Testing in Schools: Does it Help?
In this article, I try to present the idea that exams and standardized tests aren’t the only way to assess and understand how learned a student is. I support this claim by giving an example of how a different way of assessment can be just as effective and even more, inspired by Finland, in particular.
It’s important to realize that the current systems of education which are followed in many places around the world provide limited scope of making changes to the existing teaching methodologies. This makes them restrictive, which makes a slow, incremental evolution of the system itself necessary to make way for new strategies in the classroom.
I came across an interesting piece of news from 2015 published in Taipei Times describing the response of students towards standardized tests in Taiwan. I was researching standardized tests and examinations for this article and this was, in my opinion, quite baffling.
Students decorate school corridor with exam papers
A team of art students at Yong Kang Junior High School in Tainan recently wallpapered a corridor on campus using recycled examination papers, a work of public art that they said comments on standardized testing and the education system.
The team questioned the standardized testing system, saying: “Are there standard answers to all the problems in life?”
Pretty cool, huh?
Jokes aside, searching more on the Education system in Taiwan, I found the following facts:
- Taiwan has three levels of education. First is primary education which is compulsory for everyone and spans from Grade 1 to Grade 6. After Grade 6, students ‘graduate’ with a primary school diploma but they are not required to sit for an exam to enter junior high school.
- The second is Junior High school which spans the next three years from Grade 7 to Grade 9. Students have the option to choose between an academic track and a vocational track. While students in the vocational track can continue to senior levels without an examination, students in the academic track are required to pass an exam to get ‘placed’ in a high school. The exam takes two days, and might be one of the most stressful exams in the country owing to its ridiculous difficulty level.
- The third is high school which spans for the next three years, from Grade 10 to Grade 12. Students are prepared for higher education in these grades, and are supposed to choose a specialization in Grade 12. They are supposed to appear for various college entry exams after Grade 12.
Taiwan made reforms somewhere around 2015 to make sure that examinations weren’t the only focus for students in schools. Students are now encouraged to be a part of extra-curricular activities such as non-government organizations and competitions; they are also admitted to universities based on the performance in these activities.
I could draw some similarities to the education system we have in India. While we don’t have a vocational track for studies and we don’t ‘graduate’ from primary schools, the system of examinations for the academic track is quite similar with the difference of the inclusion of extra-curricular activities. We don’t need to do anything apart from studying in high school; we are admitted purely on the basis a joint entrance examination held each year or on the basis of a national examination held in Grade 12. The competition is tremendous and grows year after year.
I have often wondered about the implementation of this ‘extra-curricular activity’ theme for admission to universities around the world. In some countries it’s not a requirement but is recommended; in others, you are expected to do volunteer work or represent a social cause for your application to even be considered. While making social service compulsory for students is a good move, it seems to be enforced rather than something that should be a reason for enthusiasm and a sense of contribution to society among students. Many students take part in social services without realizing how important it is for their development, and schools in several cases do not help students in reaching that realization.
Finland is considered to have the best education system in the world. Hence, I researched their education system.
Among the search results was an article of an interview of the school principal from one of the schools in Espoo. He was asked the following question:
Do these children take a standardized test during the school year?
To which, his reply was quite simple.
Standardized tests are not used in Finland like they are used, say, in the United States. Instead, we follow pupils’ progress with school-made summative and diagnostic assessments in order to find out which children need more help than others to be successful.
Summative assessments are meant to be graded almost everywhere in the world and they are another metric which can decide if a student can move to the next education level or not. But in the case of Finland, students aren’t taught on the basis of the education level they belong to, but rather on the level of learning they are at. You would find students from different age groups sitting in the same class and studying together. As for summative assessments, grades aren’t mandatory to be given to students till the 8th Grade, which eases the pressure of studies and education, further strengthening the system as well.
Finland also follows a variety of methods for assessing students. During peer assessments students provide feedback about other students’ work. A typical class in a training school in Finland has the teacher and the students who are being taught as well as a second teacher who is undergoing his/her training in the class itself. It’s an encouraging idea for the teachers-to-be to involve themselves with the students, gain hands-on experience, and even provide their own assessment methods as suggestions that may be more effective in the classroom.
There are no exams till the age of 16, in contrast to tests which the Taiwanese and students from other countries have to sit for each year, apart from the ‘big’ exams that decide a student’s future.
Students in Finland are not subjected to a fixed curriculum across schools. Finland has curriculum autonomy (schools can have their own curriculum for each level of education) and teachers have classroom autonomy (teachers can make choices from the curriculum regarding what to teach, when to teach and how to teach it). Curriculum autonomy is one of the reasons why standardized testing doesn’t make sense; you can’t implement the same test in each school. Students can grow and learn at their own pace, which seems counterproductive for most countries when we have to think about economy and workforce, but surprisingly, it works for Finland.
