I recall being in the tenth-grade hall with shaking hands while holding an exam paper that was supposed to determine my overall value as a learner. That instance caused me to wonder about whether one exam is the best approach to determine what a student knows.
There are several reasons why exams can be considered superior. For example, exams provide an even playing ground, test a student’s performance in challenging situations, and are easy to conduct among many others. Employers and institutions of higher learning have been relying on exams to make their decisions for decades mainly because exams provide a standardized measurement tool.
This standardized process comes with a price as well. It is quite possible that someone who has mastered the material may not perform well during exams due to any number of factors, including psychological issues or some other health challenge. It is simply unfair, and every teacher who has been teaching for a long time would easily agree with me.
Continuous assessment solves this problem since it considers everything else that goes into a student’s performance and success.Realistically, neither approach alone is sufficient. A combination – where exams test core knowledge and continuous assessment captures broader competencies – seems most honest to what education is actually trying to achieve.
The goal, after all, is not to rank students but to understand them.