По­яс­не­ние. Some say that exams give students motivation to study harder. Others argue that they provide unnecessary pressure and accomplish nothing.

I for myself tend to agree with the former. I consider myself a lazy, but a responsible person, so when there is an exam or a job to be done, I do my best, otherwise I lean towards wasting time and having fun and I am sure I am not the only one like that, so there is a certain number of students that study hard mainly to pass the upcoming exams. Moreover, the exams let the students see how well they are actually doing, which is quite important in my opinion.

However, there are people that think the students' performance can be undermined by the fear of the exam that they naturally feel. They might also add that learning a subject may be funneled into exam preparation which reduces the knowledge students are left with at the end of the course.

I can't agree with those statements for two main reasons. Firstly, the fear actually stimulates students to work harder because a student that studied all that he had to is sure to pass a properly designed exam. Secondly, the composition of the exam should require all the knowledge the students' course had to offer, so the "funneling" problem comes not from the concept of an exam, but from how it is implemented, which is often done wrong due to the human factor.

To conclude, it is safe to say that education cannot be without exams that work as a stimulus for students to work and a measure of their succes.