Session Information
09 SES 14 A, Research And Practice On A-Level Examinations – A European Perspective On Student Assessment through High-Stakes Testing
Symposium
Contribution
Upper secondary exit exams bridge the gap between school and university, acting as a tool of assessment for the first and as a gate-keeper for the second (Noah & Eckstein, 1992). Exit exams are seen to improve student performance (Bishop 1998; Jürges, Schneider & Büchel, 2003), but can increased exam choice undermine this by directing students’ choices at school? In Finland, recent reforms increasing students’ choice in the specific exams they take have led to high-achieving students competing against each other in the more demanding subjects while their less able peers share the same distribution of grades in the less demanding subjects. This has led students to strategic exam-planning, which in turn affects their study choices at school, often to the detriment of the more demanding subjects and, subsequently, to students’ later career opportunities. The present paper focuses on the relations between students’ exam choices and their course selection and achievement during the three years of upper secondary school. The data is from 50 schools (approximately 4000 students), sampled from the full 2006–2009 data of 131 000 matriculating students which disclosed the first results regarding the lacking comparability of exam grades as possibly guiding students’ exam choices.
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