Achievement vs Attainment
Achievement and attainment are words that are used commonly by teachers to assess the amount of learning that has taken place in their students. Often, it becomes necessary to assess the level of skills at a particular point of time to judge. Teachers evaluate the performance of the students to find out if they have, in fact, attained desired skill levels. There is quite a bit of overlap in the two words achievement and attainment that confuses people and leads to these words being used interchangeably. This article takes a closer look at the two words to find out if indeed there are differences that warrant them to be used in each other’s place.
Achievement
Achievement is a relative concept that measures improvement in performance of a student over a period of time with the help of instructions given by teachers. Thus, achievement is what a student gets in the form of grades now in comparison to what he got in his last exam. Passing an exam with flying colors is also referred to as an achievement of a student. This is a concept that is used by individuals in their resume or bio-data to draw attention to their skills or excellent grades obtained earlier. In general, the progress made by students over a period of time is referred to as their achievement that is reflected in their grades.
Achievement is also referred to as a feat, and any act of accomplishment or finishing a task in a successful manner is considered an achievement for an individual.
Attainment
If there is a standard for height or weight that has been set for boys of a certain age and they achieve it, it is said that the boys have attained the desired standard. Often benchmarks are set to find out the under achievers and also those who are very good learners. Students attaining these benchmarks or standards are considered as average students while those falling short of the local or national benchmarks are sorted out as under achievers or slow learners.
In most societies and cultures, attaining the age of 18 is considered as becoming eligible for driving a car and also to drink, not to speak of the eligibility to vote.
What is the difference between Achievement and Attainment?
• Achievement is the progress made by a student in acquiring new skills that are reflected in improvement, in grades, in exam,
• Attainment is reaching a certain skill level that has been set as a benchmark.
• Attainment is also the act of achieving something valuable or important.
• Attaining the age of 18 makes an individual an adult and eligible for voting.
• Attainment is also the act of reaching a skill level through hard work and training.
• Achievement is doing or performing a feat that has been attained by a select few earlier.