Kelvin Teo
Singaporean students at a National Eduation exhibit.
Every year, our Ministry of Education (MOE) conducts an annual posting exercise for secondary one and junior college admissions based on the students’ scores in the Primary School Leaving Examinations and “O” levels respectively and their choices of schools.
In recent years, MOE has taken positive steps to do away with the school rankings, replacing it with an achievement table based on academic value-added and non-academic achievements (i.e. character development, physical and aesthetics). More specifically, a banding table based on the aforementioned criteria replaced the ranking table. There are 12 bands for secondary schools offering the special/express course.
However, even as the rankings are being done away with, the public will still rank the school consciously and this is attributed to the banding practice, and another more important factor – the fact that cut-offs still determine entry into schools; a high cut-off score is likely to gain the student admission into a premiere school whilst a lower score means that the latter will probably get into the lesser school unless he has proven to be talented in non-academic areas e.g. sports, that can gain him admission into the premier school.
Closing the social divide
Hence, the focus of this essay is not so much to argue against the ranking or banding system, but rather to advocate doing away with the use of examination results for admissions. In doing so, its initial impact will lessen public perception of what constitutes elite and lesser schools, which is commonly based on examination results as the entry criteria. The very concept of value-addedness will also be discussed at length, challenging the traditional notion of value-addedness within our education system.
As a starting point, a discussion on the philosophy of education will be apt. We will go back as far as Plato, specifically on Plato’s model of the just state. The Plato-nian model has a few assumptions, and of importance to us are three of them – 1) Any society is segregated into classes based on knowledge and character, both more so as compared with economic criteria 2) Men are unequal 3) That education should sift individuals, discovering what they are meant for, and applying a means for each to the work befitting of his nature in his life.
John Dewey, an American philosopher and education reformer, however criticized Plato’s model. According to Dewey, Plato’s model ignored the uniqueness of individuals. Dewey argued that there are numerous variable human capacities or abilities, and that social organization requires the specific and variable qualities of individuals.
Thus, we can argue that segregation of students into different schools based on examination results has a slight touch of Plato-nism, not so much of sifting individuals in terms of functions they are suited for, but rather the work of segregation into ‘classes’, specifically referring to perceived elite and lesser schools, based on knowledge, as reflected by the results, and hence the inequality of the students.
What’s the point of having education?
The next question we should be asking is what should be the goal of education? Consider the example of an elite school with a selective entry criterion that takes in students with elite results. The school fares among the top institutions for examination results of its graduating batches; hardly a surprise since it took in an elite batch of students. The second institution is one who took in an academically-weak cohort of students. However, its academic programme enabled students to score above their predicted scores, earning the school a respectable reputation in producing graduates with good results.
Most would rather like to believe that the goal of education is to provide the means for our students to reach greater heights. Using a sports analogy – which form of victory is sweeter – recruiting a team of all-star athletes and win, or recruiting a team of ordinary-level athletes and nurture them into elites and win? It wouldn’t be surprising if most go with the latter. To a large extent, education is like sports – training ourselves go beyond our limits.
Much has been discussed at length of academic value-addedness, and the next question is whether academic value-addedness considered too narrow and should be expanded to other domains such as sports, aesthetic, physical fitness, character and cultural achievements? There is no reason why there shouldn’t be an extension.
Dewey himself was the fore-runner of the progressive education movement; progressive education comprises two essential elements – (1) respect of diversity, which means according recognition to the students’ abilities, interests, needs and culture; (2) participation in the affairs of the community in a collaborative effort towards the common good.
A widened domain of value-addedness is consistent with the aforementioned two elements of progressive education because it accords recognition to and attempts to improve on multiple areas of student development, all of which encompasses the student’s scope of interest be it in sports, culture, arts, etc. And participation in community affairs is in line with the interests of a group of students which lie in diverse areas of social engagement.
Thus, for instance, if students of the school through their own initiative (not forced) organized an unprecedented charity drive for an old aged home or a cultural concert in collaboration with a local heritage society, having been inspired by the civic education that they received, that in itself would be considered value-added in the broad spectrum sense.
Similarly, if the school track and field coach helped an athlete improve on his current standings, it would likewise be considered value-added. In contrast, if the school recruited a number one seeded athlete who is widely anticipated to be the champion in his events, the school is unlikely to gain any value-added points even if he continues to win championships in the tournaments he is expected to win.
If we are going to advocate that the schools will not admit students based on their examination results; then how we should go about doing it? We can probably retain the old system of getting the students to preference their choice of school, and then go through a balloting system. What determines the priority of the student for that school should be based on his ranking of choices and possibly, the proximity of his current home address from the school.
Benefits of doing away with examination-based admission system
What are the benefits of doing away with admission based on examination results? To reiterate, it will lessen the public’s perception of the school’s ranking since admission is no longer based on examination results whose cut-offs determine in the public’s eye which are of the elite or lesser types.
The second benefit is that students will not feel pressured into trying to get into their dream school since it is a matter of their preference and other suggested factors unrelated to their studies that will decide where they go to and not their examination results. Thus, it will be good for the students if they do not stress themselves over trying to get into their dream schools.
The third benefit is that all schools involved in the posting exercise have no choice but to work on their value-added programmes since the cohort they will be taking in is variable, and it is expected that they will admit a number of what is perceived to be weak students.
The fourth benefit is that from the progressive education perspective, the school will admit student from a diversity of backgrounds, and thus increase the need to recognize students for their interests, ability and cultural background.
Some drawbacks
What are the drawbacks of doing away with current approach of using the students’ examination results to determine their school posting?
One obvious issue is that such an approach cannot be introduced straightaway, but should involve a gradual process, for example, starting off with opening 20% of the places not based on examination scores. This will allow the school to work with the sample population of students and come up with appropriate programmes to cater to them.
An immediate implementation will not do the schools any justice as they are not prepared to cater to all the students. The other drawback is that even though examination results are done away with it during admissions, the school can still practise micro-segregation, separating students into good and bad classes.
Again this segregation can be good and bad, the good is that parents worried that their good sons or daughters may fall into bad influence by the bad students will rest assured that their kids are in a class of good students. And the bad, segregating is not good for diversity.
We need to move away from the mindset of classifying of our educational institutions both consciously and unconsciously. Doing away with examination results-based criteria for admission achieves just that.
Instead, the pertinent question we should be asking is what can our educational institutions do for the future of Singapore? We will definitely want future leaders and citizens who are understanding towards fellow Singaporeans of diverse backgrounds, and who can actively contribute to the common good of the society. That is why it would be a good idea for our educational ministry to widen the scope of value-addedness from academic to other areas.
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I went to a boarding school in NZ that had 70 per cent Maoris, 20 per cent Pakehas and 10 per cent Pacific Islanders. This is supposed to be a Maori elite school, though any Maori can gain entry if he can just fork out the required sum of money.
At a time when so few Maoris had secondary education, this school’s graduates and its brother school graduates, Te Aute, made up half of all the officers of the famed Maori batallion that fought so gloriously in the North African desert during WW2.
Few of them made it to the university and all of them received some kind of financial grants. The failure rate was high.
Rugby was king and this school excelled in thrashing other Pakeha, mixed Pakeha and Maori schools and Maori schools.
Another king of this school was singing and dancing the Maori war dance.
Armed with rugby and the performance arts they went on rugby tours and the school funded such tours by giving concerts.
This school had only 110 male students and they were not a selected lot.
At the end of the day it was just sheer training on the two ‘kings’ that made this school great and gave the students and parents a sense of pride.