On the purpose of exams

On the latest furore over exam testing in Singapore (3 ‘exceptionally difficult’ 2019 PSLE math questions circulate online after students left in tears):

Ian Chung:

"My brief take on this:

If we accept that exams need to serve the dual functions of allowing students to demonstrate mastery and allowing the tester to have a sorting mechanism, then a good exam needs to have these sorts of questions.

Will 3 questions make a huge difference to a student's score? I doubt it. If they did, that would actually be a poorly designed testing instrument. Can 3 questions make a huge difference to a student's confidence? I have no doubt about it.

However, that raises the question of how we have trained our students to think about exams and testing in general. If you get stuck on 3 questions at the expense of completing the rest of the paper, that is clearly poor exam-taking technique. If your confidence is damaged after one exam, then what about the rest of the hard knocks down the road of life?

If the argument is that we shouldn't strike our kids down at this early stage, then what exactly do we want as a society? We've already done away with exams at P1 and P2. Maybe we should bring them back instead, and include such pattern recognition questions from an earlier age? The alternative is a race to the lowest common denominator, where your testing instruments no longer serve the differentiation purpose, and exist solely to affirm prior learning.

This sounds great, except...testing is embedded at all levels of education as a form of quality control (even PhD candidates need to defend their work!), and it shouldn't be just to show that you have learnt something; it should also encompass the ability to apply and extrapolate from that acquired knowledge.

On a more pragmatic, Singaporean note, how will we sort our kids into secondary school without this kind of testing? Are parents really going to accept a system where there is no longer any form of sorting mechanism at work?

So when we complain about such questions, are some of us really saying "This is unfair because it damages my kid's prospects of getting into [insert school of choice]"?"