Final exams and frequent tests are considered essential for education programs worldwide. I believe that the advantages, such as determining a student’s overall level, outweigh the downsides associated with it, including academic unfairness when conducting tests.
First and foremost, these assessments are crucial in gauging a scholar’s overall level, which is subsequently important when choosing courses at the university and finding suitable careers. They are usually tested on different concepts, such as mathematics, language, science, and arts, allowing the examiner to determine the learner’s overall ability. Although certain factions object to the following concept, it also allows for a fair comparison among the students and enables easier categorization of their future prospects in the industry. For example, past trends have proved beyond a shadow of doubt that the highest performing learners often go on to outshine their counterparts in university and job market; hence, showing that the criterion in use is a good measure of the young adults’ ability.
However, these testing techniques can also be unfair to the candidates because they do not consider the prevailing circumstances. Although teachers try their level-best to derive question from all parts of the syllabus, they still only cover a fraction of the content. This means that a student who unknowingly focused on these sections are rewarded, while those who skimmed over them are punished, regardless of how much they studied. Furthermore, prevailing circumstances, such as illness and days of the semester missed, are not considered when marking the exams, which exacerbates the unfairness. For instance, final year students in Kenya have to go for their national examinations, regardless of their illness and loss of loved ones, inevitably worsening their performance.
In conclusion, while there are demerits to these examinations, such as unfairness based on differing students’ circumstances, I maintain that the benefits hold more weight because they allow for a student’s overall intellectual capability to be properly assessed.