Most educational systems make use of examinations and they have become a well-established means of measuring a person’s understanding of a subject. Examinations, it has been argued, may help to identify the most able learners, and the existence of an examination at the end of a course may motivate learners to work hard. However, in recent years, the need for examinations has been brought into question as a result of the pressure they exert on students. In this essay, I examine arguments that support examinations and those that do not. I then go on to consider whether or not examinations should be retained as the main mode of assessing learning. 

A number of education experts have presented evidence to show that the existence of examinations encourages students to take their work seriously. They do this by giving students a concrete goal to aim for and most students appreciate examinations for the way they provide an organizing focus for their studies (see, for example, Feng, 2000: 20). Without examinations schools would almost certainly have far greater numbers of poorly motivated students than is the case at present. In the examination itself students are stimulated by the competitive atmosphere to produce the best work they are capable of, and time pressures simply reflect that in the real world all tasks are tackled under time constraints — often very tight ones. Examinations stimulate hard work and healthy competition, which reflect the realities of the outside world.

However, examinations can affect the psychological state of candidates. Green (2001: 92) has argued that although a little stress is necessary to ensure a good performance, examinations can cause some students severe psychological problems. In fact, students who are relaxed tend to do better than those who are anxious. Carroll (see Green, ibid.) demonstrated this in experiments carried out under examination conditions. Candidates who felt calm and at ease were found to organize their work more logically and express themselves more clearly than nervous candidates.

The next consideration is the measuring function of examinations. Society needs a standardized system of assessment for deciding who will continue on to tertiary education, and who will do particular jobs. Many very important selection procedures rely on examination results. For example, without the objectives measurements offered by examination results employers would find it very difficult to know whom to employ and at which level of responsibility to employ people. University administrators would also have no way of knowing who was suitable to undertake degree-level studies. Examinations also help educational institutions to measure the effectiveness of their own teaching methods. A set of poor examination results will force a school or university to review its syllabuses, teaching methods, and instructional materials.

The validity of examination results has, however, been challenged by Fan (2001: 18) who argues that examinations encourage students to memorize information rather than understand it thoroughly. Examinations may not provide a valid standardized way to compare students’ ability if they only measure what a candidate has memorized rather than understood. If high grades are achieved at the expense of deep learning they are meaningless and cannot be treated as valid by educational institutions, employers or, indeed, the candidates themselves.

A third argument in favour of examinations is that the alternative mode of assessment, continuous assessment by coursework, has serious deficiencies. In continuous assessment students, particularly the weaker ones, get a great deal of help from teachers. This attention pulls them up to a higher overall grade than they may have achieved in an examination. Further, an unfortunate fact associated with continuous assessment is that it has a “levelling” effect — that is, teachers avoid awarding grades at the top and bottom of the scale — with the result that students’ marks cluster around the mean grade. Employment and future study decisions are then made very difficult because students appear to be mostly of the same ability. Examinations, however, have 65 the effect of spreading students more realistically over the full range of possible grades and the results obtained in this way provide employers and universities with much more reliable data on which to base their decisions.

The concerns about continuous assessment have been refuted by Brown (2002: 62), who suggests that assessment by 100% coursework ensures that teachers will cover the full range of topics on the subject syllabuses. Teachers are always very anxious about examination results and feel that their competence is judged, to a large extent, on the results achieved by their students. The consequence of this is that instead of teaching a complete syllabus, teachers often concentrate only on those parts which are directly relevant to examinations. Continuous assessment ensures that all topic areas on the syllabus are given equal attention.

In this essay, I have discussed some of the main arguments for and against the use of examinations as the main mode of assessing learning. Benefits of examinations were explained, for example, their provision of a standardized form of assessing candidates’ suitability for employment or further studies, and their potential to stimulate students to work hard by creating a competitive atmosphere in which they strive to produce the best work they are capable of. I also analyzed some of the main arguments against examinations. Drawbacks include the harmful psychological effects they have on some students, and the claim that examinations encourage memorization rather than understanding of information. I also pointed out that concern about examinations may cause some teachers to limit the topic areas covered in a course.

Evaluating the evidence leads me to conclude that examinations should be retained. They are a reasonably reliable indicator of students’ academic ability and allow employers and educational administrators to base their judgements on objective rather than subjective or impressionistic data. I am not, however, in favour of examinations being the only form of assessment. I would recommend that most courses of study should allot 40% of marks to continuous assessment but the remaining 60% should be reserved for the examination. In this way, a fair balance will be achieved between grades scored throughout a period of study and those earned under examination conditions.