The purpose of the school is to facilitate learning and impart knowledge. In May and June, however, the main focus is on sorting. Each student must end up with the fairest grade average possible. Why then do we continue with the lottery for the exam? If you now think that we have to have exams to scare students into working, then we have just had two years without exams which proves that this is not the case. Without exams, we had more time to teach the curriculum and were able to make use of the whole school year. My experience is that we had learning pressure for much longer in the school year than we have ever achieved with exams. When all the syllabus has to be reviewed and repeated before the exam, the time after the exam completely loses motivation. Without exams, we could test students right up until the last week before the summer holidays. The exam is a great injustice In mid-May the students at VG1 found out who sat for the exam this year. 20 percent of the students passed an exam, while the remaining 80 percent cheered with joy. Some came up in a subject in which they are strong and will get another strong grade on the diploma which strengthens the grade point average. For others, the exact opposite happens. I have students who I know have the knowledge and skills required, but who severely underperform in assessment situations. It is difficult to defend this injustice to the students. One reason for holding examinations in secondary school and upper secondary school is to ensure equal grade levels from school to school. To be sure that the teachers give the correct grade, we force the students to pass the exam. It is not fair to torture students to test the teachers. Test the teachers and let the pupils skip the exam It should be possible to create a system where each teacher was sent an assessment situation in each of their teaching subjects annually. It can be a written test that some students have completed, an oral assessment situation such as a lecture that has been filmed or perhaps a practical situation from a subject discussion or an experiment that has been carried out. We then ask the teachers to assess these individually and report their grading to the Directorate of Education, with a numerical grade and written justification. With an overview of the grading, on the same task from all subject teachers in the country, each teacher can receive feedback from the directorate on how the assessment matches the rest of the country. In addition, it would have made sense for the Directorate of Education to have an expert group that arrived at a recommended grade level. Now the teachers get an annual correction to their grading, without the students having to go through a scary and unfair exam that potentially changes their future opportunities. More effective than exams All teachers will quickly get an overview of where they stand in relation to the rest of the subject teachers within the same subject. It will probably also lead to good professional discussions locally at each school. A joint assessment task would also lay the foundation for a meaningful dialogue at national level. Engaged teachers can discuss the quality of the assessment that was given and the grade level at which it was graded. In this way, we will be able to achieve a joint quality improvement of assessments in general. The annual newspaper articles about students who complained about a failing grade in an exam and got a six on the complaint will hopefully be fewer. Such a way of ensuring the quality of teachers’ grading will also lead to good and creative assessment methods being effectively spread throughout the country. In this way, the system will contribute to the further development of the Norwegian school. Experienced teachers will contribute their practical knowledge, while recent graduates can model the new research-based assessment ideas they recently learned at university. My experience is that this assessment creates a lot of uncertainty among new teachers. Such a “stamp of approval” from Udir will be able to reassure many teachers about their own grade assessments and stand more firmly in the guidance of their own students. The discussion we have had this autumn, whether there has been a dilution of the strongest grades, could be substantiated/disproved with data. In the best case, it would have been avoided. Hopefully, it would also contribute to greater transparency and transparency in the assessment processes in the school. I even think it will be cheaper for taxpayers than conducting exams with invigilators and examiners. Why don’t we have such a system? All politicians have completed their primary and secondary school exams. The vast majority of voters have also completed exams at these levels. If the tradition had been to conduct an exam for 50-year-olds to see if schooling has an effect in the long term, then the exam would have been abolished a long time ago. Maybe we have it to train students for university exams? In that case, it is almost impossible to “train” all students from the 10th grade. Subjecting 15-year-olds to stress that 20-year-olds are supposed to handle is just mean. Is there hope? An NOU on assessment is now being worked on. I hope the committee has the courage to come up with new arrangements and new ways of thinking about grading. The exam is not a necessity, and other methods are not only possible, but preferable.
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Cut the exam at upper secondary school – Speech
