Ranking system in schools

last SG · 2000-06-20T03:27:00+00:00

Well 1st of all i conclude that you're in one of the few or if not the better jcs. I'm from the lowest ranked jc and we don't really have this kind of proble...

rae-lyn SG

I know this is often debated: whether it's useful, brings any new meaning to life, that kinda thing. I have always thought it was useful, i.e: it gave the schools and the teachers more inspiration to do their jobs better and it gave the student body some form of identity and pride.

Yet, there was always the problem of getting overly-devoted with this ranking system, where the institution forgot about educating the students in the way appropriate, but rather by making them adhere to certain conditions which would make the school look better. Perhaps this is not often seen in secondary schools, but in junior colleges, it's prevalent.

Most colleges make their students drop one subject that they are weak in not only to help them concentrate on the other more promising subjects, but to make their ranking higher. Colleges are ranked on 3 A Level subjects although most students begin with 4. I have heard stories from my friends in schools where the principal calls them in and asks them to drop the subject right after the first common test, where the student is just realising the difficulty level of the subject. Some schools never let the student decide on what they want, they encourage dropping so strongly that some students feel silly to hold on.

Dropping subjects may seem like a good idea, I mean, who doesn't want more free periods, right? But the fact that the subject combinations was one that the student chose and probably can excel in if enough effort was put in is often ignored. By encouraging 3 A Levels and making it a norm of some kind, isn't the institution limiting the breadth of what the person knows and studies? Isn't the institution teaching students giving up is okay? Perseverance isn't realistic if you know you're gonna fail all the time?

And why am I launching into this? Because my teacher came in today and made it clear to us that it was the students who are in the particular stream that I am are pulling down the percentile of students getting As. That it doesn't look nice (well at least, that's what it sounded like to me) and that if you are consistently getting Ds and Es, you should drop it now.

Maybe I'm just in a bad mood and somehow disgusted with the way we are manipulated, made to believe what they want us to, to 'beautify' the school's overall results. In fact, I believe that schools cannot be solely judged on the ranking, but rather, the ranking of value-added. Some schools have always been somewhere at the top, simply because they receive the top students. That doesn't say that a school is an outstanding institution. In fact, it becomes a "constructed reality" where the best school remains the best only because the best can get in and that remains as the perception. Not that the teachers were fantastic or that the institution cultivated minds really well. It's all constructed reality.

Asure SG

[This message has been edited by Asure (edited 06 November 2001).]

Revelations SG

I'm glad my JC isn't the type of school you mentioned, or else I wouldn't be in the University I am right now.
I believe that the ranking system is good, gives people good reference to how good a school is, but it is the attitude of the individual schools to this ranking system which needs to be change. Why get so competitive?

prodigal SG

Here is my views on the issue you have raised. First of all, we have to understand what are the objectives of having a ranking system. The objectives are that we want to have give the parents and the students the guide to select the schools which are ideal for their development and the pace which they want to be in, and to have healthy competition among schools.

Ranking of schools is definitely not something which only happens in Singapore. It happens in US, where we ranked Universities and we normally see the Ivy league universities, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Cornell and etc, or even in UK, where we see that Cambridge, Imperial College, London School of Economics, Oxford are also competing. What is strange, is that people in these countries have a different perspective in viewing these ranking system as compared to the Singaporean perspective. How do we see that?

The point of contention is that the ranking should be seen just as what it is worth. It should not be a measure of status for a person. What is happening in Singapore now, is the ranking of a school becomes a status quo for the student. For example, if we have two parents comparing their kids and let's say one is from the Really Good School (RGS, sorry I just liked making fun of the name), and the other, let's say he is from New Town secondary school, they would take the ranking and compare their kids. I pity the latter kid, when the mother start saying something,"Why you can't be as clever as that Mrs Blah Blah's daughter who is scoring 9 A1s?" The parents become obsessive over the success of the education of a child equated to the success of the child later in life. This is preposterous. Many studies have shown
particularly, a report from MIT recently who demostrates that the gifted programme in US, has shown that there is not even 1% of those so-called brilliant students, who either made it to be the rich or famous, or even a Nobel Prize winner/Fields medalist. What does that tell us?

