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Singapore abolishes school exam rankings (2018)

• LoSboccacc 7y ago
  something I don't understand of this approach, how can one strive to get better if there is no better to get?
  • jacobush 7y ago
    Maybe that feeling of enjoyment learning and mastering things.
    • LoSboccacc 7y ago
      that common feeling within the creative type is just not there for the majority of the population, learning has had to be made mandatory specifically because juniors won't otherwise do it on their own accord
      • jacobush 7y ago
        I have a very hard time believing first graders etc have much use for scores. And beating knowledge into students only goes so far. The downsides to external rewards and punishment vs intrinsic ones are so great anyway, I wonder what the point is with scores many times. It didn't work on me, that I can say for sure.
        • LoSboccacc 7y ago
          > I have a very hard time believing first graders etc have much use for scores people all age react to compliment and scoldings, grades are just a synthetic alternative
  • hjek 7y ago
    Surely as one learns to ride a bicycle, one will strive to fall off less, and to ride faster; and as one learns to cook, will strive to burn or spoil the food less and make it more delicious; all this done without a ranking system.
    • LoSboccacc 7y ago
      but those are something you learn for your interest, not something the society has deemed necessary for everyone to know. school has conflicting goals, you need to help develop both kid with interest in learning and kid that would spend their time in other activities but need to reach the same goals nonetheless this is definitely not about self improvement.
      • hjek 7y ago
        > this is definitely not about self improvement. Well, even when we learn to read and write, and learn maths, is that not self-improvement? Do we learn this things because they are beneficial and useful in our lives; or is it just a matter of achieving the highest score? When you write things on this forum; is your only motivation to receive the most upvotes and get the highest score? Just because something is useful to society, doesn't mean that it will have no use for ourselves, does it?
        • LoSboccacc 7y ago
          case in point: I hated latin in high school. I precisely only put in enough effort get a passing grade.
          • hjek 7y ago
            Good point. Indeed, if you don't use some kind of authority towards students, you won't be able to teach them things that they can't see the point in at all. The question is whether we (as teachers / as society) choose to use tests and authority to motivate them by fear; or to try to entice their interest in the subjects; or if something is genuinely not interesting then perhaps just not force that it upon students at that particular time. My favourite teachers have had an radiant enthusiasm for what they were teaching, and could make almost anything interesting. On the other hand, some teachers manage to make even the most exciting subjects dull.
  • dmos62 7y ago
    If you're learning to drive, or program, or whatever, is your objective to be able to do it efficiently, or to do it better than another person?
    • wlkr 7y ago
      Both, I think but it depends on the situation. For many things in life competency is enough (although there are still tests involved in demonstrating this) but there aren't unlimited jobs in any field so being 'better' certainly makes you more desirable. A racing car driver is measurably better than me at driving but then driving is not a job for me and so proficiency alone is acceptable.
      • wltprgm 7y ago
        yet company has to pay a lot if they want a better candidate, technically speaking or any country from 3rd world country can afford hiring silicon valley graduates at $300k per year just for a senior to tech lead level position?
    • badpun 7y ago
      If you want to use these skills not only for yourself, but to sell them to others as well (as labor), it's really helpful to know where you stand on the market. Otherwise you might think you're good enough at something, devote a lot of time to it, but only later learn that others are better at it. In fact, I think it's quite common scenario in a lot of solitary pursuits, be it intellectual or artistic. Without the immediate ability to compare, you can spend years doing something without being rewarded for it at the end - for example, Hitler spend a decade trying to be a painter, before he finally owned his failure and switched to politics. If there was a way to get reliable feedback in painting without putting a decade of work into it, he might've had abandoned it much earlier and not grow his resentment towards "the gatekeeping Jews".
    • LoSboccacc 7y ago
      both and neither. in some programming languages I'm barely literate, like I know enough to cook a php landing page or a simple file/database accessing system should the need arise for something simple, cheap and done yesterday. in some like Java I take pride in knowing them far beyond what's required on the job and in being a reference point for my team. some stuff like node.js I just put my hand into because I can get around, but hatee it with passion and will only do if strictly necessary. so the question is what drives my choices? for one I can derive a lot of wealth out of my knowledge. on the other hand there's the pride of accomplishment. but if I had to generalize I say lot of people around me just have an utilitarian approach to knowledge, and they won't deepen their unless enticed or coerced. beside I can't see people getting around and just learn stuff outside what's in their interest to begin with, me included, didn't and won't care to learn ancient languages and those lesson at school were just a chore note that I think of it heading also has another purpose, to let parents know efficiently if these any hiccup in some courses. how held would parents know where their kid needs help? sure there's the semestral parent-teacher meeting but that seems inefficient and too coarse compared to punctual grading
  • realusername 7y ago
    "better" does not mean much in a context of a university, rankings are very subjective.
