Imagine a student who spends fifteen years attending school, learning mathematics, science, languages and history. At the end of this journey, much of what society knows about that student's intellectual ability may be reduced to a percentage obtained in a three-hour examination. A few marks may determine admission to a university, access to a professional course and, sometimes, the direction of an entire career. But an uncomfortable question remains: do examinations actually educate people, or do they merely tell us how well people perform under examination conditions?

The distinction matters because education and examinations are not necessarily the same thing. One is a process of developing knowledge, understanding, curiosity and the ability to think. The other is a mechanism for assessing some aspects of that development.

To understand how examinations became so deeply embedded in education, we must travel back to imperial China. Around the sixth and seventh centuries, China developed the Keju, an imperial competitive examination system designed primarily to select candidates for government administration, Elman, B. A. (2013) . It offered an alternative to hereditary privilege and personal recommendations by introducing a more structured method of assessing candidates.

The system eventually became one of the world's most influential historical models of competitive examinations (O'Sullivan & Cheng, 2022). Its original purpose was understandable. An expanding empire needed educated administrators, and examinations offered a relatively standardised way of identifying candidates. However, something significant happened over time: education increasingly became organised around the requirements of the examination itself.

Schools began preparing students for examinations, curricula reflected examination requirements, and success became associated with academic rankings and social advancement. O'Sullivan and Cheng (2022) explain how this relationship between education and selection gradually developed within imperial China. Perhaps this was one of the earliest examples of an educational system becoming heavily influenced by the very instrument designed to assess it.

It would be unfair, however, to blame China for modern examination culture. European universities, expanding bureaucracies, industrial-era schooling and modern competitive selection systems all contributed to its subsequent development.

There is a fundamental difference between examining students to understand what they have learnt and organising their entire education around what they will eventually be examined on. The first approach allows examinations to serve education. The second allows examinations to control it.

Consider what happens in many classrooms. A teacher completes a chapter, announces the important questions, identifies likely examination topics and advises students to memorise answers. Students reproduce those answers, receive marks and move to the next chapter. The process may successfully prepare students for an examination, but does it necessarily develop their ability to apply knowledge in unfamiliar situations?

A student may memorise the definition of photosynthesis without ever observing how light affects plant growth. Another may reproduce the laws of physics without understanding how those laws explain everyday phenomena. The problem is not memorisation itself. Remembering information is an important part of learning. The problem arises when remembering becomes the principal evidence of understanding.

Research on examination-oriented education in China has documented how high-stakes testing can influence classroom teaching, encouraging preparation for examination performance rather than broader educational development (OECD, 2020). This phenomenon is not exclusive to China. It is visible, in different forms, across education systems worldwide.

One of the biggest assumptions underlying examination culture is that marks provide a reliable representation of a student's intellectual ability. But intelligence is not a single, easily measurable quality.

A student who performs exceptionally well in mathematics may struggle with communication. Another may demonstrate remarkable creativity, practical intelligence or problem-solving abilities but perform modestly in written examinations.

Similarly, a student who can identify an environmental problem, design an experiment, collect evidence and propose a solution may possess valuable scientific abilities that a conventional examination does not adequately capture.

This does not mean that examinations are useless. They can assess subject knowledge, conceptual understanding, analytical reasoning and the ability to communicate under defined conditions. However, treating examination scores as complete representations of human potential is a much bigger claim than assessment can justify.

The National Research Council (2000), in How People Learn, emphasised the importance of learning environments that connect knowledge, learners and assessment. Assessment should reveal understanding and provide opportunities for feedback and improvement, rather than merely record performance.

John Dewey, one of the influential philosophers of modern education, argued that meaningful learning is closely connected with experience, reflection and interaction with the surrounding world. In Experience and Education (1938), Dewey challenged the idea that education should simply involve the transmission of established knowledge. He emphasised experiences that develop the learner's capacity for further learning.

