Timely Article from ST

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FRIDAY MATTERS

Stop those scare tactics of 'sure fail' exams
Chua Mui Hoong, Senior Writer

ONE morning this week, a friend and I got together for a quick breakfast.
Topic: PSLE stress.

It isn't that either of us is taking this milestone examination of course. But her daughter and my niece are.

Many parents feel stressed when their children sit for high-stakes milestone exams like the Primary School Leaving Examination or the O or A levels.

They feel responsible for their children's performance. Even balanced parents, who understand that their role is mainly a supportive one, feel as stressed as though they are taking the test themselves.

Schools should be an ally in the gruelling preparation for this major race.
Unfortunately, many see their role differently.

Many schools use shock scare tactics that are remarkably out of date.
I'm talking about the habit of many schools to set mid-year examination papers of an unduly high difficulty level.

One parent, Ms Jessica Chong, wrote to the Forum page about this, citing her daughter's experience in an all-girls' school with a Maths paper set at such a difficult level that half the class flunked.

Concerned about the impact of this on students' motivation levels, she wrote: 'I appeal to the Ministry of Education to compare the disparity between the simplicity of published primary Maths textbooks and worksheets with the difficulty of exam papers set by schools.'

That school is by no means the only one that uses such tactics.

A friend who's a full-time mum and coaches her son personally was aghast when he scored just above 50 in his Maths paper in a mission primary school.

But the teacher assured her that it was a very good score, considering the average score across the entire school was 40-something. In other words, more than half the school failed the paper. The lowest mark was below 10.

Closer to home, my niece managed just above 40 for Maths, a subject she struggles with but usually manages to pass.

When I rang her teacher, she assured me that her score was not unduly low; the median grade in her class was, indeed, in the 40s.

If you talk to enough parents, you will know that this is a common phenomenon.

Many schools set mid-year exam papers at an unrealistically high level of difficulty, deliberately to 'jolt' students and parents into a state of panic to work harder for the PSLE or O-level exam.
When the preliminary examinations roll around later this year, the same pattern will repeat itself.

Thousands of students will be in tears over unwonted failing grades. Thousands of parents' stress levels will rise, fearing their children will do as badly in the PSLE or O levels, as they did for their prelims.

I am not a pedagogist, but it seems sheer bad educational practice to deliberately set an exam paper that seeks to fail most students.

That is not education; that is psychological manipulation of a rather negative and perverse nature.

This practice of setting punitively difficult exams in schools has been around for years.
I recall similar practices from my school days 20, 30 years ago.

Schools justify it by saying that a little bit of failure spurs students to try harder. The practice results in better grades, they may argue.

But people who argue this forget the impact of repeated failure on a child's motivation and self-esteem.

Top students who score 75 instead of their customary 90 in a particularly difficult paper may indeed feel motivated to work harder to bridge the gap. If they have good family support, they can push themselves and end up with 95 in the PSLE.

But what about the impact of repeated failure on the average child?

A borderline student who fluctuates between a B and C, is likely to be pushed into a sea of red ink when confronted with an exceptionally difficult exam.

Imagine the impact of getting four straight Ds in June, four months before the PSLE exam.
Demoralised, goaded by fear, the child works harder. Teachers raise the spectre of failure to urge the child to try harder. Tutors add on extra sessions.

Come August or September, the child sits for her prelims. The school ratchets up the difficulty level. The child gets another sea of red ink: another string of Ds or worse.

The child now feels like a total failure. Despite his best efforts from June to September, he is still failing. Anxiety rises to fever pitch. He can't do it. Self-esteem plummets. He must be stupid, he thinks. He gives up.

My question to those principals and teachers out there blithely setting examination papers they know most students will fail in: Is the child, in such a state above, in a good frame of mind to take a high-stakes national exam?

Parents and family members rush in to do repair work. We give emotional support, making the child feel loved, secure and valued despite the string of failing grades. We source for tutors. We talk to teachers. We coach the children and do our best to coax them to remain positive and motivated.

But we are frustrated when schools seem to be part of the problem. Instead of motivating children, schools' practices demoralise and discourage them.

Some principals and teachers who use this 'fail-them' exam scare tactic will point out that it has worked for years, and raises the school's average scores in PSLE.

My retort to that is simple: Your school's aggregate average grades may improve, but how many vulnerable children's self-esteem have you destroyed in the process?

And just as pertinently, how many children's zest for learning have you destroyed? And how many individual students ended up doing worse, not better, because of anxiety and stress?

In motivation theory, there is positive and negative motivation. Negative motivation - where you do something because you fear the outcome if you don't do it - has a role in human behaviour. For example, the fear of being caught or the fear of failure constrains bad behaviour.
But negative motivation destroys young children's motivation to learn, and hampers their self-esteem.

Negative motivation certainly should not be systematised to such an extent that schools across Singapore deliberately prepare exams to fail students.

The Education Ministry should monitor and discourage this perverse practice. Guidelines could spell out the difficulty level of school preparatory exams, to align them with the actual standards of milestone exams.

Schools with large numbers of students who consistently fail mid-year and prelim examinations, but who go on to do well at the PSLE or O levels, should not be praised for their students' 'improved' results, but should instead be questioned on why their internal school exams are so out of whack with the national ones.

Punitive examinations designed to fail students based on warped ideas of human motivation should have no place in Singapore's education system today.