Saturday, April 17, 2010

Independent External Testing

Lots of discussions on the importance of the independent external testing these days - to me, this kind of centralized testing is the only way to 'compare' students across schools. Giving weights to the student's school results has the danger that it gives schools the incentive to give good grades. At the other side, school results are based on the performance over a period of time which means students cannot game the system by just study for a single test.

One thing the external testing has made clear is that there is quite a performance gap between rural and urban schools - in that sense, not using such centralized tests, might have an equalizing effect if university admission committees are foolish enough to take school results at their face value.

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