The Value of Examinations In Education

As we hit Term 3, Week 6, our Year 11 have commenced their final exams and in two weeks, our Year 12 will head into their Mock Exams. It is an exciting time in our calendar, where students get to challenge themselves and demonstrate an incredible complexity of thinking. Our teachers eagerly await completed papers, where they too find a great sense of achievement in seeing their students succeed after months of teaching, consistent practice and determination. As educators we take great pride in the resilience of our students and their resolve to challenge themselves in what some may suggest is an outdated measure of student success in today’s educational setting.

But herein lies the truth, grades matter and so do the habits that produce them. Trust me, the best schools build both, on purpose.

There is certainly a wealth of reading material regarding the value of academic exams and education. While some challenge this traditional paradigm in schools, there can be no doubt that academic success is absolutely central to education. Of course, education is not only about academic success. It's also important that students graduate with a secure sense of themselves, a strength of character and a strong moral compass, but still, the right kind of academic success is unequivocally necessary.

Conversations that pit one type of learning against the other are both unnecessary and unhelpful. It seems obvious to me that we cannot neglect the non-exam, intangible qualities of curiosity, love of truth, independence, determination, development of character and conscience, and so on – the skills and qualities we know from our own experience, and so many other sources, that really count after the school years. It is obvious that an education that equips students with decent grades yet without these skills is not an adequate one.

Education is all about the long game and you cannot challenge the importance of a values driven education. However, there is a lot to be said for knowing a great deal of ‘stuff’, and for excelling in exams. They are both needed! When we consider the idea, ‘knowing a lot of stuff,’ there is a lot of nonsense spoken about the changing need to know. This has been brought on by IT - ‘you can Google it’ or 'with AI now there is no longer a premium on knowledge' being reasons for focusing more on skills than traditional disciplinary knowledge. But there are massive differences between things on your phone or laptop and things in your brain. You can actually use the latter much better than the former – that is, knowing and understanding content is actually central to developing the very skills and qualities that the OECD and other national and international bodies say are needed for the modern economy. Let’s be honest we want our professionals, in any area, to know their ‘stuff’ and have the critical skills to use that knowledge in an ethical way.

This brings me back to exams. I have heard it said that exams are ‘old school’ and meaningless in the modern world; that they only give a picture of what someone can do in a compressed timeframe, and so should be replaced by other modes of assessment. There is some truth to this, so complementing exams with other types of assessment is required. But as with any extreme statement, there's always an element of well it depends... If exams were simply sprung on students by surprise, and simply consisted of factual recall, then it would indeed be lamentable. But instead consider exams that are scheduled well in advance, with probing original questions that test understanding and insight, where lessons leading to those exams support increasingly independent student preparation by practicing over an extended period.

Success in exams like this will come for students who genuinely understand, and who have the organization, determination and discipline to prepare well over months. The “it’s all about exams” or “it’s all about skills and qualities” debate is a false choice. Academic success today means knowing a great deal and cultivating the dispositions that make knowledge usable. The capacity to take exams is a central tenet to the development of academic success!

At Somerset we are values driven and believe in a holistic education that includes academics as a critical element. Academics and values do not evolve as separate entities being taught in isolation. So, when it comes to periods of examinations, there is no tension here. We recognise there is a huge convergence, because scholarship is not something dull that only happens in dusty libraries, in silence. It’s what happens when active minds are sufficiently at peace with themselves that they can engage with the world, with ideas, and with other people – when the excitement of making a connection gives a new perspective, and most likely, raises a whole series of questions, thoughts and possibilities. Genuine scholarship leads to wonder, and even awe; and well-constructed exams, used with judgement and alongside other evidence, can validly signal parts of that formation. When we get scholarship right—calm minds, sharp questions, honest effort—exam success follows as a consequence, not the point. That is the education our students deserve, and the one society needs.

Good luck Year 11 and 12 on your current and upcoming exams! A busy time ahead, but equally so an exciting time for which you have been well prepared.