Are exams still useful?

[ukyp]

http://ukyp.org.uk/203361.html

In August thousands of pupils around the UK wait nervously for their Sats, GCSE, A Level, Standards and Highers results. Thisyear, for those who took Sats the wait has been longer because of problems with marking. This latest exam disaster, along with growing concerns over the standard of exams and quality of teaching in schools, has led many to question whether exams are still a useful way of testing young people. We asked MYPs about their own exam experiences ...

By Bethany Harvey, age 14, Deputy MYP Walsall

I am still waiting for my Sats results so personally I think they are a waste of time.Exams don’t show what a student is really capable of; what if the pupil is having personal problems and they don’t do their best because of it? What if a pupil doesn’t do as well in the exam as they have in class? What if they haven’t had enough support from their teachers? What if they are nervous because of the stress of exams? Exams just makes life even more difficult for teenagers to cope with. Sats are getting easier every year, and some of the things we learn aren’t even useful. I can’t think of a time in my life when I’ll ever need algebra! To me exams aren’t useful because they are stressful and they are not a good way to test ability.

By Shannon Taggart, Age 14, MYP Stoke on Trent

Exams are the best way of monitoring progress throughout school life. I think the new path some high schools are taking with coursework-only subjects is rubbish. They do not test what you know, instead they test what you are doing at the time. This makes some subjects a whole lot easier to pass but that doesn’t mean the student will be more knowledgeable. Exams are getting easier so I believe that from an early age children should be learning more advanced subjects such as foreign languages. These days you need to get ahead to be successful and schooling is the key for success in later life.

[Gotlieb Alexander]

SATs are useless, they serve no purpose whatsoever, I am sadened to hear that young people are worried about them, after all nobody is ever going to be affected by their SATs scores in the future.

GCSEs are probably the most accurate and sensible of the exams but too many people get the "middle grades" and so it is very difficult to distinguish between two C grades.

A-levels on the other hand are a disaster, they give a very inaccurate reading of ability and knowledge.

I have proposed changes to the exams system and the details are on my website at http://www.aless.co.uk/education.php

[mkalimshah]

Exams are very useful for future but very penic in present. Most of us put our eyes on present, exams looks dreadfull. Other than this, Exams are useful...Exams are the way to Acess some thing. Such as our writting skils, our learnig skill, our memory, quik decission in short time etc.
I think this way of accesment is useful. However, It can be Modernize.

[make.me.smile]

I don't think exams are useless, but I do believe they are unneccessary. Having been in the German schooling system for most of my life I have not ever taken exams and can see that you do not need them to have a good education and on top of that they make life very hard for students.
There seems to be a lot more pressure on you as well.

[Paul]

Originally Posted by make.me.smile

I don't think exams are useless, but I do believe they are unneccessary. Having been in the German schooling system for most of my life I have not ever taken exams and can see that you do not need them to have a good education and on top of that they make life very hard for students.
There seems to be a lot more pressure on you as well.

Surely they must have some exams at the end?

Ireland just has two sets - Junior Cert (age 15) and Leaving Cert (age 17/18 - there are vocational alternatives to the academic Leaving Cert), don't think they do grammar school type exams anymore.

The European Baccalaureate is crazy - they have a very good pass rate because if you aren't good enough from the age of 11/12 you start being told to repeat years and if you have to repeat 3 times you're expelled.

[make.me.smile]

In the German system you have exams when you're about 18, about al 13 subjects which sucks - I'm escaping that thank God. I did a year of the French baccalaureate, but I didn't like it too much. I think I'll prefer A-levels, just doing what I want to do, rather than keeping up in subjects like math, which hold no interest for me anyway.

[EmmaGallen]

Originally Posted by Paul

The European Baccalaureate is crazy - they have a very good pass rate because if you aren't good enough from the age of 11/12 you start being told to repeat years and if you have to repeat 3 times you're expelled.

Only Germany has Sitzenbleiben. France doesn't have any equivalent. And most German's don't do the IB (or EB as you seem to be calling it...); they do Mittelreife and Abitur (GCSE and A level thigns respectively)

In the IB you are working over a two year course and you don't get exams in every subjec; you get to chose which subjects you get marked in.

[make.me.smile]

In France you can actually repeat a grade (or be made to) and in the IB you pretty much choose an area (in the French system you choose either L -language/literature, S - math/science or ES - social science/economics).

[Paul]

Originally Posted by EmmaGallen

Only Germany has Sitzenbleiben. France doesn't have any equivalent. And most German's don't do the IB (or EB as you seem to be calling it...); they do Mittelreife and Abitur (GCSE and A level thigns respectively)

In the IB you are working over a two year course and you don't get exams in every subjec; you get to chose which subjects you get marked in.

EB is the one used by the 14 European Schools, which are for children of EU staff.

European Schools - Schola Europaea - Department for Children, Schools & Families - Wikipedia
European Baccalaureate - Wikipedia - Department for Children, Schools & Families - Schola Europaea

The European Baccalaureate is taken at the end of the seventh year of secondary education. It is awarded only by the twelve European Schools and should be distinguished from the International Baccalaureate (IB) and the baccalaureates of various national systems. Details of this examination are set out in the Annex to the Statute of the European School and in the Regulations for the European Baccalaureate, available from the schools.

The European Baccalaureate is administered and directly supervised by an external examining board appointed annually by the Board of Governors. The examining board consists of up to three representatives of each member state, who must satisfy the conditions governing the appointment of equivalent examining boards in their respective countries. It is presided over by a senior university educator appointed by each member state in turn, assisted by a member of the Board of Inspectors of the schools.

Article 5 (2) of the Statute provides that holders of the
European Baccalaureate shall:

• a. enjoy, in the Member State of which they are nationals, all the benefits attaching to the possession of the diploma or certificate awarded at the end of the secondary school education in that country; and
• b. be entitled to seek admission to any university in the territory of any member State on the same terms as nationals of that Member State with equivalent qualifications.

The Baccalaureate is a two year course and assesses the performance of students in the subjects taught in secondary years 6–7.
The first awards of the European Baccalaureate were made in 1959.

[Paul]

Here is the message from the Schola Europaea homepage...

WELCOME TO THE WEBSITE OF THE
SCHOLA EUROPAEA

WHO ARE WE ?

The European Schools are official educational establishments controlled jointly by the governments of the Member States of the European Union. In all these countries they are legally regarded as public institutions.

Originally, they were governed by the Intergovernmental Protocol incorporating the ‘Statute of the European School’, signed by the six founder Member States in Luxembourg on 12 April 1957 and ratified by the national authorities of the signatory countries. The present Convention defining the Statute of the European Schools, which has replaced the previous agreements, entered into force in October 2002. Following enlargement on 1 May 2004, the ten new Member States of the European Union have acceded to the Convention. Romania and Bulgaria have not acceded to the Convention yet.

The mission of the European Schools is to provide a multilingual and multicultural education for nursery, primary and secondary level pupils.

There are currently fourteen Schools (Alicante, Brussels I (Uccle), Brussels II (Woluwé), Brussels III (Ixelles), Brussels IV (Laeken, opened on the site of Berkendael in September 2007), Frankfurt am Main, Mol, Bergen, Karlsruhe, Munich, Varese, Culham, Luxembourg I & Luxembourg II), in seven countries (Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom, Spain and Luxembourg), with a total of approximately 20,000 pupils on roll.