The Final Exam Complaint Line
Posted by Peter Gerlach (peter gerlach) on Jan 16 2006 at 2:28 PM
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The Final Exam Complaint Line is the Dutch school student organisation, LAKS' (Landelijk Aktie Komitee Scholieren) project to improve their final exams.

For approximately two decades ago the organisation of the final exams in Holland was of poor quality. Exams were out of proportion with each other, meaning that some were very difficult, and some were very easy, on the local level, the organisation of the final exams was sometimes best described as chaotic and exams even contained mistakes from time to time.

Back then the school students didn’t have anywhere to turn with their complaints, so therefore our organisation (LAKS) set up a final exam complaint line 18 years ago, and today it’s still running.

For 18 years we have been gathering the complaints and evaluations on exams. We’ve set up a great network, and we have gained much influence on the whole process around the exams.

At first it was very small, and only few complaints were gathered. But due to the fact that we kept on setting it up year after year it has grown to a large project.

The complaint line has successively gained more influence over the exams. LAKS is now represented in the meeting that decides about how heavy exams should be marked. We also make research on complaints on mistakes in the exam. If we find the complaint to be correct we directly inform the organisation making the exams. If they really have done a mistake they often decide to give the points for the question to everyone.

7 years ago we received approximately 7000 complaints, whilst last year we gathered 76000 complaints.
This doesn’t mean that exams have been getting worse, only that people know the project so well that they dare to tell us about their bad experiences.

As a matter of fact exams have been getting better due to the fact that everyone benefited from the feedback that students gave through our final exam complaint line.
Many mistakes in the organising of the exams have been extinct, and many big mistakes don’t occur as often anymore.

As this project grew bigger, we gained much more media attention. Many newspapers call daily, and we cooperate with a media organisation, which makes 4 exam journals on radio, and 2 for TV each day during the final exam period.

In this way the dutch school students influence the way exams are held.