“Out of date” – teachers criticize grades in certificates
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Loading... - Jackson Campbell
- 06 Feb 2023
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It is becoming increasingly difficult for teachers to grade their students in their reports. A Zurich teacher is now calling for more opportunities for individual assessment.
Sammy Frey (45), a secondary school teacher at a special school in Zurich, has to write reports these days – and that's pretty exhausting for him, as he explains in a video on YouTube. The problem: “The school and society have changed extremely. But the certificate has remained essentially the same in Zurich and many other cantons over the past 20 years.”
Schools today make a lot of effort to do justice to the children's individual opportunities in the classroom : "With the curriculum21, skills-based teaching and the integration of special needs students in regular classes, individuality is a priority. The certificate currently offers little opportunity to express that. For many teachers, this form of certificate is no longer sufficient - and yet it can be decisive for the future career of the students."
"Simply no longer up-to-date"
Frey emphasizes that he is not in favor of the abolition of certificates. "It needs some form of written assessment, but what it looks like, that's the question." As a teacher, he only has the opportunity today to award grades from 1 to 6 for school performance and "very good, good, sufficient and insufficient" for work, learning or social skills. "It's just not up to date anymore," Frey is annoyed. "You can't constantly demand individualization and then hardly show it in the certificate."
“If someone always comes to school in track pants, a teacher may judge that as not accepting the school rules, there is an insufficient social behavior. Then we find out that the kid comes from a difficult background and doesn't have clean jeans. How are we supposed to fit that into such a limited judging scheme? Or did a child who keeps calling but always answering completely off topic, actively participated in the lesson?" Frey gives further examples in the video. Read More…
