Examination is a practice of evaluating a student’s knowledge and subject matter expertise through a series of questions. Exams are deeply ingrained in our pedagogy and are normalised as the yardstick to measure knowledge. However, the effectiveness of formal exams to assess students’ abilities and to judge their academic success is questionable.
To begin with, formal exams are an equitable way of testing one’s knowledge as everyone is given the same question paper, same exam time, and assessed using the same grading scale. These exams help the learner to understand how much they have learned and paves way for improvement. Preparing for formal exam is also a way to refresh one’s memory of the chapters studied, thereby supporting continuous learning. Further, the grades received in exams often act as a positive reinforcement for the students to do better.
However, formal exams look at subject from a theoretical standpoint and there is so much that cannot be tested through an exam. Moreover, these exams are mostly time bound and not everyone might be able to do well under this kind of pressure. The fear of exams is also common among students, often leading to anxiety, stress, and in severe cases, leading to student suicides. For example, the infamous city of Kota in Rajasthan, India, is not just a hub for competitive exam preparation but also a place which has seen numerous student suicides. Along with formal exams, comes the pressure to score high marks, this contributes to the anxiety and often forces students to engage in malpractices during exams. Exams also fail to look into diverse learners: students with learning difficulty or dyslexia. Writing an exam within a given time span might not work effectively for such learners and hence render futile in assessing their abilities.
In my opinion, the disadvantages outweigh the advantages. I strongly believe that students learn from a variety of mediums including internet, textbooks, classroom lecture, and real-life experience. A formal exam can only measure certain aspects of the overall learning and it cannot do justice in assessing the depth of a student’s knowledge. While exams attempt to be a fair practice, it exerts exorbitant amount of stress on the students. According to me, it is high time we remove formal exams and look at a more comprehensive and inclusive way of assessing a student’s success.