Secondary School External Examination Systems: Reliability, Robustness and Resilience
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Secondary School External Examination Systems: Reliability, Robu ...

Chapter 1:  Introduction: The Importance of External Examinations in Education
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The new system helps me to be more objective. It is very difficult to not take account of friends and family, but the result will be a [nation of] semi-professionals.

Do faculty understand the implications of education corruption? In some cases, they do. One professor put it this way:

Corruption is bad. It is clear even for a fool that we are producing not very smart people. Corruption will affect our economy. If we produce a foolish agriculturalist, and he chooses a bad crop, a bad seed, the result will affect all of us. We have suffered before from famine. We can again. There are implications of corruption in which it becomes an internal threat to our economy. This is true for every discipline, chemistry, physics, and mathematics. That is why foreign companies are using all kinds of screening and testing devices for their new employees. Our local companies should do the same thing; and these screening devices should be independent.

Although it was widely acknowledged that the problems of corruption are pervasive, there is also evidence that in some instances, these problems are on the decline. All three countries had recently instituted standardized, computer-scored admissions examinations with the explicit purpose of addressing the problems of corruption in university admissions. One professor at TSU assessed the results in this way:

Before national [standardized] exams corruption was very high and moral pressure [to change grades] was also. The departments which are more prestigious are the worst in terms of corruption: Law, Business, International Relations. Because of the exams however, many things have changed. Students from rural areas and from poor homes are more numerous. When bribery was necessary to enter the university, these students had no chance to enter. Today because of the examinations, they do. This is very new and very good.

Summary

Standardized external examinations serve many important quality-assurance functions. Examinations used for monitoring and for selection are necessary to all modern nations.