Assignment 2: School league tables 'encourage the selling of souls' by Xin Ni (09) and He Ying (13) 4C

Summarise some of the arguments the author raises against School league tables.

120 educationalists from around the world have signed a letter attacking the OECD's Pisa rankings and their undue influence on education systems worldwide. Pisa compared the data without any caveats or explanation, making tests the driving force in teaching and learning and inhibiting learning. Schools are turned from centres of learning into marketing enterprises seeking instant results; students often have nothing to fall back on but a good examination technique which has limited value except for passing tests.  The league tables encourages student to focus on learning a prescribed body of knowledge, to accept that education is all about passing exams. It is a disgraceful yet significant factor in the marketing of many selective and independent schools. Even the 100 global schools questioned the OECD'S Pisa so as to remove the naming or shaming for themselves.

Do you agree with the author that schools should not be ranked? How are these ideas reflected in your society?

Without a doubt, I agree with the author that schools should not be ranked. Ranking of schools can have immediate detrimental effect on the society or in a long run as well. As schools will become results driven, and start encouraging teachers to adhere to a prescribed body of knowledge, usually only what will be tested, often without hesitation or deviation. Students’ curiosity will be smothered; tangential questions are avoided, just as to maximize the marks attained by the student body. Education will then be just about passing exams, and nothing else. Students are often left with nothing to fall back on, other than a good examination technique which has absolutely no value in the in the workforce, despite receiving education since the age of three or four. Important life skills are neglected for schools are only interested in their academic performance on the league table. However, realizing the harmful effects of ranking of schools, the Singapore government had decided to abolish the ranking system in our education. "These include abolishing the nearly decade-old system of banding secondary schools based on their academic results, which has led to keen and sometimes unhealthy competition among schools. Some awards which schools currently get from the ministry for academic achievements will also be scrapped." This was quoted from an article by the Ministry of Education (MOE). Thus, top scorers of the Primary School Leaving Examinations (PSLE) as well as ‘O’ Levels were no longer being announced since 2012. Thus, I agree with that author that schools should not be ranked as it comes along with extremely harmful effects.