Exams Are Driving Me Mad

I am posting this out of frustration with my teaching experience at a very good girls' school in the UK, with extremely dedicated and hard-working teachers. It's been amazing to me how much of their energy is devoted to exam-related activities: the list is almost endless. And what the students are to learn is so circumscribed by the huge importance of how they score on the exam. If it's not on the exam, it's almost considered wicked to teach it, wasting minutes that students at other schools are spending practicing, learning exam-answering techniques, studying old exam papers, and memorizing things that are likely to come up.

When I talk to my fellow-teachers here, they agree that exams are troublesome, but they truly seem convinced that they are necessary for fair evaluation of student achievement and selection by universities. Then today I talked to a friend who teaches in Canada ... no external exams, no SAT's. Woohoo. That's what made me think I'd like to start a conversation on this. Please join in and invite others to join us!