Hi there. In this education post, I would like to cover the topics of cancelled exams.
The motivation behind this post was from this Youtube video in the Toronto local news. Future physiotherapy practitioners are held back from getting into clinics for work as their clinical exams are cancelled. After a little bit more Youtube research there are other places where exams have been cancelled.
No Exams, Not Knowing Your Skill Level
With me personally, I am not a big supporter of exams. Exams measure mostly how well someone is good at taking tests. Some exams are designed a bit better that aim to measure communication skills, writing skills, problem solving skills and so on. I view exam results as somewhat informative and become not so important after three months onwards.
Not having exams is worse as there is no measure on the student's retention and understanding of learned material. Students who have classes with no exams just learn things and then forget them. The learning and forgetting it after is not good in subjects where topics build from previous lessons such as languages, science, grammar, mathematics and computer science.
I once had a student in my online Mathnasium work who had no exams in his grade 9 math. He got passed into grade 10 math. As there is no pressure for him, he got complacent and lazy in the Mathnasium lessons thinking that his math is okay. His algebra skills were not great, maybe not even passable at the grade 9 level.
These two Youtube videos below are additional examples are exams being cancelled:
Education & Careers On Hold
Having your life on hold and in control in the hands of someone else or a group of people is not a good feeling. For those physiotherapy graduates they are not able to obtain their licenses and work when their exams are cancelled. Any time that is lost is also lost wages that could have been earned with the time for work.
Those who are recent graduates in these times with lockdown measures and working from home enter a labour market with limited opportunities. Many small businesses are shut down or operate at less than full capacity. Available jobs are either online jobs or positions from large corporations where it is an employer's market where there are more job candidates than job seekers. It is the labour market version of musical chairs.
Homeschooling Option
In this past, I did not think too much about homeschooling. I heard about it once from a fellow karate practitioner who had his son in homeschooling. With some of the teachings in school becoming watered down, politicized and/or unfocused, I can see why some prefer to do homeschooling instead of traditional tax-funded schooling.
If parents perceive the quality of public education to be low or even useless, homeschooling can be a desirable option. The "I can do it better" mentality is a main motivator I would assume for homeschooling parents. You can combine homeschooling with private tutors and extracurricular activities for social interaction with others for the child.
