Standardised testing is something that has become crucial to most educational systems over time. The main point of testing overall is typically to help students and teachers gauge academic progress, while standardised testing typically exists so students can have some evidence of their achievements to show to colleges and employers. Every system uses different rules, regulations, and guidelines to decide how the tests should be created, administered, and examined, and each system enforces them to different levels.

This is one way in which standardised testing can fall short. Standardised testing can be extremely stressful. One of the most extreme examples of a stressful exam is the national college admission exam in China, the Gaokao. The Gaokao is extremely strictly enforced and the syllabus is extensive and difficult. This single exam is also considered one of the most important qualifications students can have for college. This causes pressure so immense that some students are driven to suicide, which is unfortunately not uncommon. This highlights the issue of balancing both freedom and strictness. For standardised testing to be successful in its goal, it needs to be of a reasonable difficulty which the target group of students can reasonably handle with enough effort, while still being difficult enough to actually challenge students.

However, regardless of balance another issue with standardised testing is that this can lead to a significant financial and regional bias in college admissions and some unfairness between countries. Every college has their own criteria which they accept, but colleges in the same country typically have somewhat similar requirements. Colleges from less developed countries typically accept qualifications from education systems in richer countries, while the opposite is rarely true. For instance, the UK has A levels and Switzerland has the IB program, both of which are recognised almost globally. On the other hand, most poorer countries have a national exam that is mainly accepted by colleges in the country itself. This can lead to a gap in the opportunities people are offered based on their financial status and birthplace. For people living in less developed countres, international A levels and IB programs are simply not accessible either because of the price or because there simply are no schools offering education with these systems, so they have to work significantly harder with extracurriculars and projects to even match what students in first world countries get with education alone.

Overall, the issues most commonly brought up by people is that standardised testing sucks the passion out of subjects. Standardised testing is one of the only ways that admissions officers and employers can gauge an applicant’s proficiency in a field, as it somewhat engages students to apply their knowledge practically without the need for individual effort from interested parties. The issue with this is the standardisation itself. Students cannot do wellby simply being proficient in the subject, they have to study test taking methods. This can make it much more difficult for those who learn in different ways and at different paces to prove themselves. There are many people who excel in certain subjects or crafts but have to go above and beyond to prove that solely due to the fact that they do not have the skill of taking tests. This makes it much harder for them to pursue a career in fields they are interested in, which greatly reduces the opportunities they have.

However, many organisations in charge of such exams take measures to account for some of these issues. For instance, Pearson, an organisation which administers A level exams, will deal with the issue of balancing difficulty by grading tests on a curve to ensure that the grade distribution is relatively consistent for all exams, and every session they may make some revisions to the system for creating exams, creating mark schemes and examining tests in order to maintain this balance. To further help students prepare for the test taking aspect of tests, they have every past paper and mark scheme except for those from the last year available online, and while they may occasionally change question styles, they almost never change the general structure of exams. Another measure that has been taken is that many colleges and universities offer scholarship programs to those on lower incomes, which will help those in poorer countries afford higher educations. However, some issues, such as the reduction of passion, are somewhat unsolvable, and are just part of the nature of standardised tests.

Bearing all this in mind, standardised testing is an inherently flawed system which can make opportunities somewhat inaccessible to many groups, but it is a necessary evil, as it is also one of the only realistic ways that colleges, universities and workplaces can get an overview of a candidate’s capabilities without immense amounts of time and effort.