A mate of mine explained it to me quite well, showing the change for him from traditional, to "let's not hurt his feelings" marking...

"In maths in year 7 I got an E, I managed a D in year 8, a C minus in year 9. My marks went up by 21 percent. Then I was told I was "working towards" and remained so until I finished school. I never reached what ever it was that I was "working towards" and, seeing no progress or results, I slipped back down to the place I started."

He realised his own limitations, but nevertheless saw in a very graded system a way of self-improvement. He admits that maths is not his best subject, and no matter how much work he does, he won't acheive many goals that he is "working towards". Even students who don't turn up to class get "working towards" when they arn't working at all. It is offensive to students who work to get a D, to be lumped in with some politically correct nonesense with a student who would get an F for not attending class.

It is assumed by many teachers that if someone gets a D that they cannot be happy with themselves, and need to be wrapped in cotton wool and given a euphemism for their level of acheivement. Weak students understand that they are weak students; the worst that we can do for them is removing any incentive to work by this cloudy language, and telling a student who acheives his potential at D that he is still "working towards" some goal. It's plain snobbery on the part of teachers to assume that we can't be proud of ourselves if we arn't acheiving a certain grade.

Hi DFXK,

I enjoyed reading your post. Unfortunately, one of the problems with not failing kids is that it gives them an unrealistic sense of their own ability. Better to be honest as in the real world one learns very quickly if one is not up to scratch.

Kevin

It saddens me to think that we wrap our kids in that much cotton wool that they do not realise that the world is full of pass and fails. If they don't realise this at school before they get to the real world then boy are they in for a shock. I as a parent myself had a report card with the A to E rating system only in my day you aimed to attain an A on your report card unfortunately an A in the new report card is unattainable by most students and the teachers know it. How can we teach our children to strive to achieve an A when it is unrealistic that they will ever be able to get it. Gone are the days when both your achievements and your under achievements were listed on your report card so that as a parent you were able to see exactly how you child was doing at school. Now according to the report card I received today mainly your downfalls are listed and as parents you are encouraged to help your child achieve and keep positive about school when all this report card achieved was to gut and dishearten my son and left him with a why bother approach to school. They picked out all the things he was having trouble with(which for me was good to see) but what they failed to do was to also list his achievements so far this year for which there have been many. Had they actually had a realistic view they would have listed both struggles and achievements so as to encourage him to do better next term so that by the end of the year he could see how much more he will have achieved if he puts in more hard work. For this I am quite disappointed with the new report system and think it needs more review. Either by the teachers writing them or by the big wig who created them.