Why high stakes examinations and learning dont go together

[Music]

here i was

sitting in my very first university

class

i had done all the pre-reading

memorizing name

dates key figures events you name it and

i was ready for the professor to ask me

anything

except that he turned around and said to

me

anya what do you think

i stared back at him blankly

it was in this moment that i had a

crashing realization

that my entire schooling experience up

to then

had prepared me to memorize and to take

tests even effectively

but it had not prepared me to think for

myself

and this reality is certainly not unique

to me

in fact keeping exams and tests at the

center of the teaching and learning

experience is

rampant across pakistan’s education

systems

whether that’s an elite private school

or a government school or a low-cost

private school

unsurprisingly though the implications

are far worse for low-income

students who make up 90 percent of our

school going population

they tend to have parents that are

illiterate they have limited to no

access to the internet to television

to basically opportunities that can help

them develop

alternative ways of learning and

thinking anything that’s

outside of what the classroom offers

them

the world bank describes learning

poverty

as the percentage of 10 year olds that

can’t read

and understand a simple story according

to their

estimates 75 of pakistani children fall

into this category

75 interestingly enough

up to the age of 10 enrollment rates are

the highest in pakistan so that means

the students are actually

in school in fact the students that are

not learning how to read

are not only enrolled but they’re

progressing from one grade to the next

based on their performance on a single

high stakes exam

so then how is it that they don’t learn

how to read

i believe that a fundamental reason for

this ongoing learning crisis

is our approach to assessments and by

that

i mean the way we use exams and tests

as the only way to measure student

learning

before i get into how we can revise and

reform this approach

i want us to take a closer look at the

implications the current assessment

approach has

on key stakeholders of education for the

past 12 years

i have been working within researching

key education stakeholders

including students their parents and

teachers

and i have found that all three of them

share in the struggle

at the hands of our current assessment

approach now let’s take a deeper look

from my interviews with students i have

consistently learned

that what they’re learning in the

classroom is exactly what they need

for the exam in fact when they’re

raising their hands to ask questions

that are diverging from the lesson

they are often reprimanded for doing so

their one job is to be able to take that

exam

and to pass it and it does not matter

how they do it and it

certainly doesn’t matter whether they

understand the content

unsurprisingly this leads to very high

dropout rates in fact

22 million children are out of school in

pakistan

and this number puts us second in line

as having the highest rates of

out-of-school children in the world

next let’s look at parents from my time

with them i have learned that they

define their children’s learning success

by how the child performs on an exam and

this is because

every time they go to school and inquire

about how their child is faring

they’re repeatedly told go and look at

your child’s report card

so now when the child doesn’t perform

well on exams

parents are found to be encouraged to

pull their child out of school

this of course then contributes to the

high dropout rates

last but not least let’s look at

teachers

from my time with them i have

consistently learned that they

feel burdened pressured and even

intimidated by the sheer

volume of syllabi they have to finish

just so that the children can take exams

this assessment culture is so deeply

ingrained

in our collective psyche that a child’s

future prospects and the way we define

and understand their intelligence

all boils down to a single letter grade

or a number grade

do you think it’s fair for us to

evaluate our children this way

i believe we as a society need to

reflect deeply

and re-evaluate and reassess what we

value in education

now let’s turn to what can be done

we need to reform our examination and

testing culture

this is not a new idea and neither is it

novel

but i believe it can be revolutionary in

pakistan’s context

first we need to end high-stakes exams

i’m aware that this may not be a

realistic possibility in our near future

especially given that the majority of

our students take the metric exam

which gives them entry into higher

education as well as employment

but ending high stakes exams needs to be

in our end goal

and one that we work backwards from

so what can we be doing now and on a

continuous basis

i believe that schools can use a blended

assessment approach

by this i mean you combine formative

assessments

for which students receive no grades

with summative assessments

for which students to receive a grade to

produce a weighted average

and by this i simply mean that one

single exam can no longer be used to

determine a child’s ability

to progress to the next grade and

neither can we use

one exam anymore to evaluate and define

a child’s

intelligence this is especially key for

early years

because it can encourage children to

have a healthier relationship with

learning

where their inability to perform well on

a single test

does not determine whether they will

continue with their education

in fact i think if we can prioritize

such a reform

across our primary years of schooling we

can increase the likelihood of our 10

year olds becoming literate

this shift from focusing on a high

stakes single event

it gives students not only the

opportunity to demonstrate their own

learning in a multitude of ways

but in fact they will have to learn on a

continuous basis which is how the real

world works

such an approach also removes the

excessive burden

of the teachers they don’t just have to

finish the syllabi to be able to ensure

that children pass

exams now they have agency and freedom

to prioritize learning

you’ll find that teachers have time to

be able to invest

in creating differentiated lesson plans

and adopting

a variety of methods to assess their

students rather than having to stick to

just

one so how do we bring about this reform

we need to involve the same key

stakeholders in education

students their parents and teachers

in fact many of you or your family or

your friends must be at least one if not

two of these stakeholders yourselves

so now let’s look at students first we

need to involve them in

our process of revising our assessment

approach

after all they’re at the center of

learning we need to ask

them what works for them how do they

best learn

rather than doing things to them focus

groups and interviews with students are

a great starting point

next let’s look at parents we need to

invest

in school-based initiatives and

community-based programs

that can help parents disassociate

learning

from performance on single examinations

we need to position literacy and

well-being is only possible through

healthy learning environments that are

not tied to single units of measurement

last but not least teachers we need to

take a long look

at our current curriculum as well as our

upcoming single national curriculum

and ask do the lesson plans embed

formative assessments

do we prioritize activity-based and

project-based learning

and simultaneously we also need to

invest in teacher professional

development

so that they can be upskilled on the use

of formative assessments

and also so we can enable them to shift

their mindsets

about the value of learning coming

through an exam only

the way we center our entire teaching

and learning

experiences on deaths and exams

currently is just not working

with covet 19 and school closures the

world bank now estimates

that the percentage of 10 year old in

pakistan who will be unable to read

and understand a simple story will only

increase

from 75 percent to almost 80 percent

and what’s more they’re also projecting

that almost 1 million students will drop

out of school

many of whom are not convinced of the

value of being

enrolled because they’re not learning

how to read or write and the millions

that have gone back already

would struggle to keep up trying to make

up for the gap in their learning so that

they can pass exams to enable schools

governments and international

organizations to reform their thinking

on assessments

and re-imagine what they value in

education

my co-founder and i began the maple

advisory group

where we believe that all children can

learn if we create enabling environments

for them to do so

we at the maple advisory group believe

that millions of ten-year-olds in

pakistan can learn how to read and

understand and think for themselves

but only if we take a long and hard look

at what we

value in education is it the student’s

ability to perform

on a death that they’re taught to take

or is it their ability to think for

themselves

a skill that is required to not only

survive but

thrive in today’s globalizing world

so what do you think

thank you

[Music]

you