Michael Gove decides to teach all British children himself..

[aliensurfer]

I don't agree with exams, could have a really bright student who knows the subject inside out, who may have a mental block with exams or just have a bad day and that's it, you're fucked, you have to re-take them. there should be other ways to gauge how well a student has understood a topic, and lets be honest, how many jobs out there expect you to remember everything and not be able to look it up in a book/online or be shown/helped? Exams are artificial as you do not work like that in the real world.

Exams are designed to test your knowledge and understanding of a subject, and do so in a time-pressured environment....actually a useful skill in the real world. Some exams do allow for a reference book to be taken into the room. If you have a "bad day" you can retake them...not the end of the world.

Coursework can be googled/wiki'ed/bought off the Internet, or even drafted by the teacher. Not saying everyone does it by any means, but unfortunately it now has that perception with many employers.

true, but a good tutor can spot that. I get your point about exams, yet some people just cannot cope with exams (I am shit with them myself to be fair even on stuff I know really well). It's not a fair way to do things though to have one way of testing, although there are some changes these days depending on what you are studying. Not every exam can be re-taken either, and I've not heard of any exam you can take a reference book into. Perhaps there should be a balance, after all everyone is different and has different learning styles, so why then make all those different people do the same test when it will not suit everyone. some jobs yes will need people who can recall everything in a time pressured environment, but probably more don't.

[AKULA]

Exams are designed to test your knowledge and understanding of a subject, and do so in a time-pressured environment....

In most instances they fail then. The people who got the best grades in my classes at school were those that were most like computers in terms of memory. Exams do not test your knowledge or understanding of a subject. The best ways to get A* is to regurgitate word for word, other people's views you have memorised from text books.

I took notes for GCSE History to revise from, I loved history. There was one hot chick in our school, she asked me, yes me, to borrow my notes as she had 'lost' hers. She hadn't lost them, she hadn't been bothered to take them and do the revision. Still she was hot, and what 15/16 year old boy isn't going to lend her the notes? She got a grade better than me, but didn't have the interest, passion or knowledge of the subject that I had. She had simply been able to memorise the information and regurgitate it at will where as I probably just got all stressed and wordy over it...

And therein lies the truth.....

[Bronshtein]

The course work v exam argument is pointless unless you first decide what the purpose of assessing students is.
If you want to know how people react under stress - an exam can be a good way of measuring it. Then again - what kind of stress and what are you expecting them to do under that stress? If the answer is just regurgitating facts then you are testing memory - which is okay, but... A better exam would be to ask you to remember how to approach a problem - set out those approaches and then pick the best one and explain how and why to the examiner.

Course work can do similar things and test some things better than exams.

But a mix of both is probably fairer and best for the widest test of abilities.

I confess to liking exams and hating course work; either because I used to have good memory or was a lazy sod who hated working all year round.

If you want to be 'fair' you should allow each person to discover their best learning style and follow it accordingly - whether plodding or fizzing (bias acknowledged).
I would have hated continuous assessment - oddly enough, and I know you chaps will find it hard to believe, I antagonised quite a few of my teachers and they would probably have marked me very badly. Examiners who didn't know me marked me quite well.

[mcfonz]

True story dat. Mind you, I got a better IT grade than a complete IT lover who could build PC's, write programmes and hack quite effectively. Again, no intent to be an IT person, I have a basic understanding of how things work but no idea otherwise when it comes to building them, repairing them or countering viruses etc. I was, and still am no where near as knowledgeable as he was then.