Consider a simple classroom experiment. Instead of asking students to reproduce the definition of evaporation, a teacher asks them to place equal quantities of water in two locations, observe the changes and investigate why the water disappears at different rates. The examination of learning now becomes an examination of observation, questioning, reasoning and interpretation. The student is no longer simply recalling what somebody else discovered. The student is experiencing how knowledge is developed. This is particularly relevant to science education, where questioning, experimentation and evidence are central to the discipline.

Interestingly, educational research does not suggest abandoning assessment. It suggests reconsidering its purpose. Black and Wiliam (2006) and Looney. J (2009)in their influential review of classroom assessment research, demonstrated the importance of formative assessment and feedback in improving student learning.

There is an important distinction between two approaches. Summative assessment asks: what has the student achieved at the end of a learning period? Formative assessment asks: what has the student understood so far, where are the difficulties, and what can be done to improve learning? The second approach makes assessment part of the learning process rather than simply its final judgement.

The OECD (2025) similarly emphasises that formative assessment involves identifying students' progress, providing feedback and adapting teaching to their learning needs. Imagine if students received meaningful feedback throughout a semester instead of discovering their weaknesses only after the final examination. Assessment would then become an opportunity to learn rather than merely an occasion to be judged.

The arrival of generative artificial intelligence adds another dimension to this discussion. Students can now use tools such as ChatGPT to explain scientific concepts, solve mathematical problems, summarise books and generate answers to complicated questions. Information retrieval and answer generation, once considered important academic abilities, are becoming increasingly accessible through technology. This does not make knowledge irrelevant. Rather, it raises the importance of knowing how to question information, verify evidence, recognise errors and apply knowledge responsibly. If an examination primarily rewards the reproduction of information, what happens when machines can reproduce that information more efficiently?

Perhaps education must place greater emphasis on the abilities that cannot be adequately demonstrated through memorisation alone: intellectual curiosity, independent judgement, creativity, ethical reasoning and the ability to formulate meaningful questions. Assessment methods should evolve accordingly. Projects, experiments, oral discussions, portfolios, field investigations and problem-based assignments can complement conventional examinations. The objective should not be to replace every written examination but to ensure that examinations do not become the only recognised evidence of learning.

The National Education Policy 2020 in India also recognises the need to move away from rote learning towards conceptual understanding, critical thinking, experiential learning and competency-based assessment. This is an important direction, but changing policy documents is easier than changing educational habits. Parents still celebrate marks, institutions advertise rankings, and students frequently measure their academic worth through examination results.

The challenge, therefore, is cultural as much as institutional. We need examinations, but we also need to question what they measure, what they ignore and how much influence they should have over the educational journey. Perhaps the most important distinction is between an examination that asks students what they know and an educational experience that helps them discover what they do not yet know. Education should prepare people not merely to answer questions that have already been asked but also to recognise questions that nobody has thought to ask.

Tailpiece

We introduced examinations to assess education. Somewhere along the way, we began organising education to serve examinations. Perhaps it is time to reverse that relationship.

References

1. Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (2006). Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 5(1), 7–74. https://doi.org/10.1080/0969595980050102

2. Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. Macmillan.

3. Elman, B. A. (2013). Civil examinations and meritocracy in late imperial China. Harvard University Press.

4. Looney, J. (2009), “Assessment and Innovation in Education”, OECD Education Working Papers, No. 24, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/222814543073.

5. National Research Council. (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school: Expanded edition. National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/9853

6. OECD. (2020). Benchmarking the performance of China's education system. OECD Publishing.

7. OECD. (2025). Unlocking high-quality teaching. OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/f5b82176-en

8. O'Sullivan, B., & Cheng, L. (2022). Lessons from the Chinese imperial examination system. Language Testing in Asia, 12. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40468-022-00201-5

9. Wiliam, D., & Black, P. (1996). Meanings and consequences: A basis for distinguishing formative and summative functions of assessment? British Educational Research Journal, 22(5), 537–548. https://doi.org/10.1080/0141192960220502