In the city where I live, one particular afternoon, I strolled down to a tailoring shop across the street to buy a specific thread that I would use to fix a button on a shirt. I arrived and met the woman and a group of school pupils. The pupils just collected their end-of-term results and the report cards only have "pass" as remarks which if the pupils had failed, the remarks would have been "failed".
"Since when did this start? Last year's report cards weren't like this. What are schools turning into?" She lamented and other parents in the area joined her.
Maybe I'm too traditional; I love how schools were during my time, especially when it comes to student grading. The usage of 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th to the last number in the class to grade students was fun and it led to positive competitions. Back in the days, it was this kind of grading that our parents used to know if we were catching up with academics or not. They don't bother to go through our books or join in doing assignments, all they were concerned about was the positions and nothing more. It becomes more fun when a lady happens to take a position before you and your parents get really angry.
During my primary school time, I was made to repeat primary three and that was when I picked up my academic life, I started with 3rd position and the lowest I took was 4th position during the remaining days of my years in primary school.
The fun continued and even became more valid in grading students until we got to Senior Secondary (SS) and Credits grading became what was used. This confused my dad a lot and he never bothered to check the results as long as no one was repeating classes. Oh yeah, the only place this pattern was used greatly was during the promotion to the next class. Once one fails to get up to 5 credits in all the subjects including mathematics and English, it means one has to repeat the class.
While this pattern which I think is still being used in our second schools, feels good for students, the competition to become the best in a class has died down. Oh yeah, there's absolutely no way to know who is topping the class except that the Class teachers decided to mention who scored the highest in their subjects and this doesn't mean anything because one can be good in Biology and be poor in mathematics.
Whether we like it or not, those competitions in school boost students' morale to study harder just like how I had it during my primary just to overtake the girl who was always standing in my way and also to make my dad proud.
So yes, the specific gradings help a lot and I wish Schools could return to it.
It's even worse this era...
I did teaching in my NYSC days and in a private school. In that school, there was nothing like 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th gradings. The proprietor made it known to us(teachers) that students are not allowed to fail. So you see, there's no grading to report how a child is doing.
Thanks for reading.