The next thing which the Singaporean perspective differs is that the principals of the junior colleges, particularly this woman principal in one of the junior college (in top 5 of course) are playing their own ball games. Let me tell you an actual incident, that principal actually tell a trainee teacher who was dedicated in making his students understand the subject, by saying that she is not interested in whether they learned the subject, but interested in whether they score A grades. This words coming from an educator, I feel really disgusted, and sometimes, I really hoped that I can have higher level political contacts and make sure that she would get fired by the ministry if I have to work in the Ministry of Education as a high level person. This is surely not the way.

These different perspectives can make the ranking system look either good or bad. In the end, we must ask ourselves, that it is not the ranking of the schools which determine us, but it is us who determine how the schools should be viewed.

Just my two pennies worth...Have a good day.

Altrex SG

yupz.....the idea of a ranking system is there. however, as prodigal rightly puts it, it's the S'porean mentality which screws it up.

i was from a top sec sch. the ranking thing started just abt the time i went in. we topped it for the first yr, then spent the next 4 yrs chasing our sister sch. we were sure under hell lot of pressure to regain our place at the top, though it wasn't too bad as well...it's our sister sch.

in my sec 4 yr, our new principal made the really STUPID mistake of openly telling us that we MUST beat them. the next thing he knew, this was in the papers and we looked damn bad for openly challenging our sister sch. worse, my batch was hit by the A2 syndrome and we lost again. he was super result-orientated and started a system whereby only students who had a certain percentage score in Sec 2 could take 9 subjects, something which used to be traditional in my sch. having left for 5 yrs, i dunno if the new system he set up is still in place. while i credit him for putting us back on top, which we've stayed since, i really object to the way he did it. true, his tuition program helped a lot of pple, but it's not as if we couldn't handle 9 subjects.

thankfully, as far as i know, my JC, despite losing a few yrs, never quite implemented such a system.

the purpose of education is to learn things. while doing well in exams is undoubtly part of the equation, it isn't the whole story. there are other ways to test a student's ability and grasp of a subject besides exams.

now in U, i really love open book exams (the real open book kind, as opposed to "controlled" open book) and project-based modules.

my juniors will probably slam me for this, but i honestly feel that it's a lot easier to get straight As now. just 5 yrs after my batch, 60% of my sch and my sister sch gets 5 A1s and above. a similar number probably gets straight As too. are the kids a lot smarter now? perhaps, they had better training, etc, in their younger days as compared to us, but the system is getting stale. my tuition student gets As too, not so much coz he's damn smart, coz i tell him how to get the A. with help, getting the A is getting a lot more easy.

going back to my jc, i talk to my teachers and find that while the students are getting better grades, their attitude is getting worse. obsession with materialism, arrogance and other things.

even if kids are getting smarter, i feel that there's more to life than getting good grades. positive attitude, vision, etc are all part of the equation. while the results are going up, are the younger generation really much better than my peers and my seniors? i doubt it.

TheInvisibleOne SG

This is just a bit of cut-and-paste from a related piece of ranting I did a while back.

Streaming is based on standardized testing, and standardized testing is an unreliable way of determining an individual's future learning potential. They measure what a person learns, and not how a person learns. Except for the most basic cases, the latter is always immeasureably more valuable than the former. One can only teach students to recognize their own abilities, not attempt to measure them externally.

Because of the predorminance of streaming in Singaporean education, standardized testing is overemphasized. It no longer serves as only an evaluation tool, but instead becomes the centre of the act of teaching. The popular use of the "Ten-Year-Series" as a textbook testifies to this.

Streaming also has the tendency to suppress the individual nature of education. It detaches the student from his or her own education by placing little control of his future in his own hands. One may argue that a student can choose to work hard or not, and that that is a choice in itself. The truth is that when streaming comes into the picture, things are made one-dimensional, and the different streams are ranked against each other and pegged to value judgements which become impossible to shake. Once a person, in spirit, starts learning for others and not for himself, he becomes incapable of self-evaluation, of self-criticism, and of independent thought. Creativity goes too.

