We talk to experts on the effectiveness of formal assessment
It’s no secret that economically developed Asian countries are pretty keen on school exams. From Hong Kong and Singapore to South Korea and Japan, the pressure on students to succeed academically is buttressed by a strict regime of formal exams, the results of which play a large part in determining their futures.
Singapore, however, announced in 2019 that it is getting rid of all exams for primary 1 and 2 students and mid-term exams for primary 3 and 5 students, and in the third year of secondary school.
Announcing the changes, the education minister, Ong Ye Kung, identified four trade-offs in any educational system: between hard work and student enjoyment; between useful academic differentiation and an overcompetitive culture; between customisation to cater for a range of abilities and stigmatisation of the less academically able; and between skills and paper qualifications.
The problem is a culture where the grade is valued more highly than learning.
In common with plenty of educationalists around the world, the Singaporean government appears to believe that putting too much emphasis on exam results can be counterproductive. The most visible problem is the amount of pressure piled onto students, but there’s also the bigger question of whether exams are an effective way of learning or of assessing students in the first place.
They only test a limited range of skills—a particular problem with the job market rapidly changing in the era of disruption, automation and AI—and, as professor David Carless of the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong puts it, “The danger is that students will memorise some stuff because they have an exam and then a week later forget it all.”