Exam

An examination (exam or evaluation) or test is an educational assessment intended to measure a

test-taker's knowledge, skill, aptitude, physical fitness, or classification in many other topics
(e.g., beliefs).[1] A test may be administered verbally, on paper, on a computer, or in a predetermined
area that requires a test taker to demonstrate or perform a set of skills.
Tests vary in style, rigor and requirements. There is no general consensus or invariable standard for
test formats and difficulty. Often, the format and difficulty of the test is dependent upon the
educational philosophy of the instructor, subject matter, class size, policy of the educational
institution, and requirements of accreditation or governing bodies.
A test may be administered formally or informally. An example of an informal test is a reading test
administered by a parent to a child. A formal test might be a final examination administered by a
teacher in a classroom or an IQ test administered by a psychologist in a clinic. Formal testing often
results in a grade or a test score.[2] A test score may be interpreted with regards to
a norm or criterion, or occasionally both. The norm may be established independently, or
by statistical analysis of a large number of participants.
A test may be developed and administered by an instructor, a clinician, a governing body, or a test
provider. In some instances, the developer of the test may not be directly responsible for its
administration. For example, in the United States, Educational Testing Service (ETS), a nonprofit
educational testing and assessment organization, develops standardized tests such as the SAT but
may not directly be involved in the administration or proctoring of these tests.
History[edit]

"The Official Career of Xu

Xianqing" - on the bottom right the imperial examination examinees sit their exam, 1590, Ming
dynasty
Oral and informal examinations[edit]
Informal, unofficial, and non-standardized tests and testing systems have existed throughout history.
For example, tests of skill such as archery contests have existed in China since the Zhou
dynasty (or, more mythologically, Yao).[3] Oral exams were administered in various parts of the world
including ancient China and Europe. A precursor to the later Chinese imperial examinations was in
place since the Han dynasty, during which the Confucian characteristic of the examinations was
determined. However these examinations did not offer an official avenue to government
appointment, the majority of which were filled through recommendations based on qualities such as
social status, morals, and ability.
China[edit]
Standardized written examinations were first implemented in China. They were commonly known as
the imperial examinations (keju).
The bureaucratic imperial examinations as a concept has its origins in the year 605 during the short
lived Sui dynasty. Its successor, the Tang dynasty, implemented imperial examinations on a
relatively small scale until the examination system was extensively expanded during the reign of Wu
Zetian.[4] Included in the expanded examination system was a military exam that tested physical
ability, but the military exam never had a significant impact on the Chinese officer corps and military
degrees were seen as inferior to their civil counterpart. The exact nature of Wu's influence on the
examination system is still a matter of scholarly debate.
During the Song dynasty the emperors expanded both examinations and the government school
system, in part to counter the influence of hereditary nobility, increasing the number of degree
holders to more than four to five times that of the Tang. From the Song dynasty onward, the
examinations played the primary role in selecting scholar-officials, who formed the literati elite of
society. However the examinations co-existed with other forms of recruitment such as direct
appointments for the ruling family, nominations, quotas, clerical promotions, sale of official titles, and
special procedures for eunuchs. The regular higher level degree examination cycle was decreed in
1067 to be 3 years but this triennial cycle only existed in nominal terms. In practice both before and
after this, the examinations were irregularly implemented for significant periods of time: thus, the
calculated statistical averages for the number of degrees conferred annually should be understood in
this context. The jinshi exams were not a yearly event and should not be considered so; the annual
average figures are a necessary artifact of quantitative analysis.[5] The operations of the examination
system were part of the imperial record keeping system, and the date of receiving the jinshi degree
is often a key biographical datum: sometimes the date of achieving jinshi is the only firm date known
for even some of the most historically prominent persons in Chinese history.
A brief interruption to the examinations occurred at the beginning of the Mongol Yuan dynasty in the
13th century, but was later brought back with regional quotas which favored the Mongols and
disadvantaged Southern Chinese. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the system contributed to
the narrow and focused nature of intellectual life and enhanced the autocratic power of the emperor.
The system continued with some modifications until its abolition in 1905 during the last years of the
Qing dynasty. The modern examination system for selecting civil servants also indirectly evolved
from the imperial one.[6]
Spread[edit]

