UK poll findings show no readiness

More than half of the 633 lecturers polled said students did not possess the writing or critical thinking skills needed for their degree courses. Three-fifths of the respondents said their universities offered catch-up classes for fresh students.

A poll by UK lecturers at the Cambridge University’s exams board in April 2012, found that many A-level candidates are not adequately prepared for university.

More than half of the 633 lecturers polled said students did not possess the writing or critical thinking skills needed for their degree courses. Three-fifths of the respondents said their universities offered catch-up classes for fresh students.

The UK experience suggests that the debate about exams getting easier goes on even more intensely far away from Uganda’s borders.
But then, does it even matter whether examinations are easier?
Daniel Hemmens, a blogger, doesn’t think so: “The job of exams is not to be hard, it is not to be easy, it is most certainly not to provide the top five per cent of students with a flashy qualification they can use to get into Oxford. The job of exams is to test learning and produce adequate differentiation across the full range of candidates.”

He adds: “This, among other things, is why we need what that charming individual called ‘Exams for Thick People’.

The job of an exam is not to let clever people show off, it is to actually assess people, and that means differentiating between D and E grade candidates just as much as it means differentiating between A and B grade candidates.

Complaining that exams are getting easier is just a socially acceptable way of complaining that we’re no longer restricting education to a privileged elite.”

It seems, then, that Hemmens, Prof. Kakonge, Mr Nyende and Dore agree on one thing; exams, whether easy or difficult, should aim to prepare students to improve the world, lest the Diploma Disease worsens.