Hi guys, I am currently in my final year of Sixth Form and I am beginning to think that exams are extremely detrimental to our education.
Personally, I have always seemed it strange that across the country students spend time going over resources that should not even be accessible, such as examiner's reports, mark schemes and past papers. Even more worrying are the teachers who teach only how to get full marks on a question, leaving no time for topics that interest the class or which provoke genuine thought in the subject. In one case, I have had a teacher say "well, oscilloscopes (a whole unit in Physics) are unlikely to come up, so we won't bother going over that". I still don't know the use of various settings on an oscilloscope.
When a teacher places the mark scheme for a question on the board I cannot help thinking that neither we nor our teachers trust exams to assess us on our ability in a subject, and so we must instead learn how to prove that we are able in the subject - ultimately proving nothing.
I believe exams should be either replaced or have reduced importance to the overall grade of a student, in favour of individual and group projects, research and class work. There is hardly any creativity or enthusiasm left in our school, which I believe must be addressed. Going in to Sixth Form I was excited to explore the subjects I enjoy in greater depth, and for this deeper understanding to enable me to investigate areas that interest me. In reality, it has turned out to be an uninspired, formulaic extension of GCSEs, with a heap of content explained only to the point that we can answer exam questions on it. I have been left to form the majority of deep understanding (for Maths and Physics) by deriving it myself with the Feynman technique, which should not be necessary in a good education system.
I would love to hear your opinions on this topic :P