Exams as a Measure of Students Abilities - Education Essay Example

Exams are part of our daily lives. One cannot talk about education without thinking of exams. Exams are used to determine a student's performance and whether that student should proceed to the next level of education or not. It is through the same exams that one is selected to join college. However, the question that everyone should ask him/herself is whether exams can be used to measure a person's ability. Can they be used to determine a person's success in life? How about skills like leadership, persistence, critical thinking, creativity and reliability; are they measured in exams? The truth is despite the association of passing exams to success; it is not an accurate measure of ability.

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Success in life is not determined by exams. There are some people who are successful but did not perform well in school, and others even dropped out of school. In fact, there are people who focus on their talents end up being very successful. A good example is sports stars; these are people who take advantage of their talent to make a living; many of whom make a lot of money, yet sports are not part of exams. Some big corporations like Facebook came to exist due to creativity; it is well known that the founder dropped out of college yet this did not hinder him from becoming successful. There are also some leaders who ended up in prominent positions despite the fact that they dropped out of school.

Exams to some extent have affected the education system in a negative manner. This is because students and teachers tend to focus on passing exams that gaining and retaining the knowledge to apply it in future. Teachers end up teaching their students with the aim of passing exams and students on the other hand focus on questions and answers. This, in turn, discourages intelligent responses and critical thinking especially when it comes to standardized tests whose answers are limited. Moreover, exams encourage repetition as students need to read over and over just to remember the answers.

Students take too many tests which they do under pressure. This is not a measure of intelligence; it only measures a student's ability to remember under pressure given a limited time. There are some students who fail exams not because they are not smart but due to anxiety which caused them to panic. Exams have been given so much importance to the extent that the thought of not performing as expected causes stress. Failure means not getting into a good college or not getting that job that one has been eyeing. There are many factors that lead to one not passing exams, and they range from emotional state of the student at the time of exam to lack of adequate knowledge.

A lot is learned at school, but only a fraction is tested in exams. It is unfair that what is learned over a whole semester is measured by a test that takes a couple of hours to do. There are many topics that students learn which are not tested in the exams, some of which could have favored a particular student if examined. A failure by that student in that exam does not necessarily mean that that student is not intelligent because had a different topic been tested, then the result would have been different. There is a lot that is not tested in exams that could determine a student's ability.

Instead of using exams as the only measure of students' abilities, institutions should include group activities, written assignments, and class participation. Activities such as presentations should be included in grading. The presentation which is a part of class participation measures a lot in a student; it is through this that a student can portray leadership and public speaking skills. Students should be encouraged to do projects, and they should be graded this encourages creativity and curiosity. Group activities which encourage teamwork can be used as a measure of reliability and resourcefulness. Written assignments like reports and many others could also be included in a student's final score. Participation of students in extracurricular activities if encouraged and graded would also favor those students who are talented in other fields. If all activities are considered, and an average score is given to a student, then that would provide a better measure of abilities.

Apart from school, institutions should encourage students to tackle real-world projects. This will challenge them to improve their creativity and encourage entrepreneurship. In this way, staff helps students discover their interests and talents thus improve on them and even make a career out of them. Provided they give evidence, institutions should find a way to give credit to students who have accomplished things outside of school. Games could also be a way of assessing students. There are many game-like applications which could be used to assess a student's mastery in a certain field and encourage critical thinking.

The aim of education is to produce productive members of the society. Productivity is not only determined by academic excellence but also by the ability to solve real world problems which bring about social and economic stability. It is, therefore, unfair to measure the ability of a student by exams as it is not an accurate measure of intelligence and does not determine success in life.