Page:EB1911 - Volume 10.djvu/56

Rh subjects, shorthand (the Society of Arts and London Chamber of Commerce), engineering (Institutions of Civil Engineers, of Mechanical Engineers, and of Electrical Engineers).

3. School-leaving Examinations.—The faculty of arts in medieval universities covered secondary as well as higher education in the subjects concerned. The division in arts subjects between secondary and university education has been drawn at different levels in different countries. Thus the first two years of the arts curriculum in English and American universities correspond, roughly speaking, to the last two years spent in a secondary school of Germany or France, and the continental “school-leaving examinations” correspond to the intermediate examinations of the newer English universities and to the pass examinations for the degree at Oxford and Cambridge (Mark Pattison, Suggestions on Academical Organization, 1868, p. 238, and Matthew Arnold, Higher Schools and Universities in Germany, 1892, p. 209).

A tabular summary is given (see Tables I., II., III., IV.) of the requirements of the secondary school-leaving examinations of France, Prussia (for the nine-year secondary schools) and Scotland, and of the university of London.

There are in England a number of school examinations which, under prescribed conditions, also serve as school-leaving examinations, and give entrance to certain universities, especially the Oxford and Cambridge local examinations (both established in 1858), and the examinations of the Oxford and Cambridge “Joint Board.” A movement to reduce the number of entrance examinations and to secure uniformity in their standard was set on foot in 1901. In that year the General Medical Council communicated to the Board of Education a memorial on the subject from the Headmasters’ Conference. The memorial was further communicated to various professional bodies concerned. Conferences were held by the consultative committee of the Board of Education in 1903, with representatives of the universities, the Headmasters’ Conference, the Association of Head-Masters, the Association of Head-Mistresses, the College of Preceptors, the Private Schools’ Association, and with representatives of professional bodies. The committee were of opinion that a central board, consisting of representatives of the Board of Education and the different examining bodies, should be established, to co-ordinate and control the standards of the examinations, and to secure interchangeability of certificates, &c., as soon as a sufficient number of such bodies signified their willingness to be represented on the board. They recommended that the examination should be conducted by external and internal examiners, representing in each case the examining body and the school staff respectively, and that reports on the school work of candidates should be available for reference by the examiners (circular of the Board of Education of 12th of July 1904).

The “accrediting” system in the United States was started by the university of Michigan in 1871. A school desiring to be accredited is submitted to inspection without previous notice. If the inspection is satisfactory, the school is accredited by a university for from one to three years, and upon the favourable report of its principal any of its students are admitted to the university by which it has been accredited without any entrance examination. In practice it is found that many students whom their teachers refuse to certify are able to pass the university entrance examination. The statistics of nine years show that the standard of the certified students is higher than that of non-certified students. Two hundred and fifty schools are accredited by the university of Michigan. In 1904 it was stated that the system was gaining favour in the east, and that it had been adopted more or less by all the eastern colleges and universities with the exception of Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Columbia.

4. Methods of Examination.—Examinations may test (i.) knowledge, or, more exactly, the power of restating facts and arguments of a kind that may be learnt by rote; (ii.) the power of doing something, e.g. of making a précis of a written document, of writing a letter or a report on a particular subject with a particular object in view, of translating from or into a foreign language, of solving a mathematical problem, of criticizing a passage from a literary work, of writing an essay on an historical or literary subject with the aid of books in a library, of diagnosing the malady of a patient, of analysing a chemical mixture or compound; and (the highest form under the rubric) of making an original contribution to learning or science as the result of personal investigation or experiment. Examinations are carried out at present by means of (1) written papers; (2) oral examinations; (3) practical, including in medicine clinical, tests; (4) theses; or a combination of these.

In written examinations the candidates are, as a rule, supplied with a number of printed questions, of which they must answer all, or a certain proportion, within a given time, varying, as a rule, from 1 to 3 hours, the latter being the duration most generally adopted for higher examinations in

England. Whereas in France and Germany the questions are generally few in number and require long answers, showing constructive skill and mastery of the mother-tongue on the part of the candidates, such “essay-papers” are comparatively rare in England. In many subjects, the written examinations test memory rather than capacity. It has been suggested that sets of questions to be answered in writing should as a rule be divided into two parts: (i.) a number of questions requiring short answers and intended to test the range of the candidate’s knowledge; (ii.) questions requiring long answers, intended to test its depth, and the candidate’s powers of co-ordination and reflection. A necessary condition for the application of the second kind of test is that time should be given for reflection and for rewriting, say one-third or one-quarter of the whole time allowed. A further distinction is important, especially in such subjects as mathematics or foreign languages, in which it is legitimate to ask what precise power on the part of a candidate the passing of an examination shall signify. Owing to a prevailing confusion between tests of memory and tests of capacity, the allowance for chance fairly applied to the former is apt to be unduly extended to the latter. In applying tests of memory, it may be legitimate to allow a candidate to pass who answers correctly from 30 to 50% of the questions; such an allowance if applied to a test of capacity, such as the performance of a sum in addition, the solution of triangles by means of trigonometrical tables, or the translation of an easy passage from a foreign language, appears to be irrational. A candidate who obtains only 50% of the marks in performing such operations cannot be regarded as being able to perform them; and, if the examination is to be treated as a test of his capacity to perform them, he should be rejected unless he obtains full marks, less a certain allowance (say 10, or at most 20%) in view of the more or less artificial conditions inherent in all examinations.

The oral examination is better suited than the written to discover the range of a candidate’s knowledge; it also serves as a test of his powers of expression in his mother-tongue, or in a foreign language, and may be used (as in the examination for entrance to the Osborne Naval College)

to test the important qualities (hardly tested in any other examinations at present), readiness of wit, common-sense and nerve. It may be objected that candidates are heavily handicapped by nervousness in oral examinations, but this objection does not afford sufficient ground for rejecting the test, provided that it is supplemented by others. Oral tests are used almost invariably in medical examinations; and there is a growing tendency to make them compulsory in dealing with modern languages. Oral examinations are much more used abroad than in England, where the pupils during their school years receive but little exercise in the art of consecutive speaking.