Educational Examinations: Effective?

So it's something that pretty much everyone worldwide ends up doing, examinations at the end of the year or during the year for high school, uni, and for other educational purposes that gets us somewhere in life.

So i saw on BBC news this morning that David Cameron (Torie leader (UK)) wanted to hold year 6 students back a year in primary school if they fail to achieve well in their SATs exams.
(See full article at BBC News)

The Standerdized Assessment Tests are examinations in english science and maths that all students in England must take at the end of each Key Stage in their education; so this is year 2, 6 and 9 ages: 7,11 and 14. However i didn't want to address Cameron's quite strange proposition
(which although would make children achieve higher could certain be quite demeaning to morale of young 11 year old students and pile on the pressure of the exams, which really are just used as benchmarks for the government to see how well their education schemes are.

I want to know how effective you find exams? Do they stress you out and do they really represent your academic achievements. I myself have just accepted them as part of schooling and find them relatively easy

I much prefer to sit a final exam rather then have an averged assessment of my year.

The UK government are basically saying that the examinations mean that teachers aren't teaching much rather training students to pass exams. Yet surely in the long run this is what we need for most of our lives, changing the whole system now won't be as effective as they seem to think it is. I really think that the system is fine, but that said i'm quite an intellectual who's sat a lot of exams even at my young age and was trained with exam techniques all the way through primary including revision tactics ect. A lot of my other friends however always are stressed during revision periods and through exams.

So what's your view? Should exams be scrapped?

God this is long lol,
Anthony

NB to Americans: British SATs are not the same as the US SAT - UK SATs are sat at around the age of 10/11

No they shouldn't.

The skills that students acquire within their early childhood are essential much later on. I regret even now not taking maths seriously when I was 8-10.

When I started Year 7/Form 1 in Secondary school (age 11), I was put into a maths class depending on my SAT score, and benefitted from an education in maths that was suited to my ability (i.e. I wasn't put in way over my head, but at the same time didn't just sit back and enjoy the ride). To this day, I still do not know how to do long division, which I was supposed to have learnt in my primary years. I am naturally able at maths, but did not take the maths seriously enough to develop core skills. As a result, I did not do as well in my GCSE maths as I had hoped - I received an A, despite expecting an A*. I also don't know how to factorise. In short, I am able to do more complex maths e.g. statistical analysis, graphing, functions, trigonometric calculations and functions and calculus, but have difficulty with simpler maths. E.g. factorising. I still cannot factorise.

Furthermore, for British students in particular, the SATs give students a good introduction to the challenges that they can expect from public examinations, without as much stress. This allows people to learn, from an early age, how to develop good exam technique - something that is almost as important as knowing the subject material.

For most kids, learning the basics when they are older may be fairly simple - it's not that hard to learn long division (or so I'm told, I have never bothered

). However, the sudden increase of work, and the difference in the approach to learning, that comes in at Year 7 often prevents students from going back to what they missed.

All in all, the SATs prepare kids better for their NCTs, and for their GCSEs. Which, in turn, prepares them better for their AS and A levels.

I don't mind exams, because you get exam leave (i.e. no school, only exams). I have had exams on for two weeks now and have been playing BF2 for all of those 2 weeks, and the week before. I went from Private to Sergeant in 2 weeks.