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By Chiang Chen-ping 蔣辰平
A number of local governments have been promoting elementary-school testing in recent years, ostensibly to better understand students’ learning needs and provide reference points for teachers and education policy planning.
In practice, the testing system has diverged from this original intent to become more and more like an elementary-school version of high-school exams.
Students and teachers are shouldering heavy workloads and elementary education is losing sight of its real purpose: learning.
When there is an overemphasis on academic testing and grades-based school performance evaluations and administrative review processes, classrooms can slip into a default mode of teaching to test.
Many schools have begun prioritizing test-based study, laden with mock exams and practice questions from previous tests.
Teachers are expected to improve scores, while students must face continuous assessment.
What these classrooms should be emphasizing, meanwhile, is understanding and inquiry-based learning.
Elementary school is a critical stage for cultivating students’ foundational skills and interest in learning.
These shifts are causing students to compare themselves and face exam pressures at an increasingly early age.
Some students develop anxiety over repeated testing and might even lose their confidence in learning altogether.
When learning becomes solely about grades, the focus of education is distorted.
Exam-oriented education reduces the professional role of teachers to score-boosting.
Student performance is influenced by a multitude of factors, including family backgrounds, learning differences and individual needs.
If teaching is evaluated by only pen-and-paper tests, it would be unfair and completely disregard the complexity of education.
When teachers are forced to focus on scores, their flexibility and space for innovation is limited, undermining the quality of education in the long term.
Another concern is the administrative burden that comes with academic testing.
The process of grading, holding review meetings and formulating remedial programs put further demands on teachers’ time.
They become busier and students more exhausted, while educational quality does not necessarily improve, but becomes trapped in a vicious cycle of exam-induced business.
Testing systems should serve as a diagnostic tool to understand learning needs and provide support.
When they become a mechanism for rankings and performance reviews, something has gone awry.
A single pen-and-paper test cannot capture students’ communication skills, collaboration abilities and creativity.
Given too much weight, they can misguide the direction of education.
Elementary-school education should not be a competition over scores, but about nourishing children’s willingness and ability to learn.
Education policy should listen more closely to frontline voices, reexamine implementation and prevent testing from overriding teaching so that schools can return to the essential goal of education — helping children to be better not at test taking, but at learning.
Chiang Chen-ping is an elementary-school teacher.
Translated by Gilda Knox Streader
