Some people believe that exams are an inappropriate way of measuring students performance and should be replaced by continuous assessment.Do you agree or disagree with this view
Though, exams have been the most acceptable and proper means of assessing students’ productivity some are convinced that it should be replaced by continuous assessment as a better means of evaluating students’ performance. Personally, I disagree with such views. Despite both being crucial in students’ assessment, exams have proven to be more efficient in doing so due to a lot of reasons.
Firstly, judging from the students’ point of view and probably due to the academic system adopted by schools in recent years, students’ tend to be scared of exams more than continuous assessment and this therefore makes them to be more serious in terms of preparation for such exams. Statistics previously conducted on this accord shows that students are psychologically driven to be more cautious of passing their exams than their continuous assessment. For this reason alone giving less preference to exams and more to continuous assessment negatively affect students.
Secondly, judging from the schools’ point of view and their academic system adopted, most schools invest more in planning for exams than continuous assessment with some of these investment including in-depth knowledge, time, huge capital, large workforce amongst many others. These huge inputs makes them take it more seriously and strive to achieve excellence which in turn increases its credibility in terms of evaluating academic performance of its students.
Another reason why exams should be preferable is its ability to test the student multitasking skills. Exams tends to cover all a student has been taught from the beginning of a semester or session depending on the school academic system to its end giving room for testing the student on a wide variety of topics which in turn increases his/her academic quality.
Although some may say it depends on the students in question, I feel employing continuous assessment as a means of judging student capabilities will adversely affect the student eagerness and willingness to tasks his/her brain as statistics show a lot of people are capable of quality outcome while under pressure.