  • chousuke 7y ago
    When it comes to learning, "better" is always relative to yourself only. Comparing yourself to other people is pointless, especially on a metric as non-informative as examination scores, because scoring higher than someone else doesn't actually tell you anything about why it happened. Maybe you're just really good at getting high scores in exams, but is that actually a useful skill? Similarly, scoring higher in your next exam doesn't actually indicate that you have fixed the problems you had during your previous examination. If you actually want to improve, you need to review your own results and find out where you failed and what to correct.
  • LoSboccacc 7y ago
    .. a pleasure like always to have a discussion around here
• prepend 7y ago
  Without rankings how do you determine how to allocate scarce university spots. I think there’s much more potential for bias when every position is just based on some committee’s prerogative in a way that is very difficult, if not impossible to measure.
  • em-bee 7y ago
    in germany universities do it by ranking the grades of the incoming students. so i have no clue what rank i have in my class, but i do know that my grade was not high enough to get into physics because there were enough students from all over the country applying with better grades. this grade would be different every year because it depended on the grades of the students that actually applied. so while in highschool i was not able to compare myself to my peers nor was i able to evaluate my changes of getting into university. (other than obviously noting that the lower my grades, the lower my chances) as it happened, the year before the cut-off was on a lower grade that suggested that i'd make it in if it stays the same the next year, but when i applied, more students with higher grades applied too, and my grades ended up being not good enough.
  • dmos62 7y ago
    Anonymous university exams should work.
    • feanaro 7y ago
      This. I have long argued that schools should optimize teaching and learning, not double in being certification authorities. The current scheme just devolves into a lot of stress for the students and selection according to school "prestige" because grades between schools are not comparable. It is also extremely stressful for students which is not optimal for the learning process. Learning should be about wanting to acquire knowledge, not being forced into it like tuna in a tuna can factory.
      • em-bee 7y ago
        well, the general expectation is that people receive a certification of some kind at the end of their study. i mean over here i have seen "graduation from kindergarten" being treated with a ceremony that makes you think you had just received a university diploma. rather ridiculous if you ask me. but what is the alternative? every university employing their own tests would mean that students now have to prepare for multiple tests based on where they apply. a job interview system? lot's of bias and unfairness in that too. in germany school prestige is irrelevant for the university selection process, only the raw grades matter. so actually your best chance to get good grades would be to pick a school that has a tendency to give students better grades. however if those statistics are not known, as they won't be now in singapore (and i don't know if they are in germany) then your school choice is either random (with respect to learning outcome) or based on perceived reputation of being a "hard" or "easy" school. there are a number of other statistics that probably need to be suppressed too, such as the number of students that get into university from each school.
• shripadk 7y ago
  This is brilliant! Learning should not be a competitive. EDIT: Why would you want to have children compete with each other on learning abilities? How does it help anyone? If a child is going to take a tad bit longer to understand than another child, I would rather the child take a bit longer to master than force the child to acquire the knowledge within a set duration. If they score 90% of the marks would you be happy that they scored 90% or unhappy that they could not master the remaining 10% and will never be given a second chance to do so? And what if your child crosses the passing marks of say 40%? Would you be happy that your child scraped through with passing marks or be unhappy that it never got that extra time to learn the remaining 60%? Not every child has the same grasping power. And by making learning a competition you are taking away the right to learn from a majority of these young children. I would rather the child compete with others on what it has learnt on a practical basis rather than theoretical! Currently, scores only determine how much of the theory the child has been able to master. There is no process that examines how that theoretical knowledge has been used effectively throughout the lifespan of the learner which is actually more important. Let them learn at the pace they are comfortable with. By making sure more children are properly educated we will, as a society, automatically reap the benefits of their future contributions. With competition, you are restricting the scope to the "gifted few" who will then have to bear the burden of the rest.
