The EconomistNovember 28th 2020 551“M
y brother thinksI’m crazy,” says
Márcia Ramos, a 53-year-old from
Rio de Janeiro. After losing a job in sales a
few years ago, Ms Ramos decided to retrain
as a lawyer. She and 6m others are now
waiting to take the enem, an exam that
many Brazilian universities use in their ad-
missions process. The test should have tak-
en place in November. Because of covid-19
it has been postponed until January.
The free test-prep class Ms Ramos at-
tends, run by a youth group, has been less
effective since it went online. So she is re-
lieved to have more time to cram. The delay
to the enemhas, however, led universities
to fill more of their spots for the coming ac-
ademic year using their own entrance ex-
ams. This is bad news for poorer students
such as Ms Ramos who have less time and
money to study for several tests.
School closures have disrupted the edu-
cation of close to 1.5bn pupils since the
start of the year. Governments have been
forced to make difficult decisions about
whether and how to conduct important ex-ams. These have revived long-running de-
bates about the fairness of high-stakes
tests. That could result in changes that last
far beyond the pandemic.
Many countries have ploughed ahead
with big exams. On December 3rd half a
million youngsters will sit South Korea’s
fearsome matriculation exam. Face-masks
are mandatory. Papers will be brought to
hospitals for any candidate needing treat-
ment for covid-19. Pupils lost at least five
weeks of face-to-face learning when the
pandemic closed their classrooms; cram
schools closed, too. But one 18-year-old
from Seoul does not feel hard done by.
When classes were forced online pupils
“talked less and studied more”, she says.
In July some 10m people sat the gaokao,
China’s school-leavers’ exam. The two-day
test took place a month late; exam centres
set aside quarantine spaces in case candi-
dates developed symptoms while it was
happening. Provincial governments in
Germany also agreed that their school-
leavers’ exams should go ahead, thoughthey account for only a small portion of
students’ final grades. Spain suffered one
of Europe’s worst outbreaks and imposed
one of its strictest lockdowns. Its universi-
ty-entrance exam still went ahead, though
it covered less material than usual.
Some countries allowed exams to go
ahead but with alterations. Italy called off
written tests for school-leavers, but al-
lowed an oral examination to proceed.
Austria and Hungary did the opposite. In
America Advanced Placement exams—op-
tional courses that some teenagers take to
impress university admissions offices—
went online. The papers were shortened to
45 minutes and covered only material can-
didates were likely to have studied before
they were booted out of their classrooms.
Andreas Schleicher, head of education
at the oecd, a club of mostly rich countries,
thinks more countries could have held ex-
ams safely: “You don’t want people to talk;
you don’t need them to move around; their
desks are quite far apart.” So far it appears
that the grades of most pupils who did sit
exams this year have been no worse than
usual, according to uk naric, a British gov-
ernment agency that keeps track of qualifi-
cations in other countries. Candidates in
Germany performed a little better.
Some countries, including Britain,
France and Ireland, cancelled exams. That
had least impact in places where pupils
rack up marks before any final tests. Other
governments asked teachers to help decideExams and covid-19Testing, testing
SÃO PAULO AND SEOUL
The pandemic has prompted questions about high-stakes examsInternational