An Adelaide principal is calling for a radical overhaul of SACE exams and hopes the assessment “becomes obsolete”.
Thousands of students across South Australia are set to begin their final exams from Monday with 15 tests undertaken electronically.
The rest are written tests with language subjects also having an oral component.
But Australian Science and Mathematics School principal Kylie Eggers hopes exams “become obsolete and go the way of the dodo”.
“Do they actually test student learning or just a measure of retention at a particular point in time?” she said.
“A doctor doesn’t do a theoretical test on paper, they’re seeing patients.”
Students at the school, with its campus at Flinders University, are told that exams are “an assessment type you need for now”.
“I hope to see it (the end of exams) but I don’t think it’s coming,” Ms Eggers said.
“Universities are moving away from it.”
She proposed that “it doesn’t have to be that everyone does the same” assessment, but said “it’s harder to look at the individual”.
For now, she wants all exams to be digital and believes they could be marked by artificial intelligence.
“The students express themselves in written texts with the technology,” she said.
Online exams have caused disruption in the past with a statewide error causing video to glitch in the 2023 modern history exam and the 2020 psychology exam was abandoned midway through due to a technical failure.
A SACE spokesman said “exams continue to be an important way for students to demonstrate their knowledge and skills under supervised conditions”.
“The SACE Board continually monitors developments in assessment and technology and evaluates how assessment practices can best support student learning,” he said.
“Any future changes to the format of electronic exams, such as the use of drawing and graphics tools, would be guided by educational value, accessibility and maintaining academic integrity”.
Flinders University education expert Tianchong Wang said supervised exams “might have an important role to play in the future”.
“We still need trustworthy evidence of what students know and can do independently,” Dr Wang said.
“In a world where AI can produce a polished essay in seconds, supervised exams become those moments we know with certainty that the thinking belongs to the student.”
The case for increased use of screens during exams is “strong”, according to Dr Wang, because “students can compose and revise their answers” and “typed responses are easier to read”.
“Paper retains advantages for equations, diagrams and several stages of working, particularly in mathematics and physical sciences,” he said.
Oral exams could provide another choice, Dr Wang said, as they “provide another way to assess the understanding behind a submission”.
However, it can “introduce additional demands” for students with issues relating to speech, hearing, language proficiency and anxiety.