I had an interesting coffee morning the other day. Well, the coffee was pretty usual but the conversation was interesting. A former British Prime Minister has proposed eliminating terminal assessment, aka as final exams, in favor of continuous assessment. Many of his arguments are country or culture-specific, but the exam v continuous assessment topic is an important discussion.
The final-exam concept is simple. Everything you have learned in the semester or year or four years of high schol is evaluated in one or two or several exams at the end of the period. You may be told what is in and what is out, or the exam may literally potentially cover anything and everything. The point is, it's high pressure and "high stakes".
Among the points for examinations are that they are common to all, consistent, equally applied, objective, summative and test performance under pressure. Among those against are that they test recall and test-technique or exam-technique rather than anything else, that a bad day or a late arrival or illness negatively impacts performance thus not providing an accurate picture of the candidate, and that performance under pressure is only one thing, and not the most important thing, in knowing whether a student is ready for the next stage in his/her journey.
Among the points for continuous assessment that it is ongoing, allows for measuring multiple activities and skills over multiple activities, adaptive, formative and holistic, and that it is more reflective of real life and of what a candidate needs for the future. Among those against it are that it is subjective, inconsistent, impossible to standardise and simply spreads pressure and anxiety over time and tasks rather than concentrating it.
A very real concern with continuous assessment I do not think receives enough attenton is that it is significntly more demanding on and time-consuming for teachers who inevitably reduce it to a few assessments which become in effect mini-exams, bringing much of the exam-negativity and negating much of the continuous-positivity.
Another area deserving of further exploration is the boy-girl thing. I have heard several times that exams suit boys whereas continuous assessment suits girls, that if you want boys to do well, give them exams and if you want them to sit still, be quiet, study, color, make models etc give them continuous. If you want girls t do well, give then continuous and if you want to keep them out of law schol and engineering programs, give them final exams. I like to say, not enturely facetiously, that when I was at high school the boys would surf or do nothing September through April and then in May cram for the end-of-year exams, after which they would then head back to the beach until next May.
Personally, I like an evaluation protocol which has a few regular tests, like mini-exams, for example quarterly or at the end of a few major units, which are common, consistent, objective etc. These scores would provide a third of the final grade and moderate, using standard deviations and z-scores, the remaining 2/3 which is teacher-based, continuous. and more suited to the needs of each subject and each unit of study.
Such a protocol includes the positives of both sets of evaluation approaches. The either/or approach so often adopted and presented in the article below is neither educationally sound nor effective as a means of measurement. My preferred protocal is both, especially when used over time.
**Please leave questions and comments below.**
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