Stigmatising students is not the way to help them learn
Philip Yeung says better teaching is needed, not ranking of exam results
The medical profession's Hippocratic oath has a simple injunction: "Do no harm." At the absolute minimum, the teaching profession ought to have a similar credo. But harm is a way of life across our state schools.
Last month, I ventured onto ground zero of a looming education calamity: a "Band 3 school". What I saw as a volunteer English teacher in a Form Five after-school class left me cursing the creators of this wretched system.
It immediately became clear that little learning takes place inside the classroom. Students were slumped on their desks, or are otherwise restless like caged animals.
For five years they have had grammar drills coming out of their ears, and in the last two, it is all about practising past exam papers. I asked each student to write me five short sentences about themselves, and most were no longer than three words, as in, "I am Peter". But, unbelievably, no sentence was error-free, as students haven't even learned to capitalise their own name.
Each year, this school sends about 120 students to the Diploma of Secondary Education examinations. On average, only one makes it to a publicly funded university.
Despite this dismal showing, principals are hell-bent on drilling their students endlessly on past papers.