Lastly, the social environment created by streaming is unrealistic, as abilities in personal competition are emphasized over the ability to work as a team.

It's also elitist, and students are encouraged to bond with others of the same 'intellect', instead of learning to accept society as a whole and learning to work with a range of people. The kind of Egalitarianism required for a Civil Society are thus destroyed.
Groups with a common educational interest, formed during the course of official education, are also broken up during continuous remixing. The substantiated sense of belonging one can have to a group, by virtue of a common base of internally-defined logic, is destroyed here.

DuZt SG

And the elitist mentality it creates is quite frankly as stupid as it is irritating
Some time back my friend sent a chain mail of jokes that were basically dumb blonde jokes with the protagonist of each joke subsituted for students a certain school along bukit timah

One individual, obviously an alumnus of the school, replied and retorted to each joke by throwing in elitist babble to defend his alma mater. one such sample was

>Q10: WHAT DO U CALL A RETARDED_____STUDENT ?
>A: GIFTED.

>This drives home my point precisely...a >student considered retarded in____is >actually
>gifted, when compared to the outside >world...well,what can I say? It's juz the >skool, I guess

Such arrogance irritated my friend from St Thresa's High(now demolished formerly festering with Ah Bengs) he replied the mail and proceeded to tear him apart systematically leaving him nothing to say and inserting a few genuinely funny rejoinders on the way

>A school is just a school. I understand the >author obviously has a good
>relationship with his alma matter but the >way these rebuttals are phrased
>you'd think he was going to tear down the >school flag and use it to jerk
>off. Get off your high horse and over >yourself..

St. Theresa's High Ah Beng - 1
Elitist private communist school - 0

"Bad scene, everyone's fault" - Jawbreaker

Terence SG

lets not confuse egalitarianism with social mixing. i have no problems with the school ranking - and if it adds stress to the student, he/she can always move to a lower ranked college.

i don't see why social mixing is always a good thing either. to say that only the good qualities will rub off and the group will improve as a whole is, at best, naive. people develop at different paces and to lump them in a class will impede more than it will help. also, students don't go to colleges to construct social relations, they go there to get the best passport in life. social relations come as a result of this, and by default is secondary.

i have no grudges against 'elitist' schools. what the heck is an elitist school anyway? its most the lower ranked schools that bitch and complain.

cheerio

Isaac SG

Let’s take it this way, this is Singapore. In Singapore, you don’t argue (or discuss) about the education system. It is to the people, for the people, and by the Government, and you don’t bloody hell argue (or dicuss) with the Government.

Terence SG

i also don't agree with the argument that ranking isolates pockets of students suis generis. social clustering occurs in everywhere. people are draw together by similar interests, goals, opinions and values. as such mixing good and bad students will still result in the phenomenon of social clustering.

cheerio

TheInvisibleOne SG

What I was oppossed to was not social grouping per se, but rather grouping in an artificial, set-up environment which does not persist into adult life.

abaddon SG

Dear Singaporeans,

Don't be perturb over how or why our government ranks schools. Yes, it's meant to be a reference for basis of selection; and yes, our government is made up of pretty bright people, all with good degrees. So what do they know about how the "lesser educated" feels?

I'm happy with the system. It works. But I'm not in the receiving end of good things as well.

If you had little education, the government sets up programs to ensure you have ample opportunity to upgrade. This is very true. I sent many of my staff for upgrading before, and they can cope with their work better as well.

If you have a good degree from a good school (mind you, NUS and NTU ain't "good". they are not reconized in the states and Australia), chances are you are head hunted and don't need much to prove your worth. And you would be given scholarships to further your studies as well! Now how about that?

And if you're not too bright, but you are creative, an underachiever, can't get into uni but are damn good at your work (or so you think you are), you end up in my catagory. But instead of whining over why I can't get into local unis and have to waste my parent's money to study overseas, I try to make a difference whenever I can as well. People in my catagory eventually make it up to middle management and upper management.

