The central written final exams start this week. An exciting time for approximately 144,000 secondary school students. Which questions the students are asked remains strictly secret until the last moment. Geography teacher Evy Kolen from Tilburg is one of the people who comes up with those questions. “So far, none of the students know that I do this.”
Evy Kolen, geography teacher at the Odulphus Lyceum in Tilburg, has been there for two years construction group member from the Cito. She comes up with questions for the central final exams for HAVO and VWO. She works on this one day a week together with seven other geography teachers from all over the Netherlands. “I enjoy being creative with my own profession. This gives you the opportunity to really delve deeply into your material.”
She has just opened a pack of old final exams in the former chapel of the monumental school from 1899. Labor migration in India and Nepal, investments in the Kenyan railway. These are two topics from the 2024 HAVO final exam in geography, but no questions from her.
Kolen hopes to encounter her own question for the first time this year when she takes the exams out of the packaging. “It takes a very long time before your question actually appears in the final exam, because there are still many screenings to be done. We provide the first versions in a database and from there Cito’s testing expert will work with external experts to compile the final version.” A process that can take up to two years.
In total, around 13,000 exam questions are devised for secondary education every year. All these questions are thoroughly checked and checked. Before a student faces an exam question, it has already been viewed by an average of seven people.
Kolen gets her inspiration from everywhere. “From the teaching material, the news, and I get a lot of inspiration from travels I have made.” She skillfully keeps to herself which topics appeal to her most. Strict confidentiality regarding the content of the exam questions is mandatory. “I can’t tell you that, of course, because that might come up in one of the exams.”
She can say something about the structure of the exam itself. “This usually consists of 32 questions spread over eight areas of interest, with four to five questions about the world, the earth, a bit of South America for pre-university education and Brazil for senior general secondary education, and of course the Dutch living environment.”
Students taking their final exams in geography receive three separate bundles. “We have the assignment booklet with all the questions, the source booklet containing the sources and a card section with various cards that they can use to answer the questions.”
How will she react if she encounters a question of her own when opening the exams? “Then I especially hope that the students do them very well.”