As everyone who has finished school knows, the exams at the end are tough, and the weeks coming up to them are a high pressure time for students, who know that the results they get in those exams can have a huge impact on the rest of their lives including how much they will be able to earn, or whether they will be able to get into the college of their choice.

Every year at exam time, the discussion begins over whether a formal examination is the best way of assessing ability, and whether the pressure that children are put under to perform to their best ability is fair to them.  Looking back on our own exams, we probably think that they weren’t as hard as all that, but at the time of taking them, the pressure we were under with so much at stake was not pleasant at all.

The question is of course whether there is a better way of assessing what a child has learned in school than by a formal examination, and it seems that there is not.  Unfortunately all the alternative methods that have been tried over the years, such as constant assessment through coursework have produced results that are just as skewed as the examination themselves.

In a way, the exams also test more than just knowledge, they also examine how well people perform under pressure, and this is perhaps the most important side of them.  Very few people will have use for knowledge of molecular physics during the rest of their life, but they will constantly find themselves under pressure to perform at the right time, and being able to respond to pressure and deliver results is an essential factor for many people.  Exams test the person as much as the knowledge, and for that reason, despite the heartache and pain they inevitably cause, they are probably still the best method of assessing ability available.