Blunting the PSLE

So the Education Minister has announced changes to the PSLE grading system, and a review of the Direct School Admissions (DSA) programme for school children transitioning from primary to secondary school.  In a nutshell, the highly gradated PSLE T-score will be replaced with wider grade bands, while the DSA programme will be reviewed to better meet its "original purpose" of recognising extra-curricular aptitude as opposed to, I presume, examination skills or some other academic talent - let's say being particularly good in Maths.

In an earlier post, I shared my heart-to-heart talk with my son on why people need to go to school - it is not merely to do well to get to the next level of education, get a good job, and consequently earn a good living.  If that were the case, then why would kids with wealthy parents need to go to school?  All their own needs are well provided for - they could just stay at home all day and play computer games till they're 90.

No - our kids don't go to school so that they benefit.  They go to school to be trained to be useful to others - future family, friends, colleagues and society at large.  To be a good parent to a child.  To advise a friend on their insurance needs.  To work with colleagues to construct a building.  To invent a means of creating cheap potable water for remote villages.

Everything about our education system should be designed with this objective in mind.  The issue is not - how do we make PSLE less stressful?  It must surely be, how do we get PSLE to incentivise the training of children to (eventually) be useful adults?

Lots of people have already asked the question - if the scores are blunted, how will secondary schools distinguish between the hordes of students who have similar scores?  Extra-curricular talent?  Piano, ballet, sports?  That just adds more stress to primary school kids!  But that's well trodden ground, so I won't add more to that.

Instead, I have one other contribution to make to the ongoing debate.  My experience as a parent suggests that we should exercise caution against over-blunting the grading system.  Why?  I have two kids.  The younger kid is good at math and science.  He struggles with Chinese.  So we have to deal with this.  What's the logical response to this situation?  It's OK - if you're good enough at math and science, your performance in math and science can make up for Chinese.  Maximise your talent.  Outperform in the subjects you're great at, and your weak subject won't matter so much.

But this approach will no longer work with a blunt grading system.  Once you cross the hurdle of "good" (say 80 marks for example), then there's no further benefit to strive for "great" (say 99!).  Instead, you are incentivised to work on your "no good" to make it "not bad".

This seems counter-intuitive to how the real world works outside school.  No one tells me at work - hey Glenn, you're really great when you help us with these complicated regulations.  But your Chinese is terrible.  Tell you what, when you can conduct discussions with our Chinese customers, I'll promote you. Of course not, right?  You tell your guys - you, great at technology - you work in Technology.  You, great with numbers, you work in Finance.  You, great with people - you work in sales.  I get that being all-rounded is laudable.  But do we really want a workforce and society of uniform okay-ness, or one that has diversified sectors of greatness?

The truth of the matter is, even with the current system, which creates some opportunity for greatness in one area to make up for mediocrity in another, we already spend an inordinate amount of time trying to patch mediocrity, rather than groom greatness.

My younger kid easily spends 80% of his time on Chinese, and the rest split among all the other subjects.  Why?  Because every subject at the PSLE has equal weighting.  But fine, I get that at Primary School, this is helpful - because a certain basic degree of competence at core subjects is necessary.  No matter how brilliant someone is at science, let's say, he still need to be able to communicate and function in the wider world around him - so basic language competency, for example, is essential.

But the fact that blunt grading incentivises a certain type of behaviour is consistent with my observations of my older kid's Secondary School education too.  As we know, Secondary School grading is already in bands (A1 to F9).  What many schools do is that they work out the grade average.  So let's say you take 7 subjects, and you get A1, A2, B3, B4, C5, C6 and D7, so your grade point average is 1+2+3+4+5+6+7 divided by 7 = 4

But what happens when you cross the "A1" threshold (typically 75 marks)?  It doesn't matter if you're great.  So how do students respond?  Aim to hit A1 in the subjects you're good at, then stop there.  Use your effort to get your weaker subjects up.

I really question whether grooming all-round students is more beneficial than encouraging greatness.  Where are our Einsteins and Jobs and Yoyo Mas and Zaha Hadids going to come from?  Would they have emerged if they had been incentivised to be general all-rounders instead?

Everybody knows, as a matter of common sense, that in life, in the workplace, and even in the family, you leverage on your strengths.  I don't make my wife change the light bulbs - I do.  I'm taller.  My wife doesn't make me plan the family schedule - she does.  She's more organised.  We don't make the lawyers troubleshoot computer systems.  We don't make the accountants write our marketing material.  We don't tell each other - spend 80% of your time on the stuff you're not good at, and 20% of your time on the stuff you're great at.

But somehow we do it for our schoolchildren.  Weird.

Am I missing something here?  Happy to hear why this counter-intuitive approach makes sense!