It's really up to you what you think of the school ranking system. But really, there is a broader picture to all these. Singapore don't think well of other uni's degrees... neither do people outside think we are that great as well. All our great techoprenuers are poly grads. All the great companies started out with ordinary people who are genuinely creative and self-driven. What's that got to do with the school they come from?

So tell your teacher it doesn't matter at all... being in a better class don't make you brighter, neither would being in a "less bright" class make you dumber. It's all about learning pace, and EQ. Cheer up. Life really begins AFTER school. Nothing is really applied to the real world anyway.

abaddon2000

Terence SG

theinvisibleone,

"What I was oppossed to was not social grouping per se, but rather grouping in an artificial, set-up environment which does not persist into adult life."

you obviously haven't worked in the civil service before. try the officer/management strata. life there is very reified and conditioned as an environment. its the place where the supposedly 'best' educated are.

also, this set up environment introduces you to people of the same mindset and abilities. people who you make friends with and will encounter in your career - kinda like an old boys network.

cheerio

MayaJade SG

Again, it's not the ranking that's being debated. It's the school's reaction to the ranking. I think having intake average -based on L1R5- of 7.5 doesn't make it so admirable if in the end the school is somewhere in top 5. Other schools take students with aggregate 10 and can still compete with the former. I know that top schools enjoy some privileges but aren't schools suppose to better the persons who enter as students?

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TheInvisibleOne SG

Terence is right, I have not worked in the civil service. From the way it is described, experience is valued over innovation in this area, which, even stereotypically, is true.
However, I have comments bout mindsets and abilities. I think its more like: Abilities as dictated by standardized testing, and static, conformed mindsets from years of being convinced that you could not think for yourselves. A sidenote, I have this unjustified impression that old boys networks tend to be under-critical of their own actions, and when critical, tend to be internally polarized and incapable of objective decision... dunno why...

MayaJade: Do not forget that to add value to an already peaked pool is hard.
And on the other hand, the supposed improvment is also measured in grades, which is part of the weakness of the original concept.

leenusg SG

I think that ranking is okay but of course there are some disadvantages to this.
I think that teachers should play a bigger part by hand picking some students to study at the better school.

of course, these student are must be intelligent but lazy. the enviroment in the better schools should help the student to get better schooling attiude.

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BluErf SG

School ranking is an example of an imperfect information system where only a small number of attributes are used to determine positions of schools, which is naturally biased towards some schools.

The solution is to put out as much information on as many attributes as practicable on all schools and let students and parents do the ranking themselves.

And what's wrong with the top schools receiving top students and getting top grades? Just because the best students go there doesn't make it a 'crime' for the school itself. You could say students go there in anticipation of competition, and they really fight for top honours.

Benevolent_Tiger SG

To echo comments that the rankings should be based on more/other criteria, an example would be US News and World Report's rankings of US colleges, Universities and programs. (http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/)

There should be more granularity in the rankings so as to accurately reflect the performance of the school and students in all areas and from all fronts.

My opinion is that rankings are useful and necessary tools but the basis of which the subject is examined should emcompass a variety of factors so as to truely attain a broad and objective analysis.

Benevolent_Tiger SG

tango SG

Nice to see this topic.

I don't think the ranking of schools to grade students is a good choice.

Parents would compare here and there. It's like if a child can't get into the top 20 secondary schools in Singapore means he isn't a very good student or smart.

I don't feel it should be this way. I was from one of Singapore's SAP school. I can only comment about my school system as being one of the worst around. (I only studied in 1 secondary school before only but I really think my school system sucks).

Teachers in my school are all very much "cock up". They would only really entertain those good grades students. Some students really do well in their sports or ECA however, if they fail to do well in their school work, they would be regarded as the bad sheeps. Students who don't do well are just send to tutorial lessons on Wednesday, all you ever do during tutorial lessons are do worksheets which I feel is pointless. To make the student fare well in the subject is to teach, make them understand and ask them to do homework which must be revised and marked by the teacher.

Personally, I think schools should be set up for a speciality and accept students who excel in a certain speciality. Like some students excel in sports, that school should be set up mainly for sport students where by the time and lessons would be much coordinated for the sports students.

Just my 2 cents...

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