Primary School Student Reviews: The Mysterious Silence of 700 Principals
The puzzling silence of 700 principals is not too late for the education sector to review the quality of primary education as well as the way students are evaluated.
The Hanoi Department of Education and Training (DET) has just held an online conference to review the first semester and deploy tasks for the second semester of the 2014-2015 school year for primary education. However, the conference did not go as expected. Instead of a lively atmosphere and enthusiastic contributions, there was a confusing silence from more than 700 primary school principals regarding Circular No. 30/2014/TT-BGDDT, which stipulates that regular assessment scores for students will not be used.
Is it possible that the puzzling silence of more than 700 primary school principals hides inadequacies in commenting and evaluating students instead of using scores?
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| The short, general way of commenting that many primary school teachers are using to comment on students |
First of all, the problem in commenting and evaluating students is that teachers do not have enough time every day to record comments on all students in the class. Especially in schools in provinces and big cities such as Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, each class is often very crowded (from 50 to 60 students).
Due to time and work pressure, on average, teachers can only give comments on 1/3 to 1/2 of the students in a class each day (including students with Good, Average and Weak learning abilities) for both Math and Vietnamese. The remaining students do not have any comments from the teacher that day.
Although the students who have not received comments today will continue to receive comments from the teacher on the following days of the week, the rotation of comments will take 2-3 days. Thus, the comments and assessment of knowledge and skills for a student will not be continuous.
Because there is not much time to comment on a class with too many students, in the past semester, most teachers commented on students in a short, general way such as: You did well on the test, I praised you, you have made progress, you wrote carelessly, you are not careful, you need to try harder, you need to redo the test, you need to pay attention to your expression... In the Math comments section, many teachers only wrote: đ (true) or s (false).
The above comments make many people, especially parents, completely "confused" and confused when looking back at their children's books. Particularly with Mathematics, with the way of commenting, correct or incorrect integration cannot accurately assess each level and ability of students according to many types of exercises such as: calculating by formula, calculating quickly, finding x, solutions, doing math with many calculations...
As for Vietnamese, the above-mentioned method of teacher assessment cannot honestly and objectively assess and comment on students' reading comprehension, spelling, vocabulary and sentence practice, grammar knowledge, writing style, etc.
The assessment and comments on the entire learning process of all students in the class are only recorded more specifically by the teacher in the form or report card at the end of the semester, but are only general, such as: Completed or Incomplete.
With general comments and assessments, students do not understand enough and do not know where they went wrong, specifically at which stage to correct, so they may repeat the mistakes they made in previous assignments.
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| The stamps stamped by teachers on students' notebooks |
For homeroom teachers who directly teach Math and Vietnamese, the comments are like that. As for teachers who teach Gifted subjects such as: Physical Education, Art, Music, they are in a "confused" state because they have to manage too many books when they have to record comments for 750 to 1,000 students in 15 to 20 classes of a school with 50-60 students/class. Because they have to teach many classes concurrently, teachers cannot remember all the training and learning abilities of all students in the same class.
On the school board's side, it is also very difficult to manage records and transcripts of all grades and many different subjects.
Thus, the issuance of Circular 30 makes us wonder whether it can only be applied to all high-quality private primary schools, new school models with few students (about 30 students or less)?
The special point of Circular 30 is not only not using scores in regular assessment of primary school students, but instead using teachers' comments on students' abilities, moral qualities and skills, but also requiring coordination between teachers and parents in educating and closely caring for their children's learning.
However, with the way many primary school teachers are giving comments, parents only know in general whether their child was praised by the teacher today or needs to try harder, but do not know clearly what skills or knowledge their child is weak in or needs to improve.
In fact, parents can only control a part of their children's learning knowledge because not everyone has enough pedagogical skills and patience to check each lesson of their children. Even because they are too busy with life, many parents have left the education of their children to the school and teachers.
With such a brief and general way of commenting and evaluating by many teachers, the big question is where will the quality of primary education go? Is the incomprehensible silence of 700 primary school principals at the online conference with the leaders of the Hanoi Department of Education and Training not too late for the education sector to review the quality of primary education after 1 semester of implementing Circular 30?./.
According to VOV
