Do you think examinations do more harm than good or vice versa ?

It all depends on the purpose of the examinations, though. In my country we have a sylibus which every student must follow during their early education years. Kids start schooling in the age of 7, attending primary school which is called Standard one - Standard Six. They finish primary education after completing the sixth grade, and then they will continue to secondary school. The same sylibus will be followed until students reach Form 5 in the secondary school. Then they have the option either to continue to Form 6 which is called High School or attend to college or university to obtain a Diploma or Degree in their own choice. During the early education years, I regret because the government have missed the most crucial part of education which is the social skills. They only stressed out more on the writing and reading skills, and memory skills. Exams are done for the purpose of getting a paper qualification. I strongly believe if the government taught us survival and social skills hand in hand, a lot of benefits can be gained.

Hello youtme, I think that it is important to have exsams, because it is all for the betterment for you. Exsams are simply used to determine if you really, understood all that was taught to you, and it gives a chance to brush up on your weak areas.

I think that it's generally accepted that testing of some sort is essential to the learning process, which, if it is to have any structure, must have goals and milestones. Unfortunately, often not enough is done to involve and engage the student in these goals: they tend to be seen as things imposed rather than as being owned by the student. As a result, tests and exams become an unwelcome chore to be passed for their own sake and as goals in themselves, which they should not be. The goal is to achieve a certain standard and the examination is merely one way of measuring that the standard has been achieved satisfactorily. Education is, properly speaking, the process of training the mind to handle information effectively. Of course, one cannot do this without giving it information to handle and some of this information must be stored (that is, facts and concepts must be learned). It is a pity, therefore, that so many examinations concentrate on testing the information learned rather than on proving that the student is able to source and process information in an efficient and intelligent way. I believe that the majority of teachers do appreciate this and that education and the learning process now put much more emphasis on involving the student to start with than they used to do. This is certainly true in the UK and the US but, I believe, much less true in many other countries where educational thought appears to cling to older and more brutal methods and examinations are still seen as tests of acquired knowledge and passing them at all costs is the main goal.

I never say that examinations should be completely banned for ever. They are quite good for our improvement in studies. Actually that's what is the major purpose of conducting examinations. But what we experience today is the misuse of examinations. Institutions are conducting too many examinations in a very short period of time. They think that conducting exams in this way, might improve the students in their studies. But it causes a reverse effect on students. Too many examinations actually hamper the interest of students to study because they are not getting enough time to get updated with their subjects. So what I want to tell is Examinations must be conducted in a proper manner by providing enough time gap between each series of examinations so that students can take it seriously and can improve their studies better.

I think examinations are really methods to judge a person from some points, in some countries examinations really make people feel bored and tough ,because they didnt make full use of the real purpose of examinations . all things have two sides ,maybe negative ,or passive ,it depends on what you really think about it .

Hi, I think it is a relative fair method to select excellent students through exams. In my country, there are many students want to go further study every year. For the poor family, their children have the chances to contiune their study through exams. I don't known the better way to select the outstanding students except through exams. This is a comparative society, exam is the better way than others. The results of exams may be the best compellent evidence.