Many high schools in northern Ontario are re-examining final exams

Just a few hours after her psychology exam, Jersy Houlahan is standing outside of Lasalle Secondary in Sudbury thinking about her mental health.

"I'm a pretty good student and it still stresses me out. It's a make or break for your whole year, right?" said the Grade 11 student.

"So like what's really the point of making something with this big, huge weight at the very end of the year, when everything you've already done leading up to this point is very important to your overall mark already?"

Many schools across northern Ontario are re-examining exams, cutting down how much of the final grade they are worth and in some classes, dropping them altogether.

"We still do see exams, we still utilize exams, they're a very important piece. But in some cases, we do not use exams at all," said Lisa Spencer, the secondary program co-ordinator for the Near North District School Board, which runs English public schools in North Bay and surrounding areas. 

The Ontario government stopped making final exams mandatory years ago, meaning they are used in different ways from board to board, school to school, even teacher to teacher.

But Spencer said the trend away from exams accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, when in-person testing was often impossible. 

"We recognize the way that students may showcase their learning is different and the weight, the priority of an exam, diminished over those pandemic times as well," said Spencer.

She said it's common for classes like physical education and drama to have no exam at all, while courses like math or history often have an exam worth 15 to 20 per cent of the final grade, compared with 30 or 40 per cent in the past. 

Instead of exams, high schools have shifted toward "culminating" projects, essays or interviews.

Grade 12 Lasalle student Damian Savard said he struggled through a math exam Monday that was worth 15 per cent of his mark, while his "culminating" was worth 15 per cent.

"Shoot! Did I remember all the stuff from the first month of my class?" he said, adding he does enjoy the rush of exam week.

"It's your exam. Your work. It's what's in your head."

Glenda Black, a professor in the Schulich School of Education at Nipissing University, said learning to write an exam is still a skill most students will need when they get to university or college.

"What this is, is really a movement away from what was happening before, which was a 'Teach, test and hope for the best' approach to assessment," she said. 

"It's providing students feedback in order for them to improve."

Black said she also worries that colleges and universities will have a tougher time, in the coming years, evaluating the students coming out of high school. 

"If there is no consistency, there's no standard," she said. 

"Then it becomes really difficult for post-secondary programs to look at their entry levels for those students."