In many countries, students potential and the success of their education is assessed through formal examination. Although, there a number of merits as well as demerits, I firmly believe that conducting formal exams is a good way to evaluate students abilities and success rate of education provided to them.
There are a plenty of positive aspects of conducting formal examination. Firstly, everyone has the same chance to perform and do well. They know what they are being evaluated for, as, this provides them some sort of expectation of the questions . Secondly, formal exams have a clear marking system, which is quite easy and understandable to everyone. Therefore, students get grades based on their performance. Furthermore, this type of examination makes students more confident as they are aware of their performance. In my own experience, i was always more confident during formal exams. As, I knew what to focus on when preparing for the exam.
Now, the negative aspects of formal exams to access students abilities are, some students do not perform well under pressure. Yes, not all of the students but some of them feel burdened owing to the fact that they have to perform well in exams. Hence, these students might underperform. As well as, anyone can have a bad day. It could be possible that the student had the ability but could not perform well due to any health issue. Additionally, a lot of skills can not be measured well through formal exams.
To conclude, in my opinion, the benefits of formal exams outweigh the drawbacks because exams are generally affair and simple way of judging the candidates knowledge.