EDITORIAL - Goodbye, board exams?

In courses such as law or medicine, a minimum of eight years before graduation should give an accurate picture of the qualifications of each student for the profession. There are tests for various subjects and competencies throughout each semester and at the end of every school year, and a thesis required for graduation adds to the assessment. Each school has a grading system that produces valedictorians, salutatorians and the various degrees of cum laudes per batch.

In such circumstances, a professional licensure examination can appear redundant, and will entail additional costs for the review and testing. Even regular four-year courses can provide a clear assessment of a student’s academic excellence or mediocrity.

With these in mind, there is a proposal to abolish professional licensure examinations, including the Bar exams. Students in certain schools will likely support the proposal.

Those supporting the suggestion raised by Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III also note that students who have consistently performed well academically as undergraduates can underperform during board exams due to personal crises or emotional distress such as the death of a loved one. There have also been scandals in the past about test questions being leaked to certain schools.

The problem in this country, as pointed out by opponents of the proposal, is the proliferation of diploma mills. When global demand for nurses surged in previous years, for example, prompting even doctors in the Philippines to take up nursing courses, the government had to shut down nursing programs and even schools dedicated to the course because too many of their graduates could not pass the licensure exams. Certain nursing groups, not surprisingly, are among those cool to the abolition of the board exams.

A possible compromise, as put forward by retired Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio, is to stop grading the performance in the standardized exams, and to simply adopt a pass or fail system. Carpio says this is the system in many countries including the United States. It’s a point worth considering in the discussion that Bello has started.