One of the hottest topics in the school is the current test schedule and its effectiveness. Many students have expressed frustration with the current test schedule. We polled the school asking students what has bothered them about the test schedule, and here are our results:
An overwhelming majority of students feel that the test schedule is unbalanced and that there are often a stretch of days with no tests, followed by a stretch with an overwhelming amount of tests. Not only does this flood students with exams during certain weeks, but it also teaches horrible planning. It is important for students to learn how to properly organize and pace themselves day by day and week by week. However, after going through this test schedule, students start to focus more on cramming material during certain weeks, while having no material to master on other weeks. This mode of learning misguides many students and does not teach proper work ethics. A similar grievance of many is that there are too many tests in certain weeks, which leads to an overload of work as well as insufficient amount of time to study. Granted, it is nearly impossible to plan a perfect test schedule, but there is much to be improved upon with our current schedule.
With these thoughts in mind, we asked students if they still believe that there should be a test schedule. The responses are as follows:
Slightly over half of the students think that there should be a test schedule, while everyone else believes that teachers should assign tests on their own accord. While there are certain benefits of allowing teachers to assign tests as they please, such as only giving tests when there is sufficient material, we cannot overlook the fact that this would probably lead to many conflicts. Plenty of tests will likely be scheduled in the same day or week which could lead to even more problems. Having a test schedule offers many advantages such as allowing a student to check his tests for an entire term and providing a structure to each class while keeping the curriculum moving at a healthy pace. Our polls show that an overwhelming majority of our students find that a test schedule is helpful in giving foresight for exams dates.
Thus, it seems extremely important to maintain a test schedule. However, there has to be much more planning and thought that goes into creating this schedule. There should be a limit to the number of tests that a student may have per week and day, to prevent a ‘pile up’ of exams. This will also force a more consistent schedule that flows smoothly and is much more efficient. Hopefully, our test schedule will only improve with time to help create a better structure for the students and teachers.