Assignment 2: school league tables "encourage the selling of souls"

Summary
When there is the presence of school league tables, learning is inhibited, breadth diminished and advantage embedded. The school league tables encourage teachers to adhere to a prescribed body of knowledge, often without hesitation or deviation. It also encourage students to focus on learning a prescribed body of knowledge, to accept that education is about adding exams and that nothing else counts. It complicates the parents selection of schools by looking for schools that can get results. This may lead to the growth of a predatory tutoring system industry which will give the extra help necessary. Schools league tables encourage the selling of souls for the sake of publicity and creating a market edge. It has had a considerable drip down effect on publishers as they play on the anxieties or a captive market. It also provides an inaccurate means of selection for universities and employers.

Reader Response
I agree with the author that schools should not be ranked. When schools are being ranked, it can have detrimental effect on the society as a whole. The teachers will only be teaching students things that will increasing their ranking in the school league tables. On the other hand, the students can only learn from this prescribed set of curriculum and nothing else. This will prevent the curious students from asking tangential questions and limit their quest for knowledge. With the schools league tables present, the test becomes the driving force in teaching and learning and the process of learning in inhibited. In Singapore, there was a system that announced the PSLE and O'level top scorer every year since 1992 but it was abolished in 2012. Even in Singapore, the harmful effects of having such a system is quickly recognized and abolished before more harm could be caused. Thus, I agree with the author that schools should not be ranked.

Cheryl Goh 4C Shernice Phuah 4B