As a strategy for supporting learning, the formative assessment is essential and is certainly a part of good teaching, but there's no doubt that there's a place for summative assessment as well, something that allows you to know what you have achieved.
I think parents have the right to know how their children are doing in school, whether they're studying math or languages. It is important for language learners to get a sense of where they are as well, as seen by objective evaluators. On that case, ACPI is working with the DELF, an international exam that does just that: it gives a level of competency, based on the European framework, of the levels of the pupil. We think that's really critical to celebrate all the learning that our young Canadians are doing.