Think mid-December, a cold room, stress, eyelids heavy from sleepless nights and what comes to mind? Is it perhaps the December exams? Well this year, juniors and seniors can breathe calmly and freshmen and sophomores can look forward to a better future as the school has officially announced that they are discontinuing December exams for all upperclassmen.

The December exams have been in place for three years now in its current format. Every year all the grades have had the same amount of learning time, the same schedule, and the same expectations. Why the sudden change?

According to Dean of Academics & IB Coordinator Mr. Philip Rogers, “the decision was made in concern for students in grade 12 and their mock exam schedule which was, well, nonexistent.” For the past few years, seniors have been getting a lot of exams with no logic to when they would come, but simply happening when the teachers could find the time. The result was high levels of stress and widespread chaos.

Furthermore, Mr. Rogers explained that another concern was “the amount of teaching time we have in high school leading up to the final may exams and how [the school] could give back some time for grades 11 and 12.” Many courses could benefit from having more time to get through their material instead of scrambling to finish.

Mr. Rogers also added that being an international school, ISB has “a number of teachers that have worked in schools around the globe that have done things differently”.   Many of these teachers wanted to see ISB reconsider the December exams.

Before this major change was made, the school went through a lengthy procedure to establish the pros and cons of discontinuing December exams for juniors and seniors. Firstly, according to Mr. Rogers, “a committee of teacher volunteers who represented quite a wide range of departments was formed.” This committee then “set out the points for why they would want to make the change and what is important for [the school] in terms of moving forward.”

Mr. Rogers explained that “after several meetings, the committee put together a presentation for the heads of department and HS admin regarding their thoughts and ideas.” As a result of this presentation, the school decided that they would work together to make a change.

The heads of department and HS administration also looked at models from other schools. Mr. Rogers mentioned that for example, “Jakarta Intercultural School (JIS) and International School Manila (ISM) also have mock exams for their grade 12s” and ISB could try “to tie that in to our current calendar schedule”.

In reality, setting up a mock exam period for seniors is much harder than it may seem. Second semester includes both second season and third season IASAS as well as Cultural Convention.

In the end, after much work, the school has successfully created a mock exam period roughly at the same time as ISM and JIS. This way, there is at least some standardization across the schools.

Not having December exams may seem like a blessing but many people are worried about the possible downsides of this change. Both Samantha March (11) and Bethelle McPherson (11) are “scared about the second semester cumulative exam” as there “is twice as much material to review as in a semester exam.”

It should be noted that end of the year exams for juniors and seniors have been cumulative for the past few years anyway, even with the December exams in place. Therefore, this change does not result in harder/longer end of the year exams but simply removes the extra December exams.

Because most courses at ISB are 1-year or 2-year courses, the semester exams are simply unnecessary for grades 11 and 12. Besides, in the end, yes assessment is important, but learning comes first and this change definitely supports that idea.

Antonina (Tosia) L