Reviled standard school test is a scapegoat for Hong Kong’s flawed education system
Alice Wu says scrapping the TSA, essentially a pop quiz for education officials to track how schools are doing, won’t resolve the complaints of students and parents about too much homework
Everyone is talking about TSA, administered by the HKEAA. I’m increasingly convinced that acronyms make us dumb, and here’s why. According to the HKEAA , or Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority, TSA stands for the “Territory-wide System Assessment”. And the authority defines that as – I kid you not – “an assessment administered at the territory level”. This, of course, explains nothing, except why almost everyone wants it scrapped – because if the administrator can’t explain what it is, why have one?
TSA is not the culprit for overloading our students with studying, homework and tests
Let’s imagine a world without TSA. According to Hung Ngai-yam, a Primary Three student, one of the youngest to have spoken at a Legislative Council hearing on the test, scrapping the TSA would give him time to play, or play sport. Without TSA stress, according to testimony, the quality of life for students, parents and teachers would improve vastly.
The convenor of a TSA parent concern group said that pushing teachers to reach standards for TSA was unreasonable because it “ignores the difference among individual students”. If so, then, in our perfect “no TSA” world, individual talent would flourish and individual attention be given to students.
READ MORE: Hong Kong parents plan class boycott over TSA exam pressure on pupils
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Unfortunately, TSA is not evil, and scrapping it would not get our kids to exercise. TSA is simply a way of measuring whether students are taught the languages and maths. The problem is its objectives have been lost, because test results have been skewed with prepping – in our case, excessive prepping. With such skewed results, it serves no purpose in assessing student learning, teaching and curriculum.
Pop quizzes exist for many reasons – there is no prepping for pop quizzes, it gives teachers an idea where students are and the chance for them to adjust accordingly their teaching methods and curriculum focus.
TSA is just a territory-wide pop quiz, and the best part is that it’s not meant to test our kids, but how well our schools are teaching our kids. It’s about accountability, allocation of resources and culpability to be shouldered by the grown-ups. While it may seem counterintuitive for principals, teachers and parents not to drill kids for TSA, the drilling is, in fact, counterproductive.
READ MORE: Parents who spend hours preparing children for Hong Kong TSA exams have ‘herd mentality’, education expert says
