More than a hundred students from secondary schools in Meppel and the surrounding area are not swinging at a liberation festival today, but are sitting in school benches. With the final exam just around the corner, they seize every opportunity to brush up on their knowledge.
The first final exams for high school students start next Thursday. To prepare them for this, school communities Stad&Esch and Dingstede organize voluntary exam training. Despite the fact that it is Liberation Day, many students show up.
Director Peter de Visser of Secondary Education Meppel and surroundings (VOMEO) is pleased to see an increase in the number of participants in the training courses compared to previous years.
He calls the main cause of this the corona pandemic. As a result, many students have missed teaching material and have been taught from behind the computer screen for a large part of their school time.
“These students have been affected by the pandemic for three years. For a vwo student, that is half the education and for vmbo students even three quarters. So students are looking for extra opportunities to pass their final exams.”
All that studying just before the final exam certainly makes sense, according to De Visser. He sees proof of this in the exam results of the students of previous school years. “Every year after the re-exams, we look at the results of students who have had exam training. On average, the grades are one point higher than at the first exam.”
The students themselves also see the benefit of it, although they have to miss the liberation festival for a year. “I actually think it’s fine,” responds one of the participants in the physics training.
“The basis for the exams is mainly laid in the fourth year and then we had a lot of corona. And of course you didn’t really go well with those lessons via Zoom.”