LAST week, I had the opportunity to go, in my parent's stead, for my younger sister's parent-teacher meeting at St. John's Institute (Hua Ming). While I sat among the parents, the tension suddenly rose in the room when the grading scale was brought up by one of the concerned parents. She said that this new system, where first honors (the highest academic award) could be only achieved at a grade of 97 percent and above and third honors at 90 percent or above, was highly unjust.
She added that in this new system, the old first honor has become the new third honor. In response to this concern, Hua Ming's principal brought up the fact that this was a new scheme implemented by the Department of Education: it was standardized among every school in the country.
Additionally, he mentioned the standardized grading scale that the school uses, where 50 percent of the final grade a student received comes from performance tasks and only 20 percent comes from examinations and tests. This struck an alarming realization in me: this new scale was completely justified.
In fact, I think it should be even more rigorous.
The fact that assessments of a student's performance come half of the time via informal, non-testing environment situations proves testament to the increasing ease at which students can receive high grades. In a situation like this, high grades don't have the same value as they used to because everyone is getting them.
In education, I've heard my teachers talk about how an ideal classroom should have a bell like curve of grades on a graph: where the bulk of students receive a seventy percent, and few students receive higher grades than ninety percent and few are below sixty percent. This model reflects that a class is rigorous enough in which high grades have meaning.
Thus, in the current scenario of Hua Ming and many other schools in the Philippines, in order to increase the competitiveness and rigor of these classes, the government has increased the bar of receiving honors by a substantial amount; hence, this incentivizes students to work harder and more importantly, learn more.
This new grading scale should not be taken back, for it only seeks to better prepare students for life, where many challenges will be thrown at them. It also increases the competition in the classroom, which also greatly aids in the students' motivation to pursue knowledge.
This is perhaps best seen through the educational model of other countries, like South Korea, India, Japan, and China, where higher grades are much tougher to come by. In these countries, due to the competition and rigor of classes, students who graduate end up faring better in the workforce and post graduate destinations. As a country that has just adapted to the K-12 educational model, the Philippines should look to replicate the success of the aforementioned countries.
Parents need to understand that their kids are growing up in a society that is rapidly changing and has a much more competitive workforce than the one that they entered decades ago. They need to understand that, if they want their children to truly thrive, they should embrace this new change with open arms. And that they will motivate their children to push their academic comfort limits.
For the youth to push the frontiers of knowledge.
