There seems to be an increasing trend towards assessing students through exams rather than through continual assessment. What are the advantages and disadvantages of exams as a form of assessment?

In recent years, the approach of using exams to assess students has risen in popularity over the alternative of continual
assessment
.
This
essay will highlight both the benefits and drawbacks th4at result from
such
an approach.
To begin
with the positives, a crucial advantage that examinations have as a form of
assessment
is that they leave little room for cheating.
This
is because exams are usually undertaken in the presence of an invigilator, whose job it is to detect any candidate and breaking the rules.
In contrast
, continual
assessment
increases the risk of plagiarism since assignments are often completed with the help of the internet.
Besides
reducing cheating, exams are
also
more time efficient. As they tend to only appear once or twice per year, they free up more time for students to revise and prepare.
Nevertheless
, assessing students via examinations does present some problems.
For instance
, some students are extremely intelligent and creative, but when put
under pressure their
Suggestion
under pressure, their
minds can go blank. Considering that exams are situations of
intensely
Suggestion
intense
high pressure, it is no wonder that even the brightest of students sometimes perform poorly. Another significant disadvantage of
this
system is the narrow range of information which students are tested on. Unlike with continual
assessment
, the small window of time in tests limits how many questions can be asked,
thus
failing to test students’ knowledge in full. In conclusion,
although
formal examinations are beneficial in terms of cutting out cheating and improving efficiency, it is important to consider that they
also
harm some students’ concentration and arguably not as thorough as continual assessments.
Submitted by zaid.qassem1991 on

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