My thoughts on the Mid-year exams removal

There are quite a few people in my circle asking me what I think of this news here. This news is regarding the planned removal of the mid-year exams for primary 3 and 5, as well as secondary 1 and 3. The intention is to withdraw from the narrow focus on grades so that students can discover the joy of learning. I can put on two hats to analyse this. One is that of a parent and the other is that of a tutor.

As a parent:

1) My first thought is that there will be less feedback on how my child is performing in schools. As a result, I will get more anxious as the whole focus will now be on the final year exams.

2) I will have to spend more time and effort to check if my children really understand what is happening in school. There are no more mid-year exams to alert me to take actions or to remedy the situation.

3) With the removal of the mid-year, will there will more of the less formal assessment and grading? If that's the case, then the stress is not concentrated on 2 major exams, but throughout the school semester.

As a tutor:

1) There are usually more students signing up after major exams. One is in May (mid-year exams) and the other is around Oct (final year exams). With the removal of the mid-year exams, my first thought is that I might have fewer students signing up. Thinking about it a bit more, I think it'll work out to be the same. Now my intake of new students will probably come towards the end of the year.

2) I kind of like it that there are no mid-year exams now because currently, it is one major disruption to teaching. Every time there is a major exam coming, I will have to stop teaching and focus on revision and drilling. That's not teaching. It's super boring for me and super boring for the students as well. With the removal of the mid-year exams, I will probably have to test the student's understanding myself. That might be better and should have a better workflow.

3) Without a reason to study, some students might really slack throughout the year and study seriously only towards the end. With the removal of intermediate assessment, I hope I won't have to face more attitudinal problems when tutoring.

4) Those vendors selling mid-year exams packages either huat because these are now precious resources, or they will lose a lot of revenue because now nobody will be buying them. Somehow, I think it's more likely to be the former than the latter. Each package can cost up to $50, consisting of several top schools and worked solutions. It can be serious money for a one-time effort in compiling.

5) Those tutors who are not so good might end up having less 'grading', since there is no feedback mechanism for the parents to tell if their children had improved, and so neither can they tell if the tutors had helped in their children's grades or not. It might be harder to differentiate between the good tutors and the truly bad ones since it's now an annual assessment of the tutor's prowess in teaching vs semi-annual assessment.