Nobody likes to take exams — but they might be more valuable than you think

Catherine Zhu · CBC Radio

· Posted: Jun 24, 2025 4:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 4 minutes ago

As precocious schools crossed Canada upwind down for the world year, students are entering the last agelong of their exams — a play marked by some anticipation and anxiety. 

At Castlebrooke Secondary School successful Brampton, Ont., subject teacher Jason Bradshaw watches the unit build. For galore of his students, helium says, the affectional toll is visible.

"They are precise stressed, and I deliberation it's mostly due to the fact that of the accent that we enactment connected grades and marks successful school, and the last exam is evidently going to beryllium a important portion of that," Bradshaw told The Current's Matt Galloway. "It's a precise high-stakes task for them and that puts tremendous accent connected them."

For teenagers juggling survey schedules and extracurriculars with the looming unit of acting upon their ambitions for the future, exam play tin consciousness similar a make-or-break moment.

In fact, some educators successful Canada person besides questioned whether the accepted investigating exemplary is worthy the anxiousness it generates. 

But others spot a antithetic side.

Kelly Gallagher-Mackay, an subordinate prof and acquisition researcher astatine Wilfrid Laurier University successful Waterloo, Ont., says that tests connection a valid signifier of assessment, measuring learning successful ways that are distinct from different methods, specified arsenic projects.

"There is simply a constituent of testing," she said.  

What bash exams distinctly archer us?  

Exams play a important relation successful gauging however good students person grasped the halfway concepts of their courses, says Gallagher-Mackay. 

Furthermore, she says that exams also help educators measure not lone what their students person absorbed but however effectual their teaching methods person been passim the year.

"It's peculiarly important for going forward. The trial mightiness archer you that you privation to spell and thatch that otherwise adjacent year, if there's 1 portion that they truly didn't get," she said.

"It gives you a benignant of wide snapshot of the grade to which the contented and the teaching were effective."

Tasha Ausman, a subject and mathematics precocious schoolhouse teacher successful Gatineau, Que., and a prof successful the module of acquisition astatine the University of Ottawa, says exams are much than just a measurement of contented knowledge.

She says they're also tools for evaluating literacy — some wide and subject-specific.

"They're testing, fundamentally, a literacy and deciphering accomplishment successful narration to contented wherever you whitethorn oregon whitethorn not cognize it," said Ausman.

In summation to comprehension, she says exams assistance solidify memorized, factual cognition — particularly captious successful subjects like subject and math, where understanding halfway concepts is essential. 

"I effort and stress arsenic a teacher, 'Hey, listen, you're surviving successful this body, you should astir apt cognize wherever each your bits are [and] however your organs work,'" she said.

However, Ausman remarks that today's students — raised successful a digital-first satellite — often question the request to retrieve facts erstwhile accusation is readily disposable online.

"I had a fewer students say, and it mightiness not beryllium conscionable this generation, but similar they're much apathetic about, 'Why bash I adjacent request to cognize this? I tin conscionable Google it,'" she said.

Yet Ausman believes exams service different captious function: preparing students for the pressures and expectations of big life.

She points to the applicable beingness skills that look from test-taking. Facing a timed, high-pressure script — similar completing an exam wrong 3 hours — mirrors real-world responsibilities wherever deadlines matter. 

"Life is afloat of deadlines, it doesn't substance what occupation you're doing," said Ausman. 

Test-taking, she says, teaches much than program content. "Reliability, commitment, obligation, organization, each those things travel done schooling arsenic well," she said.

Strategies to negociate trial anxiety 

Back successful Ontario, Bradshaw acknowledges that tests are "not going anyplace successful the contiguous future." 

So, alongside chap educators, helium is putting a spotlight connected the request to assistance students negociate the anxiousness that often comes with trial taking. 

Regarding last exams, Bradshaw advocates familiarizing students with investigating passim the semester. By incorporating lower-stakes assessments, helium believes students tin gradually physique assurance and easiness the aggravated unit that last exams often bring.

Louis Volante, prof of acquisition astatine Brock University, besides says determination are practical ways some teachers and students tin code wide trial anxiety. 

From a teaching perspective, Volante encourages educators to connection wide test-taking strategies specified arsenic speechmaking questions carefully, previewing the full exam earlier you start, skipping hard questions initially and managing clip effectively.

For tests to beryllium just and supportive of pupil learning, Volante says teachers should plan exams that 90 per cent of students tin decorativeness with 15 minutes to spare, allowing capable clip for everyone to implicit them.

They should besides see a substance of selected-response questions similar aggregate choice, existent oregon mendacious and matching, alongside constructed-response questions specified arsenic those that require short answers.

"We privation a substance of questions that we're asking students due to the fact that it's tapping into antithetic types of cognition and skills they would person learned and tin apply," said Volante.

Content-wise, helium says tests should person a bully lucifer betwixt what's taught and what's tested.

"What you often perceive from students is, 'I studied everything that was taught successful class, but the trial asked maine a clump of questions that we didn't truly cover,' and obviously, that's going to make anxiousness for anybody."

Finally, Gallagher-Mackay says that parents besides play a cardinal relation successful keeping the unit successful perspective. 

"When parents and teachers are much oregon little giving accordant messages, kids bash consciousness amended astir schoolhouse and they bash amended astatine school," she said. 

That connection is this: "Tests are not the extremity each and beryllium each — they are not a measurement of who you are arsenic a person, they are a valid mode of assessing what you larn successful a peculiar course."