Saturday, 5 March 2011

Final exams or continuous assessment?

The coalition government in the UK wants to ditch continuous assessment and go back to the old system of sitting examinations in the final year of compulsory schooling.
The reasoning behind this is that the government thinks students should not be able to keep retaking modules or submitting endless pieces of continued assessment in order to achieve the best grades in their GCSE exams. Students should have one chance at the exam and that is it.
Many people would agree with this after all, the whole point of exams is that some people get good grades and others fail, isn't it?
Imagine my surprise, then, when I learned (in an article written by himself) that Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education passed his driving test on his SEVENTH attempt.






























Photo www.labour-uncut.co.uk

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

A bit depressing that the Irish education system seems to be heading down the continuous assessment route just as Britain decides terminal exams were a good idea after all. Most teachers have experienced a huge rise in plagiarism in even routine pieces of homework; coursework that counts towards exam results is bedevilled by 'copy and paste', not to mention essays bought online. (I like your blog, by the way.)

Dom said...

Thanks for the comment and for liking my blog. I, too, think that plagiarism is getting worse. I suppose that a final exam is the only answer to the plagiarism problem.

Steve Smith said...

Hi Dom

I am also coming to the conclusion that terminal exams are the answer. If an assessment system is not reliable, it is no good.