On university admissions and provincial exams
Most British Columbians probably don’t know that students in BC graduate from high school without writing any provincially-mandated exams that matter. Our provincial assessments are called graduation requirements but their scores do not factor into student GPAs and there is no minimum score to pass; the exams can even be left blank. In Grade 12, literacy is the only subject tested. Unfortunately, our exam situation has led us to a profoundly nonsensical university admissions system. Here’s how it works: teachers assign percentage grades from 0 to 100 as they see fit. Students accumulate these grades, average them into GPAs, and send them off to universities to have their fate decided. That’s it.
How did we get here? Previously, BC students were required to take Provincial Exams across various subjects, with the exams accounting for 40% of the final course grades. If a students’ course grade and exam grade differed dramatically, a red flag was raised. Over the last 25 years we dismantled our Provincial Exam system. First we scrapped our so-called Scholarship Exams, then Provincial Exams were made optional and then, finally, we eliminated the Provincial Exam system entirely in 2016.
In the absence of any checks and balances, teachers are now under pressure to raise grades. A very honest Grade 12 student from Vancouver’s west side once told me, “The most important part of school is rushing to the guidance counsellor’s office on the first day of school and getting transferred to the teachers who give out easy A’s.” Yikes! Consider the inequities this implies: students who have the knowledge and resources to game this system can access higher grades than those who don’t. And private schools face a conflict of interest: what if their customers demand high grades, which can be handed out without oversight?
As grade inflation progresses, admissions averages in our universities’ most competitive programs are now in the low or even mid 90s. At the University of Waterloo, a student applying with a GPA below 90% would reportedly have a mere 2% chance of admission to programs like Computer Engineering. The average GPA for admitted students at UBC goes up every year, and is now at nearly 90% across all faculties. As grades lose their meaning, some universities, such as UBC, now consider applications more holistically, but this approach has serious limitations including subjectivity (less transparency in the process), authorship questions (i.e., application essays written with the help of tutors) and strategic resume-padding (aided by family resources or connections).
How does all this impact me as the principal and math teacher at VISST? For one, assigning grades with no reference point is a bizarre and complex process. When designing a test I ask myself, How difficult should I make it? How much time should I provide? Should I include a bonus question? These decisions might be enough to push grades past the university admission threshold in either direction. I assign grades like “90%” without anyone agreeing on what it is 90% of. I shouldn’t be left alone at this guesswork! The point of standardized testing is to agree on a common set of these test parameters instead of teachers individually choosing them. We have tests either way.
In the absence of Provincial Exams, VISST students demonstrate their achievements in other ways: they participate (and shine!) in extracurricular events like math contests, enroll in AP courses with standardized AP exams, and, over 5 years, create a digital portfolio showcasing their projects, proudest successes, failures, and moments of personal and academic growth.
Standardized tests are not perfect. They may emphasize rote learning over creativity, promote “teaching to the test”, and unfairly assess students with exam anxiety. Personally, despite all their problems, I believe the pros of having some sort of standardized testing outweigh the cons. They feel like the least bad of many bad options. A system without exams, such as we now have in BC, is even more unfair and even more easily gamed. This is precisely the reason why MIT defied current trends and reinstated their SAT/ACT requirement in 2022. [Update Jan 2024: see also the New York Times article The Misguided War on the SAT, with similar claims and arguments.]
I believe the BC Ministry of Education arrived here with the best of intentions: by identifying something problematic and eliminating it. Unfortunately, our new system lacks any anchor point for grades, and thus promotes confusion, unfairness, and perverse incentives. Our Provincial Exam system was flawed, but much less so than our current system.
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