EXAMINATIONS
 

I.-The Problem

1. Chronic Nature and Magnitude of the problem. 2. Reform Essential.

II.-Objective Tests

3. Conditions of a Good Examination. 4. Examinations and the Process of Education. 5. Various Kinds of Tests : Intelligence and Achievement Tests ; Aids in Selection and Counselling of Students. 6. Tests as Aids to the Teacher and as Checks on Quality of Work. 7. Hall-Mark of Attainment. 8. Advantages of Objective Tests. 9. Position in the United Kingdom.

III.-Essay-Type of Examination

10. Place of Essay-Type of Examination.

IV.-Recommendations

11. Recommendations regarding Objective Examinations. 12. Recom- mendations for the Correction of Evils now Existing in the Examination System.

I.-The Problem

1. Chronic Nature and Magnitude of the Problem.-For nearly half a century, examinations, as they have been functioning, have been recognized as one of the worst features of Indian education. Commissions and Committees have expressed their alarm at their pernicious domination over the whole system of education in India. The obvious deficiencies and harmful consequences of this most pervasive evil in Indian education have been analysed and set out clearly by successive Universities Commissions since 1902, by a Government Resolution as far back as 1904 and by a Committee of the Central Advisory Board of Education in recent years. With most of their criticism we are in agreement and do not wish to dilate on the patent defects and dangers of this system. We only note that while the magnitude of the problem has been growing at an alarming rate nothing constructive in the way of reform has happened. The Calcutta University Commission (1917-19) showed concern at the rising numbers involved in these examinations. The numbers have gone on increasing while the character of examinations has remained unchanged. The total number of candidates for the matriculation examination for India as a whole in 1904 was 23,800 in round numbers; in 1944, 36,742 candidates appeared at this examination conducted by the Calcutta University alone; Bombay had in that year 32,056 candidates, Madras 30,588, and

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Allahabad 22,262. In 1947 the number had increased to 60,841 at Calcutta, 41,092 at Bombay, 43,823 at Madras, and 33,923 at Allahabad. The total number of candidates for Intermediate and Bachelor's examinations in the Faculties of Arts and Science for all Indian universities was just under 11,000 in 1904; in 1916 it had risen to just under 25,000; in 1925 the number of candidates for the intermediate examination alone was a little over 30,000 in 1937, a little over 35,000 and in 1947, it had gone up to over 80,000 in the Indian Dominion exclusive of East, Punjab. The number of candidates for the Bachelor's examination has gone up with similar rapidity. It was 12,500 in 1927, 17,000 in 1932; and rose to 32,400 in 1947 in the Indian Dominion exclusive of East Punjab. An unsound examination system continues to dominate instruction to the detriment of a quickly expanding system of education. In our visits to the universities we heard, from teachers and students alike, the endless tale of how examinations have become the aim and end of education, I-Low all instruction is subordinated to them, how they kill all initiative in the teacher and the student, how capricious, invalid, unreliable and inadequate they are, and how they tend to corrupt the Moral standards of university life.

2. Reform Essential.-We are convinced that if we are to suggest one single reform in university education it should be that of the examinations. We advisedly say reform although we know that, in India as elsewhere in the world, dissatisfaction With examinations has been so keen that eminent educationists and important educational organisations have even advocated the abolition of examinations. We do not share that extreme view and feet that examinations rightly designed and intelligently used can be a use ful factor in the educational process. If examinations are necessary a thorough reform of these is still more necessary.

II-Objective Tests

3. Conditions of a Good Examination-A good examination should satisfy certain essential conditions. It should, in the first place, have validity. It should be able to measure what it seeks to measure. The purpose of the examination must be clear and explicit. It must be reliable; it must efficiently measure what it does measure. It must be adequate; it should sample sufficiently widely, so that the resulting scores are representative of relative total performance in the areas measured. It should be objective; it should effectively eliminate the bias or subjective opinion of the person who marks it. It should be easy to administer, easy to mark, easy to interpret.

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We suggest the introduction of such valid, reliable, adequate objective examinations in the universities of India at the earliest possible time. Without this there is danger that Indian higher education will fall into chaos.

Fortunately there is a wealth of scientific work on testing, measurement, evaluation and appraisal done in the West, and especially in the United States, which can help us very greatly in devising objective methods of testing intelligence, aptitude, achievements as well as personality traits. The discovery and utilisation of statistical concepts and techniques have helped the growth during the last three decades of an elaborate science of mental measurement which we would do well to harness to our pressing educational needs. The significant work of the Committee on Measurement and Guidance of the American Council on Education has greatly clarified educational thinking on problems of testing and student counselling The Committee's work on such projects as the American Council's. Psychological Examination, the Co-operative Test Service, aptitude measurements, and its extensive research on Primary Mental Abilities are contributions of outstanding value for higher education. State- wide objective testing programmes for high schools and colleges have also been worked out by several states in the U.S.A., notably by Iowa, Ohio, Minnesota and Wisconsin. All this material awaits intelligent study, modifications and adaptation to meet the crying need of reforming our system of examinations.

