Each time end of year exams come around, particularly for year 12s, there seems to be a lot of discussion in the media about the way students are being assessed and if it is right or wrong, and if it’s outdated - at least that’s what I’ve seen from my New South Wales HSC point of view.
It got me thinking, maybe it is? In the real world, when you get assigned a task, it’s not like you get little time to plan and have to have it done in 45 minutes. Well, maybe in some cases, but I feel as though on the majority it’s a lot more time than that. Because of course in an exam, you see the question for the first time then and there and then you’re rushing to finish it because you have other parts to finish also.
I completely understand that having a ‘suprise’ question encourages students to study everything there is on the syllabus, but I also think it favours luck. For instance, my friend who probably won’t begin studying for legal the night before/even morning of, but let’s just say the one topic she does study is the Criminal Trial Process, and she gets to do that pretty in depth because the only LCMIDs that she has to remember are from there. Then, another student may have studied the entire syllabus, creating essays and essay plans for every little bit, meaning of course there’s a whole lot of LCMIDs to remember. Then the essay question comes and it is infact a question about the Criminal Trial Process. Student 1 is able to write an essay full of LCMID, whereas Student 2 struggles to remember those exact LCMID and doesn’t get as much in.
I was even just talking about this yesterday with the two other girls in my Extension 1 English class about how the HSC can just be luck sometimes. Because if the creative writing stimulus was ‘two characters that are significantly connected but never meet’, it would be perfect for my story, but my friend’s narrative would have to basically be re-written or she would have to think of one on the spot. Or, if the stimulus was ‘from the perspective of a prescribed text character’ my friend could easily turn her story into Sylvia Plath’s life, whereas mine, set in East Berlin, would not fit into any prescribed as none are set there.
So how could we examine instead? I’ve been thinking a lot about this but of course everything I come up with has a flaw about it - although, it seems exams can have flaws too. Maybe we could even release the essay questions a day before the exam but keep the multiple choice and short answer hidden, so it encourages people to still study it all and then get to actually put in a good effort for the essay. Though, this does just sound too much like a dream, hey
I know personally at my school, whenever they could give us an exam, they would. I honestly did about 3 assignments in total all year because even one of our assignments was to be given the essay question, memorise our response and then write it in an essay condition - so it didn’t feel too much like an assignment at all. Although, one assignment I LOVED early on in HSC Legal Studies was when we did a mock trial and we were in pairs where one of us was the prosecutor and the other the defendant, and we all got given a case and clues and it was just awesome. Maybe things like that should be weighted more because of course law in the real world, you’ll be doing a whole lot more of that. I’d love to hear other ideas on how to better assess students cause my own have been a bit flimsy
Another thing is that are our subjects also outdated? I think that tertiary education should really be the foundation for HSC subjects, and maybe subjects in other states too, however, I’m not too sure what is offered in others. I say keep the core subjects we have learnt through all our junior years - English, Maths, Science, Histories, Geography etc. and add more University targeted subjects. For instance, Medicine and Communications. Because even though maths and the sciences help with Medicine, and English helps with Communications, how cool would it be to have subjects that actually completely target these fields and give you a taste of what you may wanna do in the future. This could help people decide what they want to pursue, because with no experience in a field it’s hard to tell that you will like it.
There’s flaws in all my ideas, but I think it’s something cool to think about because I presume in the future exams will indeed fizzle out, and some new technological way of examining may take over. Or, I could be completely wrong and written exams stay foreeeeverrrrr.
How would you like to see students be examined? What subjects would you want to see be given as an option for year 11 and 12s? Really keen to hear everyone’s opinions!
Well better stop procrastinating now and start studying for legal
Home
Help
Search
Login
