How are you feeling about Mandatory final exams this year? Williamsburg-James’s city county school system has decided to make final exams mandatory for students this year. For the past few years, they have been optional to students and were not required. Many students have differing opinions on whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. Final exams being mandatory is unfair to students and should not be enforced.
Final exams being mandatory puts extra stress on students that already have enough pressure on them to perform well in school. Students are constantly worried about their grades especially in high school because they are taking such difficult courses. There are such high expectations for students, and it’s exhausting for them to try and live up to them and try to perform the best that they can. Adding a mandatory exam on top of already stressful classes will only cause students to be even more stressed and overwhelmed with school.
Another reason exams should not be mandatory is because students want to have their summer. When making exams mandatory students are forced to go to school for a week longer solely to take exams. Kids look forward to their summers to have a break from school and all the stress that comes along with school. Kids already have immense pressure and stress on them to meet certain expectations during the school year so why put even more stress on them and just give them their break. At the end of the year no one wants to have to worry about exams all they are thinking about is summer and what they are going to do in their time off. I know I don’t want to spend that extra week in school and I just want to have my summer break.
Although exams can be beneficial for some students and will not hurt their grades this is not true for everyone therefore, they should not be mandatory. Some students use final exams to help boost their grade at the end of the year and it really does help them but for others final exams can hurt their grades tremendously. Exams being optional was more beneficial to all students because it gave people who needed to bring their grades up at the end of the year the opportunity but wasn’t forcing other students who didn’t need to take them. We should have the option of whether we want to take exams or not based on what benefits us best.
The decision to make final exams mandatory could really hurt some students and greatly affect their grades. This could be detrimental to some students and could cause their stress levels to rise even higher than they already are. The schools can still keep the option of taking exams for students without enforcing them on everyone to be more beneficial for all students. overall making exams mandatory for all students seems unfair and does not benefit everyone individually.
