-Grades in primary school? -No, thanks!!!

In this fourth blog assignment we’re going to write about grades. This is a big and controversial topic and it has been a lot of different discussions for or against grades in several years. Diverse marks have been tried during the years and there is a new suggestion now and then. Both numbers and letters have been tried in judge children’s knowledge. I don’t think it’s that easy, you can’t just give a pupil a number/letter and everybody gets satisfied. I’m not a friend of grades! Marks just centre on results and say a little about development. Grades take away children’s self-confident. I say: pupils will learn more without grades.

The first, and in my opinion most important, thing against grades is that it take away a lot of self-confident for many pupils. A paper which tells a pupil in grade 1 that he/she isn’t good enough is very bad for the pupil’s development. You are not able to learn things in a good way if your self-confident is low. Pupils learn much more with a good self-confident. So it is a very major thing for teachers to raise pupils self-confident and I believe that grades are the wrong way to go. Pupils will learn more without grades!

My second argument against grades is regarding individual learning. In LPO can we read a lot about to see every child as an individual and to think about that in the classroom work. I think we loose very much of the individual thinking when we give marks in early ages. Maybe the pupil need more time, different tests, or something else for his/hers individual development. The goals tell the teacher that the pupil isn’t good enough if he/she can’t read short sentences in the end of grade 1. The teacher gives the pupil a mark which tells the pupil he/she isn’t good enough. Where is the individual thinking? Gone!!! It would be much better for the learning if the teacher instead is able to focus on every individual in the class, look at the individual developments and have a good dialogue with the pupils and the parents about development. I really think they will learn more in that way!

My final argument against grades is about all the bad pressure it makes. Many pupils get head- or stomach ache because they’re nervous about the grades. Problems with sleeping and other psychological complaints also occur when we talk about grades. It seems to be in the way that focus is on the grades not on the learning. The letters/numbers aren’t the most important things, it’s the things the pupil learns. Without grades the pupil can focus on the learning and he/she will learn so much more!

Some pupils enjoy grades and need the pressure to read for the test to get good grades. They like to talk with their friends about their marks and they want to beat each other. Some parents think they need the grades to have control over their child’s knowledge, they say it’s the only proper documentation they can get.

The pupils who really like the grades and learn more because of grades, are a minority. Most of the pupils in school would be able to learn much more without it and I think that it is possible to find other ways to encourage the minority I mentioned before. I also think we are so much better on documentation now then for 15-20 years ago. We can give the parents far more information then a number or a letter. For the pupils self-confident and development he/she needs to be aware of all his/hers capacities, knowledge, talents and progresses. All that can’t be shown in a mark. I know that every teacher in Primary school want the children to learn as much as possible. I think the right way to do it is without grades!