It is the school holidays, and some pupils across various grades who performed poorly in their examinations are still unsure why they did, despite parent-teacher meetings. Why does this situation persist?
The entrenched policy of some schools to retain the marked scripts, despite requests from parents and pupils to have them returned so appropriate remedial assistance could be given, is unprofessional in nature.
Parents invest heavily in their children’s education. If schools do not execute the basic requirement of informing them about the specific areas where pupils committed errors, then Singapore is moving away from realising our students’ potential.
Perhaps the Ministry of Education could say why marked exam scripts are retained. Should schools require the scripts for internal examination of how the pupils fared, these could surely be returned after such tasks are completed.
This year, the English Language O-Level exam was based on a different format with several new genres.
Parents had been anxious, and sometime back, the MOE directed schools to release marked scripts to their pupils. Has there been a change of decision? Constant, constructive feedback is a critical dimension in holistic education.
Pupils pay fees for their exams, and marked scripts are resources for parents to ensure their children perform better, qualitatively and quantitatively, in subsequent exams. In some schools, the scripts of only some subjects, like English Language, are retained. Is this because of the fear that parents would contest fairness of the marking?
If so, teachers should justify their marking based on validated schemes with a high degree of consistent inter-marker reliability.
Professional decision-making rather than administrative expediency should direct our focus and purpose, in the long-term interests of all our students in schools and junior colleges.
S Ganesamoorthy
TRS Contributor