formal ritual

One of the first things that should go, of course, is the formal ritual with which final examinations are surrounded. There is no reason why students should not sit their examinations under the same conditions as any other test, supervised by their own lecturers or tutors instead of by old women of doubtful intelligence. There is no need for elaborate time-tables, secrecy about rooms and questions, pink booklets and code numbers. There is no need for any of this — unless we make such a fetish of final examinations that every student can be automatically expected to cheat.

But this pointless ritual, which only aggravates the student's natural anxiety, will probably be the last thing to go: since we are always more willing to rob our institutions of their substance than to dismantel them. Already some departments have begun to assign a specific proportion of the final mark on the basis of the year's work, but the examination papers remain virtually the same. The paraphernalia of examinations will probably remain as a symbol of the inglorious, irrational past, until some far-sighted Vice-Chancellor wakes up to the fact that it wastes time and costs money.

Much of the hard work which examinations involve for the staff could be eliminated very simply, if adequate evaluation of the students could be made during the year. One lecturer at the Christchurch Teachers' College confronts his class at the end of the third term and posts a list of final grades for all his students. Only those who are dissatisfied with the marks assigned to them need sit the final examination. This lecturer — obviously rather more astute than most — usually marks only two or three finals papers every year. The experiences of other teachers prove that much the same could be done at Victoria. I was told by one professor, for example, that it seemed a little pointless to "average out" essay marks with finals marks in one class since they were exactly the same in all cases. This suggests that he need not have marked any of the examinations at all.

Such changes as I have been advocating would do much to improve the evaluation progress at Victoria. It should be clear, however, that the defects of the examination system do not account for all the wastage of talent at the university; consequently, reforming the assessment procedure will not halt this wastage overnight. In broad terms, each university needs its own educational research committee, attached to the administration, to carry out a continuous analysis of the whole of university life.

Such a committee would include at least one expert on educational evaluation, who would be able to advise departments on the construction of tests and examinations. The committee would need, however. a much broader mandate, since the examination system is only one of several factors which influence the failure rate (albeit one of the most important). It would need, for example, to look at the differences between the university and the schools which supply it. These differences — in terms of impersonality. indifference, and occasional hostility of lecturers, the system of note-taking, the anonymity of students and staff, the immensely increased probability of failing — are sufficient to disorient even the best student for months. Considering all these factors, Noel Harrison writes.

"any protestations of concern by the university over the failure rate among first-year students are difficult to understand. The university decides its own failure rate. Why then should there be surprises when this policy leads to the inevitable failure of so many students?"

We know that many factors make it very difficult for students to match up to the standards which the university sets, and they will no doubt continue to have this difficulty. But when these standards are themselves unknown, erratic, or merely capricious, the difficulty becomes an impossibility.

I should like to conclude by referring to two arguments which are often used to oppose reform: (1) that staff shortages prevent any improvements in teaching methods or evaluation; and (2) that any change in assessment procedures or pass rates would lower the standard.