Re-Evaluate the EMSB 2018 Secondary 4 Science Math Mid Term Exam

 On January 30th, 2018, EMSB secondary 4 students had to take the Secondary 4 Science Math Exam. In short: the exam was ridiculously difficult.

     The exam has a duration of 3 hours, with an extra 15 minutes at the end. Most years, students finish their exam within the first 2-2.5 hours. This was not the case this year. The majority of students used the entire 3 hours + 15 minutes, and walked out in utter panic. Many were crying, because they were unable to answer half of the last part (worth 60%) of the exam. The amount of emotional distress from all, including honor students, was absolutely absurd.

     To add to this, the EMSB gave us a misleading practice exam. The practice exam (attached here) contains easy-to-moderate questions. This was extremely misleading and unfair.

     I am a secondary 4 student, and this is my second time doing the Secondary 4 Midterm Exam (I used to be a year ahead in math). The exam last year was much easier, with the majority of kids finishing within 2 hours. I have 90% math average this year. I have a fluent understanding of the content, yet I found the exam ridiculously difficult. Although this is my second time doing this program, I can say without a doubt I performed much worse than last year.

     Secondary 4 is a very important year, with CEGEPs looking at this year's marks. To receive an unfairly hard exam, where the average mark does not correspond to the class average puts students in distress. For some kids, this exam result makes the difference in a pass or fail, honor roll, or better yet, the minimum requirements for some CEGEP programs.

     What we are asking is for this exam to be dismissed, marked on a curve, or at the least, looked over and weighed less. We should not suffer. The difficulty of the exam did not correlate to the difficulty of the course.

 

     We hope you take our proposal into consideration. Thank you!

 

*All signatures are from EMSB students who took the 2018 EMSB Science Math Mid Term Exam