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