HSC Maharashtra Board

There are two ways of looking at this question.

Points in favour of abolishing them:-

� *The approach of present examination systems means the beginning of fear, tension, anxiety and stress in the minds of the students under which if a student doesn't performs according to his/her parents expectations may lead to students even taking the extreme step of ending their life by doing suicide.

� *Some people also think that exams are not a reliable test of gauging the ability of the students as luck plays a major role.

� *Present examination system encourage cramming, unnecessary expenditure on help-books and also encourage private tuition which has resulted in mushrooming of a large number of tuition shops in every city and even small towns by inexperienced persons.

� *The present examination system doesn't specify the exact criteria for how the marks are given to students.

(No one can deny that external factors can sometimes influence the distribution of marks-- like whether the teacher was in an angry mood over something in his/her personal life, or whether the teacher was upset with the class and giving a test to punish them.

� *The pressure of performing well is so much that if the student has not studied up to the required standards, he/she even sometimes uses unfair means in the examination hall to copy from a near sitting intelligent student and get good marks.

Others have also said:

School examinations should be abolished because:

• It is impossible to test every aspect of a subject within the short exam time, if a student is lucky and what he studied for is tested, he will score higher.
• they don't properly assess people's grasp of the subject. You can get higher/lower marks than you deserve.
• It is impossible to set the questions at the same difficulty every year, if it is easier, he will score higher.
• It is possible to study the tested subjects for the exam then forget everything and yet score high marks.
• Some cheaters go undetected and score high marks.
• Huge (unnecessary) emotional burden, provides stress etc.

Better alternatives include:

• put more emphasis on research work
• Less stress
• Instead of cramming info into students' heads, encourage self-learning + make students better at research skills, these abilities are useful forever and best learnt when young.

But those in favour of school examinations say they serve a useful purpose. Thus, they should not be abolished because:

• Exams make people better at the subject
• content tested in exams are random, so people study everything
• since it affects grades, people study harder
• there is competition, people study harder
• They help the teacher to know what material the students have not mastered and need to study further
• They give people important practice in dealing with stress, which can help later on with life's challenges.
• The examination system has its own benefits. It's like a self-test to see where we are and how good we fare in something that we do. The purpose of exam has always been a test to let us, human beings, to know our limits and our standards.
• Frankly speaking, who can put his/her hand on their heart and say that they would have learned the lessons regarding different subjects themselves if the present examination system were not there and didn't made the students to learn and understand the topics dealing with different subjects to perform at the end of the year. The ANSWER would be No, They wouldn't have.

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