As many schools come to a close for this year, people have to take their report cards home to their parents and year 12 students find out how well they did in exams.

But are school grades a true reflection of a person and their life alongside their successes and how a person works and operates?

Many parents and those at school take school and exam grades akin to words and readings from the Bible and they are seen as something important to cherish as a result.

But are school grades fair - or are they simply degrading? Do they truly reflect what you are about, or are they some letters and numbers written by someone else, who doesn't understand you or knows very little about you in real terms?

Dear Nathan,

No words can describe you.
Any attempt to do so is degrading.
Any teacher who thinks they can describe you in words, is an ignorant fool.
Any words presuming to "truly reflect what you are about", constitute a ridiculously poor mirror/reflector.

Letters and numbers could only be used in attempting to estimate one's suitability to survive in the employment swamp, this they can. Regrettably, this is all some parents wish for their children, most likely because their own parents never wished more for them.

The practice is not unfair so long as it is understood to just be a practical measure for a limited purpose: it is indeed degrading IF taken out of its limited context.

No they are not degrading, they are grading.

Nathan,

Is there another way to ascertain the abilities of students other than by examination and grading?

Nathan,

School reports don't just focus on grades, they also cover most facets of a pupils personal and physical growth and not only the grades but the effort the pupil is putting into each subject.

The purpose of schooling is to teach pupils certain skills that they will need to earn a living and survive in the world. Grades tell reasonably accurately how well the pupil is learning these skills, and whilst poor grades may be embarrassing, they at least provide the opportunity to fix problems.

The last thing anyone wants is for a pupil to leave school unequipped to find any work other manual labor.

Actually, the 'gradings' are probably crap also. So bad have education and teaching standards become, that the poor performance of students have to be hidden. Why do you think so many foreign students flock to Australia? Because they get free passes, even when they can barely understand English. It's all about money and Marxists teachers unions.

I'd have thought grades are simply a benchmark from whence real education starts or, as has been the case over the past five decades, when indoctrination starts !
Only those who can see through the indoctrination & those smart ones who can exploit indoctrination end up ok !

The reality is that grades are important in the
world we live in. They are a means of determining
university and college admission. They often play
a role in job applications, and in future success.

Of course it is crucial that grades do accurately
and fairly reflect a student's work.
Grading with fairness and accuracy is time consuming
and unfortunately this is often in short supply for
many teachers.

Research also shows that putting good grades above
everything else can limit a person's ability to
learn. It can discourage risk-taking, creativity,
and engagement which are crucial elements in a
productive, rewarding, and ultimately
successful school experience.

What we need is less emphasis on the importance of
grades and more emphasis on a successful school
experience and the desire for kids to engage and
want to learn. I don't see it as a student problem,
but a teacher education problem.

In the lower levels, exam results & thus grades are the teachers most reliable measure of a kids progress. They are also the parents main indication that the kid is doing well, or needs extra help.

It indicates to both which kids are most in need of a bit of extra help. For the good teacher the kids response & improvement or not helps them learn ways of helping different kids achieve. Without these measures of their progress the kid mighty as well be playing video games.

Collectively they are a good guide to the ability of the teacher, which is of course, why any form of testing is so hated by the lousy teacher.

Remember the teachers effort to put the fear of god into kids when the school inspector is about to visit. Smarter kids realised the inspector was there to evaluate the teacher, not the kids. Does this still happen in our union controlled schools?

In the final year they become a kids passport to a job. An employer does not have much to go on when hiring a kid fresh out of school. An honest report card is most important item to guide them.

I once hired a girl with VHA, "very high achiever", grade for secretarial studies from a Gold Coast High School. I wanted someone to take some of the load off my secretary who was becoming overloaded with management duties. She did not even know the form of a letter, & I let her go as the saying goes.

I made a mental note, & never bothered to interview a kid from that school again. Teachers can only get away with such misinformation if the school management is poor, & no importance is placed on grades. You can only feel sorry for kids living in the catchment of schools with such slack management

The meaning of education:

"The action or process of teaching someone especially in a school, college, or university."

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/education

By the way, are there flaws in that definition.

From the page: http://www.theodysseyonline.com/grading-is-degrading it shows a cartoon which says:

"Everybody has to take the same exam, please climb that tree".

The image on the page shows a range of animals.... and you know that not all of the animals are going to be able to climb the tree, like the elephant for example.

So you could argue for some people exams and what comes from these, being grades and results, say like a 99.3, a 76.7 or a 49.8 - are just that - a white elephant. What do these numbers really mean in real terms?

Yes, you've jammed some information into your mind to complete an exam, but that's about it, but I don't think it's anything to overly proud of.

For many the grades they receive are seen as important and what is less important is the learning itself and what one can gain from learning.

Would someone want a B in a class in which they gained a lot learning wise and gained a better understanding of the subject, or get an easy A in a class and learn nothing? A lot of students would rather get an A, move on, with some willing to cheat their way through the system to get an A and learn nothing much in real terms.

