Grade expectations

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills 

They’re a source of both anxiety and pride, but school marks can also have long-term consequences for students. Most teachers reward student achievement, but also the skills, attitudes, habits and behaviours that are necessary for lifelong learning. However, as this month’s PISA in Focus  points out, the tendency of teachers to award higher marks to girls and socio-economically advantaged students than to boys and disadvantaged students – even if they perform equally well in school and have similar positive attitudes towards learning – is cause for some concern.

Marks help to promote student learning by informing students about their progress, alerting teachers about their students’ needs, and certifying the degree to which students have mastered the tasks and competencies valued by teachers and schools. Schools and teachers recognise this: more than 95% of students in the countries and economies that participated in PISA 2009 – except Korea – attend a school that measures student achievement through teacher-prepared tests, student portfolios or student projects. In most cases, students receive feedback on these assessments in the form of school marks.

As PISA results show, few countries and economies share the same marking schemes; in fact, even schools within a country may have different ways of marking. In addition, different education systems establish their own ways of informing students that they have failed a class or an assessment. In some countries, the marking scheme allows for only one possible value for failing. This means that students who fail do not know how far they are from meeting the passing criteria. This is the case in Austria, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Serbia and the Slovak Republic. Other countries establish the passing mark somewhere in the middle of the marking scale, which gives students some idea of how far they are from passing. In Ireland, for example, the grading scale ranges from 0 to 100, but only scores below 40 are considered unsatisfactory or failing. In some countries, such as Austria, Hungary, Poland and the Slovak Republic, the remaining values on the marking scale reflect the quality of the passing mark in clear and distinct labels, such as “sufficient”, “good”, “very good” and “excellent”; meanwhile Belgium (Flemish Community), Italy and Ireland use a wider array of numeric values (e.g. 50 to 100, 10 to 20 or 6 to 10).  Analyses suggest that countries and economies that have a grading system with a limited number of values and use labels that refer to clear categories of achievement (e.g. “sufficient”, “good”, “very good”, “excellent”) can better differentiate students’ performance.

Students often base their expectations of further education and careers on the marks they receive in school; and school systems use marks to guide their selection of students for academically oriented programmes and, later, for entry into university. So whenever teachers reward – or punish – certain student characteristics that are unrelated to learning they may inadvertently shape a student’s future according to factors that have nothing to do with the student’s abilities, talents and personal goals.

That’s why it’s a good idea for school systems to promote marking practices that reward the behaviours and attitudes that help students to learn – so that more students can make the grade.

Links:
For more information on PISA: www.oecd.org/pisa/
PISA in Focus No. 26: Grade Expectations
Grade Expectations: How Marks and Education Policies Shape Students' Ambitions 
Photo credit: Test score sheet / Shutterstock

The language of dissent

Language matters to Lea Rosenberg.

The former English teacher and high school principal who is now Deputy Director General of International Relations and UNESCO at Israel’s Ministry of Education recently made an impassioned appeal to fellow education policy makers that they, essentially, watch their language when talking about education. Using the terminology of other disciplines to discuss education policy, Rosenberg argues, does a disservice to education. Rosenberg was speaking at a high-level meeting of representatives of education ministries held at the OECD’s Paris headquarters in mid-October.
Marilyn Achiron, Editor at the OECD’s Directorate for Education, spoke with her after the meeting.

Lea Rosenberg: Throughout the years, when different paradigms from different worlds were introduced into the world of education, people were fascinated by the opportunities that these paradigms gave to education. They enabled larger and deeper views into what education is all about. At the same time, the status of education, compared to other professions, is usually low. So take these two things together and you arrive at where we are now.

We have talked about education through the sociological paradigm, where students are not people, but parts of populations. Of course, teachers should take note of the populations to which students belong and understand them, but that should not be the leading language of education. It is a “foreign language”. Understanding how students and teachers function is fine, but when we used the paradigm of psychology to discuss education – another “foreign language” – teachers started understanding students better, but they lost the notion of demanding something from students. If you don’t demand something from students, you cripple them; you treat them as though they are incapable.

Now we are using management language – talking of “inputs” and “outputs” – and we’re disappointed that the results are not what we expect. Principals and teachers should know and understand this language, but it is not education’s work. The same is true with the language of economics. We depend on economics: it is crucial, elementary to our existence. But this is not the language that should lead the world of education. For example, the word “accountability”: it deals with accounts. I would prefer that our teachers are “responsible” and not only “accountable”. Responsibility covers the range of human emotions, behaviours and activities – elements, such as caring, that are not covered by “accountability”. Students might do well in mathematics, but their morals and values might be terrible.

That is what we should be concerned about: What kind of person comes out of our education systems? The language of education focuses on being responsible for students as whole beings. Of course achievement is important, but students are human beings. The language of education is one of helping students overcome difficulties, taking differences into account, steering students through their mistakes so that they learn something and can then move on. Terminology affects the way we see the world. It affects the way we see students and the way we act towards them. This is especially true in education, where language is the only tool we have.

Links: 
Languages in a Global World: Learning for Better Cultural Understanding
Preparing Teachers and Developing School Leaders for the 21st Century - Lessons from around the world
Photo credit: Dictionary entry for "education"/Shutterstock