Last week the writer and broadcaster Simon Jenkins wrote an opinion piece in The Guardian under the title, ‘If we can do without GCSEs and university exams now, why go back?’ While many Indian students were just about able to finish their March 2020 board exams before the global Covid-19 lockdown began, almost everyone around the world sitting May or June exams, or studying at a school offering a curriculum assessed using an international exam board, was left with school closures and their final exams cancelled… my son included. While some students were initially happy that ‘vacations’ began early, the euphoria ended quickly as online learning became a new normal, especially for independent schools, with children as young as 5 receiving online classes via Google Meet or Zoom.
While most classes will eventually bounce back to whatever we define as normal again, the reality for the Class of 2020 has been very different from what they imagined for the final months of their high school experience… and where has this left them as far as their university places are concerned? Well, for most of them it hasn’t made much of a difference; they have their predicted grades based on what teachers know of them, they have their offers from the college applications they submitted before the Covid-19 crisis hit and they have now (last weekend in our house) graduated online. The biggest decision is whether to defer the start of their course or not and what to do with their time that will add value to their CV if they choose to wait for the next round of ‘freshers’ weeks’ (what is it we go to university for, after all?).
IS EDUCATION ONLY ABOUT MARKS?
Jenkins makes the point that for most courses and for most people, taking an examination in a large hall is a throwback to a time when this was the only way to assess a group of people to check whether they had remembered what they were supposed to know. He goes on to say that some subjects, mathematics being the example given, have changed so much with the advent of computing that we are dumbing it down in school by unnecessarily limiting possibilities, failing our students and our society, by teaching out-dated problems so as to keep exams and classrooms computer free. This sentiment has made it into mainstream Bollywood cinema with 3 Idiots (2009) questioning the idea of rote-learning to securing high marks vs. application of theories in real life. Only a few countries offer a maths curriculum in which the power of calculators capable of solving differential equations can be utilised, which allows a far more imaginative and relevant applied mathematical education to be delivered.
Some of the most interesting courses I’ve seen over the years have been offered in schools that were free from the shackles of national examination boards. In accredited schools offering a high school diploma, teachers are free to write and assess their own units. Once foundation courses in English have been covered, imagine having the choice of courses as current and urgent as Science Fiction’s view of the Future or Modern Day Love in Literature. The assessment of these courses is conducted through the evaluation of a portfolio of research, reflection and writing that can be both individual and collaborative; this develops skills far more closely resembling those we need for the work we do in our day-to-day jobs.
Some of the most creative student work I’ve seen was made in studios that belonged to NGOs like the Agastya Foundation in Bangalore and after-school programmes that have been put on to supplement what little real art and design is being taught in schools. Unfortunately, most school art, pottery and design studios are filled with the work of the very talented assistants that schools hire to help run the activities that students participate in… sometimes by doing and sometimes by watching.
WHAT ARE EXAMS FOR?
I’m a great fan of formative assessment… teachers giving feedback that causes learning, but I have to confess that I’m not a great fan of the way that we assess students in state, national and international exams. I’m certainly not a fan of the way that I have seen some of these examinations being managed or conducted; a consequence of the way they are supervised using teachers from other schools, of their high stakes nature and of the often rote-learned content that is there for its own sake.
There are many inspiring success stories of people who moved away from conventional learning to achieve great things. While some parents are able to consider other alternative teaching methodologies such as Waldorf or Free Schools like Mirambika, many mainstream schools will not be in the position to abandon the exams that eat into so much valuable teaching and learning time. Many parents will also not be prepared to see their child go without the brand of exam board that they have bought into, but I bet that the Class of 2020 is going to do just fine. As they move through their university and early careers I am sure that we will see that not having done exams did them no harm at all. Just as when we reflect honestly on our own performance at school, that the grades we got in our exams were not the best predictor of what was to come… something that many recruiters have known for years.
As we return to school in the weeks and months to come, some of the learning from this crisis will, no doubt, serve us well in the future. It’s also the case that we will be asking ourselves whether we need to go back to doing everything the way it was done last year; we have a remarkable opportunity to change and do things that we have always wanted to try!