Let’s think about testing and examinations for a while. What’s the first thing that comes to mind? Scores. Or in other cases, grades. The sad part about both of these metrics is that they are comparative in nature. If the information of who scored how much scored in a certain exam is available to you, it’s a catalyst for peer pressure that many students face throughout their entire school life. (Countries like Canada do not allow revealing grades of one student to the other, and that is one way of handling this problem.) The need to study is to learn and understand and not chase scores and grades. Which ironically, is exactly what scores and grades make a student do. Or, they isolate the student to the extent that they don’t even try. There’s a sense of competition that develops over a period of time which forces students to adopt the wrong methods of learning. One of them is memorization which is rampant in countries where everything depends on examinations.
A standardized test has something seriously wrong going on with it, which is implied from the name itself: standardized. It’s a single test for everyone. No matter what a student is comfortable with, a standardized test specifies a threshold for students to cross. If they can’t cross it they have to go through the same lessons over again until they are able to cross that threshold. How can one expect the same student to perform better when the method of teaching hasn’t changed and the threshold remains the same? This would mean that his pace of learning has to improve, which cannot be improved with the same teaching methodology.
The system of assessment in Finland is indicative of the following:
- Instead of having a number of tests that filter out students at each level of education, every student can be as successful as everyone else if they are allowed to learn at their own pace. That can be improved over a period of time but with experimentation and adopting new teaching methods.
- You don’t need to have a certain age group learning the same thing together. Students of different ages can learn together as well, which focuses purely on intellectual growth and not growth in terms of age. This also helps in inculcating a sense of respect for people who may not be as learned at a higher age as someone who’s younger.
- A specific curriculum doesn’t necessarily have to be followed. Which means that there can be more flexibility in lesson plans, and students are to be made a priority while deciding what and how much they will be able to learn. Teachers need to be trained in this regard, so an initiative of this nature has to come from the training and educational institutions who prepare teachers for the big stage.
- Students in schools can have some time dedicated to doing their own thing. They need to be taught the importance of serving the society, but the choice is theirs to make. Many students decide to pursue music or art instead of social service, and in my opinion, that is perhaps something they would be better at since it’s something they would be interested in.
I have a question, and it’s fairly simple.
Does testing in schools help in some way?
Isn’t it better to just allow students to learn at their own pace and in their own time, and slowly improve upon that so as to ensure that as many students as possible can succeed? Won’t it be a good incentive as well for students to become more involved in studies and education?
It would be, and we have several conditions that need changes. Many universities have an age limit for undergrad programs, and learning at your own pace needs to be enabled, that needs to change. While universities would want to maintain a young and dynamic environment that also supports their reputation, academic excellence can be improved through this slow but efficient process.
How many students are too many students for a single teacher? That is one question for which we would have statistic after statistic to provide us an ideal number. I do believe though, that more teachers are needed.
In the US, a teacher’s pay is on a declining trend when you consider the amount of education that’s required to become one, which also means that lesser and lesser teachers would be willing to take up teaching as profession. The UK faces a similar situation. A teacher’s pay depends on the amount of funding a school gets to manage its expenses. Which means, that the schools aren’t funded well. That needs to change as well.
As an engineer I also believe that perhaps a huge benefit can be provided to the students if people from the industry collaborate with schools and introduce themselves to students. Not only are they guided to choose specific subjects in senior high school based on what really interests them, but they also get to understand what it feels like to be passionate about something, and how easy or how hard it is to survive in the world. Life skills and soft skills are an important part of a child’s development, and realizing that any exam is perhaps a drop in the ocean in a life full of bigger challenges makes it relatively easier for them to move forward. Specific individuals like artists and musicians from their respective industries can also help students think a little out of the box; to think that they are allowed to think outside of what the book tells them.
Editor’s Note:
Varun mentions many key players in education. He focuses primarily on standardized tests as a way to assess students. Another side of this is that standardized tests are also an assessment tool for teacher performance and schools. The Fraser Report, for example, is an annual report developed for many Canadian provinces that shows the academic rankings of schools. It takes standardized test results into consideration.
When we talk about the concerns we have with standardized testing — how there may be a belief that the test environment allows all students to be judged fairly for example — and advocate change for it, many systems have to be considered. This is not an easy conversation. This is not a straight forward conversation, partly because many people who feel passionate about it might not be in positions to directly affect the change they wish for. Let us continue to ask the hard questions, look for answers in other places and keep these conversations going!
References:
Education in Taiwan
https://wenr.wes.org/2016/06/education-in-taiwan
The Global Search for Education: A Look at a Finnish School
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/c-m-rubin/the-global-search-for-edu_17_b_1066527.html
OPINION: How Finland broke every rule — and created a top school system
http://hechingerreport.org/how-finland-broke-every-rule-and-created-a-top-school-system/
Students decorate school corridor with exam papers
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2015/06/12/2003620530
The Finland Phenomenon: Inside the World’s Most Surprising School System
http://www.thedailyriff.com/articles/the-finland-phenomenon-inside-the-worlds-most-surprising-school-system-588.php
People Think Teachers Are Underpaid — Until You Tell Them How Much Teachers Earn
http://time.com/money/4900091/teachers-average-salary-underpaid-poll/
Teachers’ pay declining, warns OECD
http://www.bbc.com/news/education-41229043
