The grading of children in primary school


Two weeks ago, I returned the test results in Spanish to my seventh-grade pupils. After going through the test, a question popped up, as I suspected: What grade does this result correspond to? I explained to them that I would not give them grades but, in its place, give them feedback on what they had achieved. They were requested to look again and see after what objectives they achieved. A few confused eyes were still looking for my intention and asked me the same question again.

A grade means everything to a pupil. It is hard to explain that it is the learning process and what they learn that counts instead. As long as pupils continue to orientate towards grades, they will lose interest in learning itself. But, this is, of course, not their fault. Our politicians have had this debate about grading for a long time now. What is best for our pupils – to grade them or not?

I cannot see grading as a positive thing; mainly because pupils focus more on getting a grade then challenge them to develop learning. It is a real challenge for a teacher as well to motivate students to study and explain what use they will have with their studies. We just have to find our ways. I believe that pupils should not be exposed for grades, especially not in primary school. If they learn to focus on wrong thing at early age, than we have to struggle even more in secondary school to change that focus.

Some people may say that grades motivate learning. Grades might have the impression that they stimulate learning, when they in fact only stimulate pupils to do as much as they believe satisfies the teacher. There is no learning taking place, because all the facts they have “learned” one week will be gone until next, when it’s time for a new test to take place. One might think that pupils need some kind of feedback so they can work more successfully, which is totally true; but grades are simply not appropriate means of accomplishment in this case.

Furthermore, there is a problem with being just in grading. Teachers may give different grades when it comes to a single piece of work. A colleague may give a “vg” on an assignment, where I would give a “g”. So why put our children through this? In today’s school all students have to pass all the subjects. They are expected to be good at everything, even if we know the simple true that we cannot be experts in everything. But why then put a label on them, by grading? Aren’t we contributing to a lower self-esteem in doing so?

My point is that learning in itself does not have to be graded in scales. A feedback on what one have learnt and what improvements can be done, can be made by other means, like written comments. Grading is not the answer. The main problem of this issue tends to be the orientation in schools. It simply has to change from a grade orientation to a learning orientation.