Should students' performance be judged by their marks?
Pulcheria Chung, 18 St Mary's Canossian College
No. First, assess the means to determine the marks. A student's performance is taken through assessments. Education experts say the aim is 'getting to know our students and the quality of their learning'. Thus we should focus on quality learning, not just simple right or wrong answers to multiple-choice questions.
The Education and Manpower Bureau is going to make liberal studies a compulsory subject. In this subject however, there will be no right or wrong answers, only personal opinions. But can subjective opinions justify marks?
Many alternative assessments have been introduced as well. Research-based team projects, portfolio development, fieldwork ... all of these new alternatives stress the process of learning, not how much you've learnt.
Marks can only determine a certain performance, but not progress. Brighter students naturally progress faster and easier. Other students may need to do a lot of hard work to make a slight improvement. Who deserves a higher mark? It's hard to decide.
Using marks is definitely outdated in this age of quality learning.
Oliver Kwan, 17 Delia School of Canada
In a perfect world, I think it would be great if students were judged by more than their marks. However, this world is anything but perfect.
Marks serve two purposes. The first is to allow students to gauge their progress, but more importantly, they implement a level of standardisation into the education system.
Marks allow institutions to gauge how well someone does in a subject. A university receiving applications from separate schools running on the same system would be able to choose the student they believe would do better based on marks. Imagine how difficult it would be for them if they were instead told that a student did 'fair' or 'above average'.
Now consider that there is no standard for gauging a student aside from marks. Letters of recommendation never include official statistics pertaining to a student's non-academic achievements. The best you can get is the opinion of the teacher. What one teacher considers genius may be nonsense to another.
It is true that a student's ability lies beyond what they're able to score in a test. However, institutions cannot send out agents to assess each student's ability.
Marks are a way of turning abstract concepts such as knowledge into measurements readable by all. Like it or not, they're the best form of assessment available.
