Exam Fever: Learner Edition

I would almost swear that the exam season air smells different. It is like it is filled with some sort of toxins that make a lot of learners act vastly different. Not always in the most pleasant way.

The fourth term is challenging for most students. They realise that the whole year has flashed before their eyes and they are either proud of their accomplishments, a very few of them, or they are hearing the alarm ringing, realising that it is too late. We have been there, in one year or another, and sometimes a bit too often for our own comfort.

Exam season can be tough. The education department places a lot of weight in the final stretch. Terms 1 to 3, known as the School Based Assessments (SBAs) terms, combined is worth about 40% of the year’s work, which placed heavy emphasis on final exams being 60%. Of course, for Grade 12s, it is more like 25/75 split. One needs to recall everything from not only the first term but also from previous grades because topics build on from one year to the next. I always believe that if a learner does not have that awareness, they are basically starting from scratch each and every year. Unfortunately, the curriculum/syllabus just does not cater for that sort of catch-up time. It hardly even caters to “normal” revision time before a test or exam.

Learners make this awareness around this time of year as though it is brand new information each and every year. It is sad to say that not many of them take it well. So, with this toxin in the air, they tend to resort to extreme tactics, unfortunately, suicide or attempted suicide being one of the worst case scenarios. Next to that being, other forms of bodily harm, which is tragic with any learner but when it is a learner in a younger grade, one can’t help but wonder, what sort of pressure is the system placing on its beneficiaries?

Then comes the unusual tactics and creative ways to cheat the system, LITERALLY! I was shocked to hear of a matriculant who got someone to try to write an exam on their behalf. Quite wild! I have heard of altercations between learner and invigilator all because the learner was late and time ran out, and strong sense of entitlement. I have also seen stones being thrown into the window of building, quite literally too. This is really as they say, ‘the silly season’ whereby anything could happen.

The less extreme learners start to make mental calculations about what it will cost them to produce the bare minimum with minimal work. This part makes me wonder about, at whatt point will they realise that there is also competition amongst people who put in the bare minimum. After hearing that a learner said that they do not see the point of doing well (specifically in maths) when they will just got work at SPAR (this possibly includes PnP, Woolies, Checkers etc.) I made a realisation that if there are many, let’s say 100s of people on that same level of mentality living in the same city, then SPAR has 20 vacancies. In this economy, 80 people, or more, would have a difficult time, and that is just at the bare minimum, working on the logic of said learner’s words.

Of course, even top performing learners have competition too. It is not meant to be easy on either side of the spectrum, but there is a large variation on the number of doors open to you when you are awake way before the fourth quarter at the last second.

This intoxicating season is sometimes difficult for a teacher to watch because, in the midst of teaching, we try to encourage an early start. We try to bring that level of understanding into how much preparation is really needed. Very few get it, some start with their action plans, while others are too drowsy to make sense of it. All we can hope for is that eventually, the message will land, but personally would not want the eventuality to be when it is more difficult to change old habits or when it is completely too late.

Thank you for your time!