Band 6+: In many countries, there's an increasing emphasis on standardized testing in schools. What are the advantages and disadvantages of this approach? How can schools better assess students' overall learning and development?

Nowadays, the system of assessment has applied standardized testing as the main method to evaluate student performance. The object of this essay is to examine the benefits and drawbacks of this system and propose substitude way to present a more practical rating of student’s learning.

The primary advantage of testing method is the convenience of evaluation since it has precise answer keys. In other words, this standard method applied for faster cheking, providing concrete descriptions for tasks. For example, teachers save their time, which would be wasted for checking essays with different opinions and illegible handwriting. They compare student’s answers with keys and establish the result in electronic diary, where students can follow their grades and academic performance. As for the disadvantages, this type of exams does not determine the student’s actual level of knowledge. In other quarters, it is sufficient to know the strategy and prepare only for certain terms to get great score, students tend to study only right before the exam and memorize the information only passing the test, but anyone will not remember it after the event. For instance, educational ministering of Kazakhstan are going to replace UNT with another better option, because UNT is becoming obsolete for its disability to define student’s personal skills.

To fix this pressing issue, implementing assess critical thinking and cognitive skills to educational system can be the beneficial alternative owing to its ability to estimate the actual academic performance. As an example, Nazarbayev University created its own entrance exam which consists of math and critical thinking. Therefore, NU with careful selection of students and strong educational system is one of the best universities in Asia.

In conclusion, testing approach is convenient standard, which became a traditional manner of marking, but it is being out of date because it can not determine the students’s knowledge. To provide a more comprehensive evaluation of student learning, educational systems can establish a critical thinking test. Consequently, it will be available to rate student’s skills accurately.