Test and examinations are a central feature of school system in many countries. Do you think educational benefits of testing outweigh any disadvantages?

The field of education has long struggled with coming up with a way to measure the aptitude of

students

and how much

knowledge

have they gained. Tests and written

exams

became the global standard to do so. I believe that examinations do more good than harm as they are a great way of measuring

knowledge

, especially if those

exams

are well-structured.

First

, testing is as old as education itself.

For example

, the Imperial Court of Ancient China used examinations to assess potential court officials, and written tests were known to Europeans as far back as the 16th century.

This

long history shows that a large proportion of educators believe in

exams

as a powerful way of measuring student

knowledge

.

Further

, companies have adapted examinations for use in screening their potential employees.

However

, many

students

complain that

exams

are a major source of stress because they have to sit through a lot of thorough

exams

over a short amount of time towards the end of the school semester.

In addition

to

this

, rigidly structured or formulaic

exams

can fail to properly judge some

students

' skills, especially if the subject matter is open to interpretation

such

as language or music. In conclusion,

exams

remain a key fixture of the educational process despite their flaws. In my view, I think that testing remains very useful as an educational tool,

although

more thought should be given to making sure that tests are thoughtfully structured to best judge

students

' learned

knowledge

.