Final exams for Maths and Physics are getting easier

Questions in final exams in mathematics and physics have become much easier in the past 30 years. This is what two researchers wrote after studying 1,500 questions on the VWO exam devotion.

Over the past 30 years, average scores on math exams have increased by half a point and by a whole point in physics. However, VWO students didn’t just get smarter, the exams got easier. It also covers less dust than before, the researchers wrote.

For example, the questions contain fewer thinking steps, or these steps are largely pre-chewed. More lenient is also evaluated, although the effect is minimal according to the researchers.

Exams examined from 2015 to 2021 contained 40 to 50 percent less exam material than those from 1990 to 1995. More difficult questions and assignments were also omitted. “Think, for example, of the three-dimensional geometry of space,” says one of the researchers.

For the study, Loek Zonnenberg (a math teacher and former partner of the consulting firm McKinsey) and Paul Rutten (a McKinsey partner) compared 1,500 questions given during centralized tests since the 1990s. In doing so, they examined the difference between two periods: the period from 1990 to 1995 and the period from 2015 to 2021.

Researchers have studied mathematics and physics because these subjects are often important for further education. “Without a good foundation, students will have to catch up on this knowledge later in life and will also do worse in international competition,” says Sonnenberg. devotion.

It is difficult for researchers to explain why the tests are made easier. “Such change happens insidiously, and you don’t see it happening right in front of you if you compare one year to the next. But if you put thirty years in a row, the shift is surprisingly obvious and significant,” says Rutten.