The Bhutanese Leading the way.
The Bhutan Council for School Examination and Assessment (BCSEA) has announced a change in its approach to trial examinations.
Effective immediately, the practice of sending trial examination question papers from BCSEA to schools will be discontinued. Instead, schools will return to setting their own trial examination questions, a system that was previously in place before the centralized approach was introduced.
Earlier this February, BCSEA said that trial examination papers were introduced to provide students with practical experience in both common and high-stakes examinations. The intention was to standardize the trial exams across all schools, ensuring that students were equally prepared for their final board examinations.
Despite the good intentions, the recent review revealed this system had minimal implications for the final board exam results. BCSEA stated, “We have found that the practice of sending trial examination question papers does not add any additional value to the examination process.”
During the initial implementation phase, BCSEA said that they had not conducted in-depth research or collected formal feedback from teachers and students.
Time constraints, due to the busy schedules of preparing trial papers and marking board examinations, had limited their ability to gather comprehensive input. Nonetheless, informal feedback from teachers and observations from visits to schools across twenty dzongkhags indicated that many educators welcomed this for its potential to reduce their workload.
Despite these benefits, BCSEA’s latest decision of sending trial examination papers were found to have fulfilled their initial purpose, but did not significantly contribute to improving the quality of student preparation for final examinations.
BCSEA’s decision to revert to the previous system is also influenced by the observation that trial exams should reflect the same level of rigor and quality as the final examinations.
For years, BCSEA has provided practice questions online to aid student preparation. BCSEA highlighted that students can still benefit from valuable preparation through the resources available on their website.
School principals are advised to resume the practice of setting their own trial examination questions and can access additional resources and support from BCSEA’s website.
Meanwhile, BCSEA will continue to provide resources and support to schools to ensure that they are well-equipped to set high-quality trial examinations.