4. Examinations and the Process of Education.-The chief purpose of the present examinations is not organically related to the actual process of education. They are a means to the giving of a hall-mark of competence which employers, public and private, may recognise as a more or less reliable indication of the possession of certain intellectual and, perhaps, moral qualities and of certain types of knowledge and skill. A university degree is a kind of passport for jobs. With the great economic pressure due to the prevailing poverty in the country, the insistence on a university degree as the minimum requirement even for posts of minor officials and clerks has put a premium on a number of evils which have come to be associated with the examination system. It has subjected teaching to the examination, made it almost impossible to provide true education and to develop wider interests, and has created temptations of cheating, corruption and favouritism. The obsession to secure, as it were, a ticket in the lottery of job-securing has over-shadowed the educational purposes which a good examination can serve.

We feel that tests and examinations should be designed chiefly with educational ends in view. They should help in the choice of

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students, in the counselling and guidance of students, in measuring their progress, in diagnosing present conditions and in devising remedial measures and finally in assessing educational achievement. There are a number of such tests available and we feel that their introduction in India, with the necessary modification and adaptation, will prove a great boon to Indian education.

5. Various Kinds of Tests : Intelligence and Achievement Tests; Aids in Selection and Counselling of Students.-There are tests available which can help effectively in weeding out those who seem conspicuously to lack the general intellectual ability to cope with the work ahead. Besides these tests of general ability there are tests which break down "general intelligence" into a pattern of abilities and help in discovering a student's strong and weak points. These can help the student to find out the fields in which he is at his best and to plan his programme of work.

Then, tests are available to measure what and how much the student has learned at school or elsewhere before he came to college. These tests of achievement can measure knowledge of facts and skills in literature, science, fine arts, mathematics, history, social studies and current social problems. The discovery of a superior or a poor high school background can give the staff and the student valuable help in the choice of subjects and in emphasizing certain aspects of the chosen programme.

The, problem of selecting students for high studies and of intelligent counselling in the choice of their fields of study is of vital importance and should be tackled in a scientific way. With rapidly growing numbers of those receiving education, and with the inevitable diversification of high school education, the importance of this problem will ceaselessly grow. The universities will perform a service of national significance by applying themselves to its solution in right earnest.

For use in selection of students who are leaving school and seek- ing admission to colleges two types of tests have been used in con- junction in: the United States. These are (1) Intelligence or Psychological Tests (2) Achievement Tests.

I. Intelligence Tests : The General Intelligence Tests are, in- tended to evaluate native intelligence and have but slight reference to knowledge or skills. They seek to measure ability to learn or to adapt to new situations. Since intelligence cannot be directly measured these tests attempt to measure it, by measuring

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the individual's ability to react to fragments of his environment. Intelligence tests sample widely from fields of experience common to all persons subjected to the test. There always is a factual element involved in these tests, but it is one that is so commonly known and at such low level of difficulty that all persons, with the rarest of exceptions, can be expected to possess it. The tests attempt to measure the abilities to see relationships, to infer, to compare, to contrast, or otherwise handle this factual material.

There are individual intelligence tests and group intelligence tests. The individual ones, which are comparatively more accurate tools of measurement, are mainly patterned upon the Binet-Simon tests produced in France between 1905 and 1911 and provide a scale on which the persons tested can, be placed at some point in a wide range extending from genius to morons. The Binet scale has been adapted and revised by many other experts. A notable variation was that by Terman of Stanford University in 1916, known as the Stanford-Revision. The American army began to employ objective tests in World War I for the selection and assignment of men in the service. Group tests were devised and administered by expert educationists borrowed from the universities. The most widely used in the American Council on Education Psychological Examination for High School Students. Most colleges and universities in the United States make use of this test for admission though many have tests of their own.

Apart from these tests of what is called general intelligence, the colleges and universities in, the United States are making ex- tensive use of specific intelligence testing by means of what; are called "educational aptitude tests". They are tests not of knowledge or skill but of the ability, at a certain point of time, to acquire knowledge or skill under proper conditions.

A great deal of successful work in testing aptitudes has been done for various businesses and industries by educational experts to measure the untrained individual's potentiality for acquiring voca- tional skills in order to make a judicious selection of their employees. Similar tests have been extensively used in various countries for recruitment, to the various tasks in the armed forces.

