With exams ruled out by Covid-19, the education system is learning a bitter truth. It never focused on learning as an opportunity to be given to all. Instead, it relied on exclusion to mask its limited offering to a few. This should prompt reflection and an honest reset.
Anyone who wants to learn should be able to, and we should figure out how to make that happen. Large gains in informed citizenship as well as productive workforce participation can only come about from this. If not, 50 years from now, we will still be in the bottom third of the world’s nations.
Exams seem like a trap that keeps us locked in the system. We are made to believe that one cannot get to college without exams, and one cannot get jobs without going to college. This cannot be further away from the truth. The only way we can dispel this myth is to leverage the fact that employers are free to reject this.
Most employers would rather hire someone whose work they are familiar with than someone whose marks sheet they have seen. Apprenticeship is the path out of the trap the system has set for us with examinations. In summary, creating a learn-on-the-job environment is the first step towards improving the quality of learning in schools and colleges too.