It is exam time and the stress levels for our students is high. How are you encouraging your geniuses to study at home? Are you adding to the pressure because they must top the class and they have to do better than the rest? This is probably one thing I did not enjoy about Samoa education growing up. Positioning in classes meant there was only one winner, one smart kid and the rest of us are trailing. 

Then for the rest of the academic year and your life, the comparison doesn’t go away, in fact even in adulthood there is comparison. Who has the shiniest Ford Ranger, the biggest house, the never ending loans and for what? So, we can have one up from our neighbour, our friend? What a way to live!

Over the past decade, educators have been moving away from traditional testing, especially multiple choice tests and turning to hands on projects and competency-based assessments, which focus on goals such as critical thinking and mastery rather than rote memorisation (Berwick, 2019). This makes much more sense for some of our students who are hands on, visual learners. I’ve come across many who echo this about their own time as students, who are now parenting children of today. 

“What’s the point of learning so much and yet, we don’t even use most of that information when we go to work?’ It is a legitimate concern. How many of us need to memorise history and geography in our every day work or needing to memorise a chemical periodic table?

Will choosing your interests earlier in primary school help avoid the unnecessary information and help focus? Although, research has found that tests can be valuable tools to help students learn, if designed and administered with format, timing and content in mind. Also a clear purpose to improve student learning. How much information can students remember from the first day of school to mid year exams? How much information can we remember as adults from the last six months of work? How many one line emails can you remember? 

I know, it is a challenge for anyone. One study for eighth graders only remember 10 per cent of the information. More effective tests include brief retrieval testing done shortly after studying. Not all tests are bad. One of the most useful kinds of tests are the least time consuming that I do with my classes. A quick quiz or easy practice test on recently taught content one to six days after teaching.

Exams are stressful and many students do not perform well under pressure not matter how hard they study. Things happen, cars break down, parents fight and environment changes. There are many factors that will lead to failure on the day of exams. So, to be tested on six to twelfth months of content in three hours has many disadvantages. So format and length matters. Timing matters.

Multi choice questions are easy to create but contain misleading information that are either ambiguous or vague. Yes, the “all of the above”, “none of the above” seems pointless to me. It just encourages me to guess the answer and not even trying to understand. Girls are found to be better at open ended questions than multiple choice exams. We do better at explaining and writing about concepts than memorising? Are we better at understanding?

I don’t encourage memorisation in my class but I do encourage comprehension of the material. There is no point in memorising 15 to 20 words if my students do not know what they mean. Understanding concepts has long term use while memorisation is temporary and limited. The challenge for any educator is motivating students to become effective, life long learners.

I’m a Science student who is working more in business today. Science was my favourite subject in school and that’s probably why I passed it with flying colours. We had awesome science teachers who did experiments, practicals, fun things with fire and salt which meant, we were not sitting still in silence "reading with your eyes only" for 45 minutes at a time. Those teachers motivated me to do my best among other factors. We do well when we enjoy something. Forced learning and excessive testing have the opposite effect.

Try testing a five year old on memorising words, letters, phonics for thirty to forty five minutes. Good luck with that. They are much more interested in play time, puzzles, colouring and singing than sitting still and trying to learn those. So, while we enjoy another peaceful Sunday, let us remember that not all students are excellent at exams and not all tests are created equal. We all want smart children but getting the top mark doesn’t necessarily mean success in the future.