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Exams, schools and trust

 As schools have gone online, after the initial hiccups it has somewhat started working well. Not perfect, but well. And around now has come the first hurdle. Exams. 

How to tackle exams in a covid scenario. I am only referring to school internal exams - not competitive ones like JEE entrance or anything of that sort. 

Like everything else, the default approach to a new situation is to force fit everything we learnt in the earlier situation to the new one. So, in the same way schools have asked students to keep the camera and volume button on, camera to always the student in view at all times. I don't see how an invigilator can actually keep an eye at multiple students - seems impossible. 

This is apart from technology solutions like no alt -tab of browser, connection drop = exam submission and all that. 

The reason that all this is being done is to stop the child from "cheating" in the exam. 

Why can't this be tackled differently? Why not have the onus of "not cheating" be a covenant between the parent and the child and the teacher (school)? Why is it an assumption that the child will cheat? If the child cheats with the parents being at home and the covenant - isn't that something the parents need to worry about the values the child is imbibing?  

The second approach - which is assume something different is to turn the exam into something that is more amenable in the current environment. Think open book exams, viva-voce, deeper reading, more frequent shorter tests, video recording and submission and so on. But this approach I suppose comes in the way of current grading methods. 

Either way, approaching the situation with a little more trust will be more beneficial. And thats the question, how can this be designed for trust?

[PS: This is from my sample size of schools]

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