II. Achievement Tests : These are used to discover the extent of knowledge or skill which has been acquired and retained by a student. Aptitude tests discover future possibilities; achievement tests reveal past attainment. There are general achievement tests as well as tests of achievement in specific subject matter and performance areas. The general battery-type of achievement

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test helps to give a picture of the total instructional situation. It gives a profile chart indicating points of strength and weakness which can be further analysed for diagnostic and remedial work. There are a number of such general achievement tests available at present covering the principal areas of education. The Iowa Tests of Educational Development and the Co-operative Achievement Tests deserve special mention. The Iowa tests have been devised for a state-wide testing programme for measuring pupil development in the attainment of the ultimate objectives of secondary school education. They test (1) understanding of basic social concepts (2) ability to do quantitative thinking (3) ability to write correctly (4) general proficiency in the natural sciences (5) ability to interpret reading materials in the natural sciences (6) ability to interpret reading materials in the social sciences (7) ability to read literary materials (8) ability to use important sources of information (9) ability to recognise important word meanings. The Co-operative Tests of Achievement are intended for use at the senior high school level and consist of tests in three phases of English and reading, and in the social studies, natural sciences, and mathematics. The Cooperative Test Service was initiated by a committee of the American Council on Education in 1930, made possible by a grant of $500,000, distributed over a period of ten years, by the General Education Board. It represents a widespread movement enlisting the cooperation of educationists in many fields and institutions In all parts of the United States. Those who wish to study this movement in detail will find volumes devoted to an exposition and evaluation of the Co-operative Test Service listed in the bibliography in Appendix L.

These objective tests of various kinds for various purposes have distinct advantages which would justify their extensive use in India. Specimens are to be found in Appendix M.

6. Tests as Aids to the Teacher and as Checks on Quality of Work.-Besides helping in the selection and counselling of students tests can be a great help to the teacher. Fruitful and competent, teaching depends very largely on knowing the facts of student ac- complishment. To know facts one should be able to measure objec- tively. Measurement, testing and appraisal are becoming essentials of effective educational procedure. The teacher can make use of standardised tests, informal objective examinations or an essay type examination. The important thing is that he should satisfy himself that the test he gives fulfils the conditions of any good examination, viz., validity, reliability, adequacy and objectivity. Standardised tests are the work of subject matter and test specialists, are intended for wide use and are accompanied by norms, whereas

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the informal objective tests are usually constructed by the teacher or within the local institution and are intended for local use. As a matter of fact, in progressive educational practice, the standardised test and the teacher-made test should supplement each other. We think a great service to Indian education can be rendered if the Indian Ministry of Education set up a machinery of their own, as well as encourage and assist universities and teachers' training colleges in India, to undertake the work of making regional standardised tests needed for use in the colleges and universities in the different provinces. They should also encourage the universities to provide facilities for their teachers to get acquainted with the concepts and techniques of objective testing and to construct their own tests under competent technical advice made available at each university. If the general body of teachers in a university can be made to take to the use of scientific and statistical techniques in educational measurement, the way will have been opened for an objective review of the curriculum, and to a conscious improvement of teaching practice. With fairly accurate and reliable instruments to measure progress, the teacher will be anxious to have definite goals towards which to work and his scores will be more generally usable in diminishing the excessive importance now assigned to the external examination award. We shall make definite recommendations later in this behalf.

7. Hall-mark of Attainment.-While objective measurements of ability and achievement, and of aptitudes and interests, will render significant service in improving the quality of teaching and attain- ment, there would still remain the demand of society for a hall-mark. A final examination award at the completion of the first degree course will, we feel, be deemed necessary. The extension of the techniques of objective testing may be considered even at this stage. As a matter of fact this is being done is some other countries. The Graduate Record Examination in the United States, inaugurated in 1936, as a joint experiment in testing achievement at degree and post- graduate levels by four universities and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching is now used by many colleges and universities in all the forty-eight states of the United States and in the District of Columbia, and in Alaska, Canada, Hawaii, Japan, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Venezuela. But as the process of changing over to the new techniques of testing and appraisal involves a degree of technical skill and preparation, we would recommend their application at this stage only after sufficient experience has been gained at the admission stage. At this, the first public examination, after twelve years of schooling, we would do well to begin utilising objective tests as soon as possible. The

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rapidly rising numbers will soon render any other method impos- sible.

8. Advantages of Objective Tests.-It has been definitely es- tablished by data based upon thousands of cases in different insti- tutions that the success of students in the college or university can be more reliably predicted by objective tests than by any other type of admission examination. High school students who have been admitted to college on the psychological test combined with achievement tests in English, Mathematics, Social Science, and Natural Science have had the following records in the first year of college work. The results of these tests correlate well with achievement at college:-