More detail can be found at: http://www.theodysseyonline.com/grading-is-degrading. It's a very interesting page to read.

I don't think people should have to prove anything in terms of themselves to a school and their demands or what a teacher dictates. School reports, exams and grades do not describe your advancement as a whole. Growth often comes from within, something others will not know about or see.

Nathan,

From about year 5 exams and tests are designed not only to determine what facts the pupil can remember, but his understanding and ability to apply the knowledge and techniques learnt.

The analogy of animals asked to climb a tree is at best infantile. The "tree" everyone is being asked to climb is life in the real world and while the education is different for doctors or engineers, I would hope that my doctor/ lawyer/ accountant is more than just a nice bloke.

Hasbeen,
You are on the money in identifying school management as being part of the problem.

In QLD it is quite possible that the VHA student you temporality employed had a similar education to that of many students that I saw when I worked in QLD schools.

She probably had a very friendly and easy-going teacher who covered parts of the curriculum in class. The most important part of the "learning" process, whoever, probably came in the week before the exam when the student carefully remembered answers to the "revision questions and answers" given by the teacher.

These answers only needed to be remembered for a short period of time.

The student was happy because of the good results.
The parents were happy because of the good results.
The teacher was happy because of the good results.
The HOD was happy because of the good results and lack of discipline issues passed on from the teacher.
The Admin. was happy because of the good results and lack of discipline issues passed on by the teacher.

I have seen this scam of teaching students the exam prior to the exam take place for years.

It was practiced most by the teachers and HODs who tended to use it on the classes where the "above average and better" students were placed.

The worst I say were the Maths HODs who trained their students to pass the exams all of which were known in advance.

The previously unseen difficult questions designed to separate VHA and HA students from the rest were simply remembered procedures in these teachers' and HOD's classes.

You can only get away with this is there is no or little oversight from the school administration.

I can’t really comment as most of my children were educated in State schools in Ireland and Irish schools and Australian State schools cannot be compared.
My youngest son was educated in Australia and never attended a State school.
All of them were successful academically and equally successful in the post school world.
They all earn a sight more than I ever did and only the youngest still has a mortgage.
One daughter reached Commissioned rank in the police before resigning to start a family, the other is a Nursing Administrator.
One son is a grazier another is a senior councillor in mental health,interstate and another has his own taxi in rural Ireland as well as a farm and is completing a Doctorate in History, just for something to keep his mind active and the youngest is an IT wizard who works in the stratosphere of ideas.
They all went to schools that graded students on academic ability and it worked.

Yes WTF? & that is why all important exams should be externally set & marked. That way a teacher can not teach only how to pass the exam.

My wife & I established for the P&C a School textbook hire scheme for our local 1600 student high school. By it's 3Rd year it was saving the kids parents about half the cost of necessary books & equipment, & earning the P&C over $150,000 a year to inject into the school.

Fortunately this gave us a bit of leverage when we wanted answers. Our eldest daughter was having some trouble with math C. I was looking forward to the year 11 half year test to try to find her weakness. To my amazement the kids were not given their test paper to bring home for parents perusal. When she asked for it she was told they were not allowed to be given out.

With our leverage I organised an interview with the head master & the head of the math department. It transpired that the math department had been using the same test for 6 years, & giving the papers out would necessitate writing a new test each exam.

After some discussion it was resolved that in future test papers & actual tests would be given to the kids to take home for parents to check their kids progress.

I don't think I was a favorite parent of that math HOD, but then he was far from one of mine, so that is fair.

Hasbeen,
When my eldest started school in Ireland I was amazed at the approach of the History Master to the subject.
Each pupil was to approach the subject from the imagined (or actual where it was known) attitude of an ancestor of the time or the Chief of the greater family.
This gave the students a personal interest in historical events.
Of course in the West of Ireland it wasn’t hard to fit into this scheme, some of the kids played in castles that were associated with their families and we had one ruined castle and one restored as a National Monument within twenty miles of home.
Naturally there arose some disputes between descendants of native Irish and the Normans but as most families had descended from marriages between the two it was easily defused.
Those few children who had foreign parents were encouraged to find out their ancestry and thus bring in different perspectives.
History was a favourite subject, learning formal Irish wasn’t but they’re all good speakers despite having a somewhat ungrammatical grounding at home.

Dear Nathan,

'Education' comes from 'Educe' and by the Merriam-Webster dictionary,
"Educe" = to draw out (something hidden, latent, or reserved)

The formal "education" system is a parody of this.

Instead of drawing out our latent inner resources, they push in external information, they indoctrinate, then like a stage-magician they pull out a rabbit from the hat and say "Oh, look what we found inside"...

Nevertheless, if you understand the reasons they indoctrinate children, then you would also understand their need to grade the results, which measure how successfully (for them) your child can be absorbed in their employment swamp, whether they want it or not.