[HPforGrownups] questions re: final exams

[Pen Robinson]

No: HPFGUIDX 43482


On Sunday, September 1, 2002, at 03:08 , dmwang9 wrote:
>
> Two questions:
>
> 1. Is one hour long enough for a final exam? Perhaps the British model 
> is
> different from the American one, but in my experience, finals tend to 
> last a
> bit longer, from 1.5 to 3 hours at least.

I think 'finals' is probably the wrong word for these exams, which may 
make the explanation easier...  End-of-year exams in English schools (I 
don't know details of Scottish ones, but Hogwarts seems to me to be 
based on English schools anyway) are only *important* exams when they 
are the public exams taken nationally.  In the Muggle world, GCSEs (at 
age 16 - ie OWLs) and A-Levels (at 18 - NEWTs).  (These days, 
complicated by the addition of AS-Levels at age 17, but JKR doesn't seem 
to worry about them so neither shall I.)

Other end-of-year exams are simply ways for teachers to assess how much 
you've learned during the year, and to get the pupils used to taking 
exams.   So the teacher for each subject is free to set exams of 
whatever kind, or length, they choose.
>
> 2. What exactly do the students do on campus between the end of finals 
> and
> their departure from school? I teach at an American boarding school, 
> and once
> students finish finals at the end of the year, they leave campus right 
> away --
> mostly to prevent excessive end-of-year mischief. Once again, perhaps 
> British
> schools have a different policy.
>
Um.  Well, loaf a bit, first of all.   It depended on age - the more 
junior pupils had a more regimented time.  But lessons did tend to 
resume, albeit rather casually - we might play bingo in French, or 
something like that, depending on the teacher.  (Of course, the 
first-year Sixth Formers still had actual work, as they were only 
half-way through a two-year course.)  As I recall, though, the 
non-public exam results usually came back to us before the end of term, 
and quite often the lessons would consist of going through the papers to 
see what the answers should have been.   (Public exams would be marked 
outside the school - wonder what happens with OWLs and NEWTs?  Are they 
assessed by outside markers?  Hmm.)  There might also be sports 
competitions, or students might be involved in end-of-term concerts or 
plays.  My children's school has 'Trips Weekend' when vast numbers of 
the kids go off to France or Holland for a long weekend.  At my boarding 
school, students did not leave before the official Last Day Of Term.

Funnily enough, the word 'campus' seems odd to me, in connection with a 
school.  It's a word I associate only with universities, and not all 
universities, at that.

Pen