Invigilators seated on high chairs at a provincial

exam in 1888 in northern Vietnam From the mid

19th century, universities began to institute written examinations to assess the aptitude of the
pupils. This is an excerpt from the 1842 Tripos examination in Cambridge University.
Japan[edit]
Japan implemented the examination system for 200 years during the Heian period (794-1185). Like
the Chinese examinations, the curriculum revolved around the Confucian canon. However, unlike in
China, it was only ever applied to the minor nobility and so gradually faded away under the
hereditary system during the Samurai era.[7]
Korea[edit]
Main article: Gwageo
The examination system was established in Korea in 958 under the reign of Gwangjong of Goryeo.
Any free man (not Nobi) was able to take the examinations. By the Joseon period, high offices were
closed to aristocrats who had not passed the exams. The examination system continued until 1894
when it was abolished by the Gabo Reform. As in China, the content of the examinations focused on
the Confucian canon and ensured a loyal scholar bureaucrat class which upheld the throne.[8]
Vietnam[edit]
The Confucian examination system in Vietnam was established in 1075 under the Lý
dynasty Emperor Lý Nhân Tông and lasted until the Nguyễn dynasty Emperor Khải Định (1919).
There were only three levels of examinations in Vietnam: interprovincial, pre-court, and court.[8]
West[edit]
The imperial examination system was known to Europeans as early as 1570. It received great
attention from the Jesuit Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), who viewed it and its Confucian appeal to
rationalism favorably in comparison to religious reliance on "apocalypse." Knowledge of
Confucianism and the examination system was disseminated broadly in Europe following
the Latin translation of Ricci's journal in 1614. During the 18th century, the imperial examinations
were often discussed in conjunction with Confucianism, which attracted great attention from
contemporary European thinkers such as Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Baron
d'Holbach, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Friedrich Schiller.[9] In France and Britain, Confucian
ideology was used in attacking the privilege of the elite.[10] Figures such as Voltaire claimed that the
Chinese had "perfected moral science" and François Quesnay advocated an economic and political
system modeled after that of the Chinese. According to Ferdinand Brunetière (1849-1906), followers
of Physiocracy such as François Quesnay, whose theory of free trade was based on Chinese
classical theory, were sinophiles bent on introducing "l'esprit chinois" to France. He also admits that
French education was really based on Chinese literary examinations which were popularized in
France by philosophers, especially Voltaire. Western perception of China in the 18th century
admired the Chinese bureaucratic system as favourable over European governments for its seeming
meritocracy.[11][12] However those who admired China such as Christian Wolff were sometimes
persecuted. In 1721 he gave a lecture at the University of Halle praising Confucianism, for which he
was accused of atheism and forced to give up his position at the university.[13]
The earliest evidence of examinations in Europe date to 1215 or 1219 in Bologna. These were
chiefly oral in the form of a question or answer, disputation, determination, defense, or public lecture.
The candidate gave a public lecture of two prepared passages assigned to him from the civil or
canon law, and then doctors asked him questions, or expressed objections to answers. Evidence of
written examinations do not appear until 1702 at Trinity College, Cambridge. According to Sir
Michael Sadler, Europe may have had written examinations since 1518 but he admits the "evidence
is not very clear." In Prussia, medication examinations began in 1725. The Mathematical Tripos,
founded in 1747, is commonly believed to be the first honor examination, but James Bass
Mullinger considered "the candidates not having really undergone any examination whatsoever"
because the qualification for a degree was merely four years of residence. France adopted the
examination system in 1791 as a result of the French Revolution but it collapsed after only ten
years. Germany implemented the examination system around 1800.[12]
Englishmen in the 18th century such as Eustace Budgell recommended imitating the Chinese
examination system but the first English person to recommend competitive examinations to qualify
for employment was Adam Smith in 1776. In 1838, the Congregational church missionary Walter
Henry Medhurst considered the Chinese exams to be "worthy of imitating."[12] In 1806, the British
established a Civil Service College near London for training of the East India Company's
administrators in India. This was based on the recommendations of British East India Company
officials serving in China and had seen the Imperial examinations. In 1829, the company introduced
civil service examinations in India on a limited basis.[14] This established the principle of qualification
process for civil servants in England.[13] In 1847 and 1856, Thomas Taylor Meadows strongly
recommended the adoption of the Chinese principle of competitive examinations in Great Britain in
his Desultory Notes on the Government and People of China. According to Meadows, "the long
duration of the Chinese empire is solely and altogether owing to the good government which
consists in the advancement of men of talent and merit only."[15] Both Thomas Babington Macaulay,
who was instrumental in passing the Saint Helena Act 1833, and Stafford Northcote, 1st Earl of
Iddesleigh, who prepared the Northcote–Trevelyan Report that catalyzed the British civil service,
were familiar with Chinese history and institutions. The Northcote–Trevelyan Report of 1854 made
four principal recommendations: that recruitment should be on the basis of merit determined through
standardized written examination, that candidates should have a solid general education to enable
inter-departmental transfers, that recruits should be graded into a hierarchy, and that promotion
should be through achievement, rather than 'preferment, patronage, or purchase'.[16]
When the report was brought up in parliament in 1853, Lord Monteagle argued against the
implementation of open examinations because it was a Chinese system and China was not an
"enlightened country." Lord Stanley called the examinations the "Chinese Principle." The Earl of
Granville did not deny this but argued in favor of the examination system, considering that the
minority Manchus had been able to rule China with it for over 200 years. In 1854, Edwin
Chadwick reported that some noblemen did not agree with the measures introduced because they
were Chinese. The examination system was finally implemented in the British Indian Civil Service in
1855, prior to which admission into the civil service was purely a matter of patronage, and
in England in 1870. Even as late as ten years after the competitive examination plan was passed,
people still attacked it as an "adopted Chinese culture." Alexander Baillie-Cochrane, 1st Baron
Lamington insisted that the English "did not know that it was necessary for them to take lessons from
the Celestial Empire." In 1875, Archibald Sayce voiced concern over the prevalence of competitive
examinations, which he described as "the invasion of this new Chinese culture."[12]
After Great Britain's successful implementation of systematic, open, and competitive examinations in
India in the 19th century, similar systems were instituted in the United Kingdom itself, and in other
Western nations.[17] Like the British, the development of the French and American civil service was
influenced by the Chinese system. When Thomas Jenckes made a Report from the Joint Select
Committee on Retrenchment in 1868, it contained a chapter on the civil service in China. In 1870,
William Spear wrote a book called The Oldest and the Newest Empire-China and the United States,
in which he urged the United States government to adopt the Chinese examination system. Like in
Britain, many of the American elites scorned the plan to implement competitive examinations, which
they considered foreign, Chinese, and "un-American." As a result, the civil services reform
introduced into the House of Representatives in 1868 was not passed until 1883. The Civil Service
Commission tried to combat such sentiments in its report:[18]
...with no intention of commending either the religion or the imperialism of China, we could not see
why the fact that the most enlightened and enduring government of the Eastern world had acquired
an examination as to the merits of candidates for office, should any more deprive the American
people of that advantage, if it might be an advantage, than the facts that Confucius had taught
political morality, and the people of China had read books, used the compass, gunpowder, and the
multiplication table, during centuries when this continent was a wilderness, should deprive our
people of those conveniences.[12]
— Civil Service Commission