid to further training of teachers in the area of student assessment. The aim of assessment is to be authentic, it is not about presenting knowledge out of the context of its use in the real world, but to assess students' abilities to use the knowledge.

Keywords: Curriculum reform, student assessment, integrated thematic instruction, primary school teacher.