something that happened in school

During the first 2 periods of school on Monday, the school printed out a target setting list for us in lieu of the vice-principal's talk about it during assembly last week. The list was computed from our PSLE scores and came with the school's expectations of us over the year.

The grades we received from the school were shocking and demoralising for most of us. Those of us with mediocre PSLE scores had low expectations with almost nothing exceeding an A2 while those with high-end scores ended up expected to get MSGs of 1.0.

I personally feel that the school should not base their expectations of us using our PSLE scores, particularly after just going through secondary 1. Another cause for worry is if this system were implemented last year, as most of us, given the low expected grades, would not have worked to our fullest potential.

Another awkward question would be how they had calculated or grades for new subjects like history, geography, literature etc. One could argue with the fact that higher end pupils being better in managing their time but I personally feel that much of it depends on the student's area of interest in the new subjects and the teachers who teach them.

One possible scenario the could be rooted from this target setting exercise would be if a student did particularly well in PSLE but slackened in secondary 1. The expected grades of him (eg.MSG 1.0) would be too out of reach, driving too much unnecessary stress and pressure to him. Another possibility would be if a student did not fare as well as he would have expected and performed to his utmost potential in secondary 1, which is not uncommon in students in this category. He would no longer feel the urge and drive to keep on improving and slacken to the low expectations of the school.

Another problem would be the teachers telling the students(if they complain about the expected grades being too high) that the targets were supposed to be meant for the end of the year. To plant such false hope in students as to thinking that they have until the end of the year to reach the expected grades is an extremely risky thing to do. They will be lead into the misconception that they can take their time and that they have the whole year ahead of them, which usually results in burning midnight oil.

I personally feel that students should set their own reasonable, achievable targets and goals for themselves according to their strenghts and weaknesses in their respective subjects. Setting goals for students is a sensible and innovative thing to do but teachers must look into the individual student's areas of interests before attempting to do so.

Lastly, I hope that this incident will not demoralise the students who are disappointed by their expected grades but act as something to propel them towards achieving greater success in their academic lives.