School exams are an important rite of passage. They allow students to test their knowledge against both objective standards and the performance of their peers. The pressure to perform well, within a limited time frame and without recourse to technology, books or other people, pushes those taking exams to work hard and learn. However, for these very same reasons, exams are under attack from those within the educational establishment.
In the UK, calls to abolish exams for 16-year-olds (GCSEs) are an annual ritual. In the summer of 2020, the heads of some of the UK’s top independent schools, including Eton, argued that the current exam system ‘neither measures the right things nor is very reliable, and leaves in its wake a trail of stress and unfairness’. Another head teacher argued that exams ‘stifled children’s creativity’. The UK’s largest teaching union called for the abolition of exams, as did around 100 Conservative MPs and the former Conservative Education Secretary who had introduced GCSEs over thirty years earlier.
Critics of exams want to shift the focus of schooling onto skills, creativity and ‘real life’. More specifically, there are questions around why pupils should be assessed aged-16 when the school leaving age is now de facto 18. These arguments show that exams are perceived to have little inherent value. Encouraging pupils to revise what they have been taught, work on topics they found challenging, and consolidate their learning, is not seen as an important process in its own right. Instead, exams are seen as, at best, a waste of time and, at worst, standing in opposition to ‘true’ learning. When this is accepted, the stress that students taking exams are assumed to experience seems needlessly cruel. One popular British commentator criticised ‘this wasteful, costly, cruel and pointless ritual of teenage evaluation’ and described the school exam hall as a ‘torture chamber’.
Such criticisms speak to confusion about the purpose of exams. Over several decades, exams have become separated from educational goals and attached to a range of economic, social and political goals such as future employability and social mobility, school performance; and national educational success or decline. The distinct role exams play in relation to learning has been lost and so their value can be questioned.
We need to consider the educational case for exams and argue not for them to be abolished but to be made more intellectually rigorous.
Too often, exams are written off as merely a test of memory. This is an unhelpful caricature. First, the capacity to memorize (or learn) information is an important skill in its own right. Second, facts are the basis of knowledge. It is when we are able to discern which facts are important and why, and how facts relate to one another, that we begin to truly understand a concept. For this reason, exams should require pupils not just to know facts but to demonstrate their understanding through longer, more complex written answers and, in humanities subjects, essays. This ability to anyalse a topic and synthesise a reasoned response, under timed conditions, shows true mastery of a subject. Exams that are intrinsically linked to a body of subject knowledge have a crucial role to play in directing learning and assessing current levels of understanding.
One reason why adults problematize exams is that competition is viewed as potentially damaging to a child’s self-esteem. The idea that children should be graded and ranked contradicts currently fashionable theories about child psychology. However, it is worth reminding ourselves of some of the benefits of competition. An element of competition can be a strong motivating force and inspire people to perform not just better than other people, but better than their own previous best. When seen this way, competition can be helpful in raising standards overall. In addition, we need to stop telling children that exams are stressful. Too often, this is an unhelpful projection of adult emotions and expectations onto children. If children are taught that exams are simply a routine part of life and a necessary - even exciting - intellectual challenge then they are more likely to come to see them in this way.
As universities and employers require a mechanism to differentiate between large numbers of applicants, some form of classifying children’s achievements at the end of their time in formal education is necessary. Exams provide the most equal means of measuring achievement. Work completed at home can be influenced by parents and become a measure of the available financial and cultural resources. Only an exam hall can ensure the absence of AI programmes, other online resources or private tutors. In the classroom, the close relationship that develops between teacher and pupils mitigates against objectivity. Ultimately, an exam hall, where all pupils answer the same questions, in identical circumstances, is the fairest means we have of testing a student’s knowledge.
There is also a moral case to be made for exams. Education should be understood as primarily concerned with passing a body of knowledge from one generation to the next. When seen in this way, we move away from instrumental, individual goals relating to employability skills, social mobility or self-esteem. Instead, when knowledge is considered important for its own sake, education becomes viewed as an intrinsically important project. Preserving and contributing to the sum total of knowledge benefits humanity. To this end, it becomes a moral imperative for society to identify those most capable of mastering knowledge and, in the future, contributing to its transmission and pursuit. Rigorous, knowledge-based exams enable teachers (and society) to determine which pupils are capable of higher learning and playing a further role in relation to knowledge.
Exams are about far more than certificates or credentials. They speak to the capacity of adults to assert educational standards in relation to both quality and knowledge content and to pass on to children the aspiration that they will live up to these goals. This makes exams vital to maintaining and raising standards. They must be defended.
