Examinations And High Stakes Decision Making In The Era Of COVID-19

For many of us, our progress through school was punctuated by a series of high-stakes examinations that determined whether we would move to the next grade level, graduate from secondary school, or enter university. In my case, it was the Leaving Certificate examinations in Ireland which determined whether I would graduate from secondary school and which university course I could take. It never occurred to me at the time that there might be other, equally valid or better, ways of making these high-stakes decisions about my future. 

Over the last few months, however, as coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic forced the closure of over 90 percent of the world’s schools and required the imposition of strict social distancing measures, ministries of education everywhere had to rethink how to make these kinds of high stakes decisions about their students’ futures, including the extent to which examinations could be retained as part of the decision-making process…………………………………………………