I am quite sure that many of the primary one students in schools before such a program changed the system have encountered the ultimate challenge in life: Stress. Perhaps it is not only these students giving themselves this stress. Has anyone actually stopped to think that there are also other factors that lead to these young children feeling the stress of the exams?
A common factor in creating such stress for the primary one students is their parents. Most of the parents that enter their child into the school for the first time are not sure of what to expect at the end of the year. Difficult questions for their children in the test? Easy questions that they can breeze through? Due to these doubts that parents have about what to expect for their child, they "force" their children to study for hours and hours "just in case". Forcing them to study so much is probably to make sure that they would definitely ace their exams with ease and hence would not have to worry so much about their exams, resulting in lesser stress. However, did any of these parents actually stop to ponder about what could have really caused stress for their children? These primary one students are young children just fresh out of kindergarten, is it necessary to pile them up with so much stress just because of the exams?
Many parents give their children stress due to the exams. It is because of the exams that there are parents like these that exist in our society. It is because of the exams that these primary one students feel stress. Is this stress really necessary at such a young age? What if the exams were removed just for one year? Would that change anything?
I believe that removing the exams for the primary one students for just their first year in their primary schools is probably one of the best decisions made. Think of it this way. they just emerged out of kindergarten, without actually knowing how life in primary school would be like. They just emerged out of kindergarten, with no clue how different life in kindergarten and in primary school can be. Shouldn't we allow them to get used to such an environment before actually throwing the pressure that our society faces at them? Shouldn't we allow them to familiarise themselves with such a strange and new atmosphere before letting them face the unnecessary pressure?
Without the exams for just that one year, the primary one students would be able to make friends, to familiarise themselves with the new study system, to know that there are people who care about them in the school. They would be able to adapt to such a strange and new environment and possibly even study better than they would with exams. Another way of looking at it would be that with the exams, they may not have familiarised themselves with the new study environment they may not perform as well as they would when they are familiar to the new study atmosphere. Furthermore, I believe that one's interest in something would result in him or her learning faster than they would when they are not interested to begin with. I feel that first year of the students primary school life should be spent on trying to gain an interest in studying, instead of already starting preparations for tests. Teachers should teach material that would pique the interest of the students in the class and this would allow them to find studying interesting. This interest would result in them either being very enthusiastic when taught topics that would be tested in the exams next year or do more research on their own, resulting in even better grades.
The good thing about these primary one students not having exams for their first year is that they would not face any pressure at all. It is also because there is no pressure that makes having no exams for the first year slightly worrying.
With no stress at all, would the students learn to adapt to the slightly more hectic school life in future? With no stress at all, would they be able to survive in such a fast-paced society like ours?Probably not. Apart from being unable to adapt to the hectic lifestyle that they would face in future, they would also find it hard to adapt to the exam conditions set during their exams in their second year. They would be clueless about what to do, clueless about time management, and clueless about how important the exams really are to them. Is this what we want to achieve by removing the exams for a year from their lives? Most probably not. Furthermore, with no stress at all, would the primary one students still concentrate in class? Most probably not, since they know they would not be tested anyway, and would not even bother looking through what they have done before at all, making going to school rather pointless.
Simply because of this problem, I do not think that the exams should be completely removed. I believe that there should be an exam at the end of the year, but the questions set would be much easier. The purpose of this exam would simply be to let the student have a taste of the exam conditions so that he or she would not be entirely clueless when he takes the exams in the following year. Knowing that there would be exams would also force them to concentrate in class as they know that they would be tested and would hence study a little for it.
Hence, I believe that having no exams at all would have also rather adverse effects despite having multiple good points too.
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