The Weighting of Exams and Summatives

Everyone knows that exam week is one of the most stressful ones for high school and university students across the globe. However, if these exams are going to be associated with so much pressure and stress, they should be worth more than 20% of your final grade.

Currently, the weight of our summatives as compared to our final exams in our semester grade is 60% to 20%. I believe that exams should be worth more than what they currently are, even if it’s by a small amount. This is because too much stress is put on students for this test to only be worth 20% of their grade. Also, technically, somebody could fail the final exam for a class completely, but still have gotten good enough grades on summatives throughout the year that they are able to pass that particular class.

For example, a current senior, who shall remain unnamed, found themselves in this situation back in the ninth grade. They failed their Chinese exam, but still managed to pass the class due to their mediocre grades on the summatives they had taken in the past.

Now, I realise the importance of summatives, and the reasoning behind the weighting, but I do not think that it is fair. So much pressure is put on students to do well on these exams when they don’t matter as much as they really think they do.

I understand that summatives are so important because of the fact that they are tests on the units that are completed throughout the year, and they measure your knowledge on those at that given time. However, I believe that, since semester exams are meant to be a test on the sum of your knowledge from the past semester (or semesters), then they need to be worth more in the grand scheme of things.

I think that there are two options here. 1. Weight the exams and summatives more evenly to create a more fair final grade, or 2. Get rid of the semester exams completely. If you can fail an exam and still pass your class, then really, what is the point of the exam in the first place? Obviously, this option is quite extreme, and I do not support it, but it certainly is a choice.

Overall, it is clear that exams need to be weighted more evenly to create a final grade that is truly fair for all high school students at AISG, but until awareness is raised and students and faculty think about these proportions, the imperfect system will remain in place.