Would Education without exams be better for students?

University Degree Education and Teaching

Ou Gaoqiang (James)

Introduction

Why exams should be taken? What does exam do? Many people believe it is a way, which can helps student to improve their skills, or just a mechanism that make student progress for their a successful future. For a student, exams are inescapable part in his or her school time. Since I had the introduction of education system, exams have been used as a means of study assessment. However, nowadays, more and more people have come to the conclusion that exam is not the only means of study assessment; they believe that education without exams would be better for students. To what extent is this statement true? With regard to this topic I will give my opinion to discuss the relationship between exam and education.

Discussion

Exams have been used as a means of study assessment for a long time; some people think exam make students work hard. In order to do well or upgrade, students have to work throughout the course, as they know they will have to prove themselves at the end. Exams test students if they are up to grade. It has become a role for students. For this role, teachers have to give information; for their child’s future, parents have to put a lot of pressure on their child; students have to work hard because most exams are compulsory in education. For example, there is a higher education examination in Chinese education system. Students have to do this exam after finish their senior high school; pass it, is the one and only way go into university in China. This exam takes three days at the beginning of June every year; that three days became the most importance in Chinese student’s life. Therefore, most senior high school will spend nearly one year to refresher course, which students had done for twelve years. Hundreds examination papers and expressions will be given by teachers, students has to rehearse them expertly. Many people believe that, this exam is test student’s memory and that are not skills. In this case, education is became rote study; the aim of studying is remember information. Many people who has graduate from university find out that some technology they learnt from school are trashy, but it was very important in exam. That can define in this kind of education, most students cannot mastery of technology; what have they got? There are expressions and principium by rote, and that are not the improvement of skills.

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In addition, what first needs to be understood is the aim of studying, it is to improve student’s skills or just pass exams? We do not need to be an educationist to answer this question; to improve student’s skills is the reason why most people study. Taking this idea into account, exam has many disadvantages and deficiencies for student. Firstly, formal exams cannot appear to reflect a student’s ability accurately. It can be unfair in several ways. For example, “the whole career of a student depends upon what he or she does on a certain day and hours of an exam. If the student is ill, or if he or she has had some emotional trauma, these factors could have a negative effect on the student’s exam results. Furthermore, some students do not perform well under pressure and require a longer time to reach useful conclusions. Even though they may have studied diligently and know the subject matter thoroughly, their examination result does not reflect their ability.”(Education, 2002, “Examination’s Advantages and Disadvantages” available online at ) For these students, exams appear to be unfair. On the other hand, in many respects, exams have the unfavourable effect. Some students merely cram so that can perform quickly for the demands of testing. And some students may cheat in the test to get high mark. Whatever, if student do test in irrationally way, exams make student develop into bad study habit without fail. By this token, would education without exams be better for students?

Generally speaking, it cannot say that education without exams would be better for students. To some extent, exam is the exclusive assessment of student’s ability, it is necessary in education system, but its format cannot be simplified. “In the assessment of student’s ability, their diligence, initiative, deductive reasoning and organisational skills are considered, and these skills cannot be tested in formal exams.” (Hu Ming, 2001, IELTS Writing) Such as education in the U.K., there also have a final examination at the end of the course, but its marks cannot determine students’ final marks of their study. The final marks need to be decided by all items including assessment work, attendance, presentation, group work and examinations. All these can really reflect students’ ability after their subject not only exam. If someone did not have a good revision or did some mistake in the examination, he or she definitely can fail him or her examination, but he or she still have done efforts in him or her study, so now the other item will be used to consider students’ marks.

Conclusion

To sum up, in different countries have different education system, but they affirm having the same final process which is examination, so the argument is coming from the final examination whether can identify student’s efforts and abilities. In my opinion, even though formal exams have been used in the past, they should no longer be used as the only means of assessment because they can be an unfair indication of the student’s overall ability. I believe that exams are important but to test in other ways as well are better for the students, which can be easy to exam student’s abilities.