  • NotPaidToPost 7y ago
    They do not compete on learning abilities, they compete on work. It is very disparaging to pupils to imply that if they "are not good" it's just because of their abilities. The message should be first and foremost that they can do it if they try hard.
    • RobertoG 7y ago
      >>"The message should be first and foremost that they can do it if they try hard" There is a difference between the message "you can do better if you try harder" and the message "you can do everything if you try harder". The first is a good life lesson, the second is self-help books marketing. This way of thinking infect society and then we have to read things, normally wrote by millionaires, like "everyone can be rich". I suppose that it's the equivalent to "every country can be a net exporter at the same time" thinking in economics. Education should be about understanding how the world works, so, it should be also about understanding your limits. We would save in neurosis treatments.
• chirau 7y ago
  So did Zimbabwe for the very same reasons 2 years ago
• gtfratteus 7y ago
  If it's not a competition, why bother?
• NotPaidToPost 7y ago
  Competition is a good motivator. At the same time the feeling of continuously "losing" is not, so rankings should be used carefully as part of a wider pedagogical approach.
  • em-bee 7y ago
    competition can be a good motivator, but generally it isn't. especially not when it comes to something as complex and vaguely defined as learning. competition matters when there is something scarce to win. but if we apply that to education we already have a problem, because education should not be scarce. hence competition is not the right way to decide who should get access to it.
    • NotPaidToPost 7y ago
      Competition drives people to push themselves, and can therefore play a useful role in education.
      • em-bee 7y ago
        it can be, but it sets you up to learn for the wrong motivation. it would be better for students to learn to push themselves for their own sake and not for sake of competing with others. it also will hurt them in the long run at work. while in many companies employees do compete, these kind of workplaces are always toxic and not a good place to work at. in a good workplace people cooperate, and that is something they need to learn in school.
• lordnacho 7y ago
  Makes total sense. If the kids are able to solve the problems at hand, why would there be a need to separate them? Just make sure you test whether people have learned what they're supposed to. Along the same lines, why punish someone for being in a class with another competent kid? As for worries about places in further education, it's easy to make things hard enough that your lecture halls aren't stuffed. Doesn't require you to rank everyone. I think I'd have learned a lot more if everything had been pass/fail. Not just because it's easy to get to the pass line, but also that I'd challenge myself more with more advanced stuff.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• corrode 7y ago
  > says learning is not competition The children are still graded. Grading, or at least its interpretation, depends on the students performance. How is this not a competition?
• muzani 7y ago
  I helped to set up a syllabus for a part time coding bootcamp. One of the things we did was to eliminate any grading, although students who completed the project would get to graduate with honors. The idea was that when I was in college, I found a lot of students avoiding the electives where they would learn a lot, in favor of electives where it was easier to get good grades. The good part was that we could push them extremely hard. There's a point where most of them feel like it's not the right career choice and we can push them past that plateau. Since a lot of them are doing it at night and weekends, they don't always have a lot of willpower or commitment. The drop out rate is a little lower than expected. The bad part is that they don't push themselves hard enough. A lot of the difficulty is in things that they can just grind through - loops, arrays, functions, conditionals. But they don't work hard enough at it, and don't become 'literate' enough to solve some basic problems. The other downside is that a diploma sells certification, and not necessarily education. Something that's easy to pass is 'not recognized', even if the students learn more in the end.
• vajaya 7y ago
  I'm rather skeptical of this news and perhaps just some typical PR effort by singapore government. Remember Singapore has a notorious education system of sending children in different tracks at an age as early as 8. That is, in your 3rd year in primary school, you'll sit an exam that would probably determine your life trajectory. If you do well, you'll be enrolled in better programs, better school and would go to college. If you don't, you'll be wrapped up and sent to classes with little resources and guidance and often times incompetent teachers, and what's more, you would not be qualified to sit an college entrance exam, which means, the best you can achieve is Polytechnic schools. In singapore's caste system, a Polytechnic student is at the very bottom. The intention and justification of this system is that people are born with different levels of intelligence. To allow all people to have a college education is not merely a waste of resources, but also not useful and meaningful for those who are just average. How do people cope with this system, well, rich people can either hire tutors or have mother work as full time educator(often in case when the mother is highly educated). Their children would win out in that race at age of 8 and would continue to win and would go to the same several elite high schools, which ends in a situation where the transportation minister has never taken public transportation ever in his/her life.