GRADING SYSTEM- NOT A GOOD INDICATOR

Yes, it’s that time of year again; exam results are going to be shipped out to every single student who has given the olevels/ alevels exams this year! This means it would mark the beginning of the never ending discussing about the grades! And this is something which bothers me a lot! I was always told that grades are supposed to reflect how well a student has mastered specific learning standards. But I believe that a typical grade A or B unfortunately is not reliable enough to allow students to be sorted effectively. A student may learn a great deal in a class but be unable to articulate that learning in a way that is generally accepted as valid, such as papers, exams, projects, etc.

Imagine reading a book review that is simply a letter grade. Many reviews feature letter grades, but they come after a thousand words of measured criticism. They are assessing the book, and they do it through a narrative response built upon well-established criteria. A review only with a grade wouldn’t help you decide which book to read…and likewise our system of letter grades is useless for assessing knowledge. What did grades really say about the person? Grades aren’t valid, reliable, or objective. A “B” in English says nothing about what a student can do, what she understands, where she needs help. Moreover, Grades tend to reduce students’ preference for challenging tasks.

The more pressure to get an A, the less inclination to truly challenge oneself. And it could also encourage cheating. We can see today as the more students are led to focus on getting good grades, the more likely they are to cheat. Plagiarism is a good example of it.

Moreover students who get A’s, at times aren’t able to apply the knowledge and yet, 'on paper' still look more educated than the student who earned failing grades and but is able apply the knowledge. Generally speaking, grades do not accurately indicate how much a student has learned in a class. Assessments too should be based on real world application of the knowledge and skills, rather than how well students can memorize information and answer questions on a test.

Therefore, schools should replace the grading system to a much to other forms of assessments as I believe the efforts of the students should not be reduced to letters or numbers as it does not serve the purpose of providing feedback to students so they can learn more effectively tomorrow than they did today. A B+ on top of a paper tells a student nothing about what was impressive about that paper or how it could be improved. And thus this system should be abolished. Abolishing grades doesn’t mean eliminating the process of gathering information about student performance – and communicating that information to students and parents. Rather, abolishing grades opens up possibilities that are far more meaningful and constructive. These include narratives (written comments), portfolios (carefully chosen collections of students’ writings and projects that demonstrate their interests, achievement, and improvement over time), student-led parent-teacher conferences, exhibitions and other opportunities for students to show what they can do.