End exams? That’s ducking the issue...
With the widespread cancellation of high school exams this year, I have been a strong advocate for awarding final grades to students based on the use of a teacher’s predicted grades. The principle of trusting our professional teachers has undoubtedly been both the pragmatic and right thing to do under the circumstances.
Over the next couple of months students will learn their fate from various examining boards around the world without having run the gauntlet of high-stakes final exams - with all the composite stress and anxiety that often goes with them. As usual, we can expect that some students will be delighted with their results, and others will be disappointed. And if the various grading systems (however complex they sound) have worked as well as promised there should not be too many surprises, particularly where teachers have given clear and regular feedback to students and parents on predicted grades (perhaps best not to go down this rabbit-hole just now...!).
So if all goes well during the results season, and students are accepted on to their university of choice, doesn’t this just prove that we should stick to the same formula now? We can do without the exams, right?
Right. But I’m just not convinced that this is a trick that can be repeated again with the outcome that many of us actually want.
Our conundrum is that a student’s final grades (whatever mathematical darks arts are used) will still pre-determine their chances of getting where they want to be. And so if there are no final high-stakes exams, all that will happen is that it will be dressed up in another guise.
Next year, if the same modified grading systems are used again, teachers will be telling students that X assignment or Y test or Z essay will be used to inform their final teacher predicted grades. And so, hey presto, each of these will become high-stakes and we will be back exactly where we started. It may even be worse.
As my late father used to love telling me, “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck”.
We can not duck the issue. Exams are here to stay for as long as they remain the key to university admissions and academic credentialing. If we want to change education for the better, this is where I would start.
Academy Principal
4 年Agree Damian Bacchoo - portfolio-styled collations of evidence of understanding are surely more holistic in nature. Never been convinced that IBDP exams are about learning per se so would welcome any change there. Schools need to push the envelope to force uni admissions to take notice of great candidates.
Head of Upper School
4 年Employers, entrepreneurship, innovation are all seeking team-players with soft skills, ability to manage long term projects etc. So assessment modalities which develop and assess such skills should very much be part of a twenty first century education. Those contexts/challenges also look for people who can assimilate large amounts of information and reframe/transfer in prose, oral and other modalities under pressure. Exams need to evolve, to be sure, and to form part of a pluralist, dynamic assessment culture. But something like ‘high stakes exams’ will probably always be part of the picture in a competitive world that prizes academic excellence and innovation - and with largely good reason.
Corporate Head of Inclusion GEMS Education
4 年Absolutely spot on!
This is exactly the beauty of an IB education. Assessments are made for growth and give students an opportunity to shine in a myriad of capacities. Because of the multiple assessments and the portfolio-style assessment, students and teachers were not "surprised" by the cancellation of the formal exams. On the US front, it has also been helpful for college admission to re-evaluate their admissions practices after the College Board high-profile issues this year. Let's hope the admissions process begins to look at students, their needs, goals, and the environment in which students could thrive instead of numbers on a paper from one testing day.
Passionate about education
4 年Goodhart's Law