Year 7 dd’s class have to call out their test results

[CatsnCoffee]

My dd seems to have made a great start to secondary school. Made friends, likes school and receiving support with Maths. In 2nd week of term one teacher made each child in class call out their scores from peer-marked test. Daughter came home v despondent as her score was lowest by a long way. I thought this humiliating practice ended years ago. Called school and spoke to head of year who was going to speak to teacher without mentioning my call. Last week same thing happened with same teacher. Older ds has same teacher for GCSE do don’t want to cause bad feeling!

I think it did mostly end years ago, but schools are struggling with restrictions due to covid. A lot of schools are advising staff not to take books in, or at least not to look at them until they have been quarantined for a couple of days. That makes it difficult to collect in the marks and see how well everyone has understood and who needs more help.

Hopefully they can come up with some more imaginative alternatives. Hold fingers up instead of saying? Equip each kid with a number fan? Ask them to email their test score as part of their homework?

We are having to revert to this as well, as we are supposed to remain 2m from the students, and books need to be quarantined for 72 hours before taking them in, which is then too long to hopefully address the problem.
I know it's not ideal, but actually most students are kind and understanding when others get lower marks. It's the best we can do in a bad situation.

We used to do this in school, but I’d also thought it had stopped as standard.

It’s only one of her teachers, so presumably the other subject teachers are able to find alternative means. I think you’re deluded if you think all children are sympathetic. That’s little reassurance to a child with slow or lowest score.

In my three DC’s schools (9, 12, 18) this has always been standard practice, and they’ve been to a number run of the mill state schools

However, my younger 2 don’t mind it at all, even when DC12 tends to not do so well in assessments, whereas my (generally) top of the class eldest didn’t like it one bit. So maybe the children will be more sympathetic than you’d expect?

@CatsnCoffee

It’s only one of her teachers, so presumably the other subject teachers are able to find alternative means. I think you’re deluded if you think all children are sympathetic. That’s little reassurance to a child with slow or lowest score.

Very much depends on the subject and type of test I’d have thought. Some subjects lend themselves to numerical ‘out of 10’ style marks, others less so. Teachers can’t collect books/papers if they are following guidelines correctly. Unfortunate, but there you go.

Awww what a nightmare! Regardless what other kids think of your test results, you feel embarrassed if they’re bad. And sometimes if they’re good. It’s far from ideal. My 3 DC don’t share test results as it’s just simply bad form. I totally understand that it’s an impossible situation for the teachers and I’m struggling to think of a way around it, unless they have email or something similar.

I know it's not ideal, but actually most students are kind and understanding when others get lower marks.
They certainly weren't when I was at school!

That sounds absolutely awful, humiliating and cruel. Can’t believe teachers think this is o.k.

I sometimes do 'hands up if you got more than... 1..2..3..4..5..6..7..8..9' and watch when hands go down, but if I wanted to record scores I'd take the tests in and wait out the quarantine before recording them (or cheat and use hand sanitiser after touching them).

When I trained (recently) there were plenty I observed who still did it and the pupils honestly didn't seem to mind, but we were told not to when GDPR tightened up data rules (which is bollocks, calling out scores has nothing to do with GDPR as far as I know, but there you go).

In my experience the first thing most of them do when they get a test back is shout 'I got 4/15, what did you get?' across the classroom to a friend.

Just email the teacher (cc in head of year) with a polite, 'x is being upset by having to reveal her score to the rest of the class, can we find away around this as I don't want her to build a negative association with the subject' or something. If it's one teacher going to them directly usually works better than up to the (no doubt overworked) head of year and then down and up and back to you, etc.

My kids secondary school puts them up on the board, the whole year group 😳

I think last year it wouldn’t have happened so much, but this year, as others have said, means that we aren’t allowed to take in any books or papers without isolating them for 72h, marking them, then isolating them again for another 72 h. This makes collectIng in marks for quick recall tests rather difficult.
Also agree with other posters that the most common format on return of a test to a class for them then to spend the next five minutes loudly sharing their scores.
I would just leave it.

Thanks for all the comments. I wish there were a way to ‘like’ a post as with Twitter, FB and Instagram!
Some people seem more sympathetic than others. I suspect this depends a lot on your own childhood experience and most teachers (with some exceptions) were smarty pants at school and never experienced such humiliation!

Ours have done it using the whiteboard page in their planner, so they write their score on and no one is allowed to turn around to see behind them. Could this be a way to boost morale of students?

Onthebenchofdoom that’s a better way.

Whether or not the other children are sympathetic or just completely uninterested in other students' scores doesn't really matter. It can still feel utterly himilating to a student who is already self conscious about ability. I really don't think there isn't a way of passing the score on to the teacher without shouting it out.

Jesus this is awful and demoralising.

On the other end of the scale being top of the class also means that when you come in second some students really celebrate that.

My son's school are great in that they tell students the top mark was 85 the bottom was 23 and most people got 50-58 so you know how you are performing without revealing to everyone what you got.

I used to do something similar - I'd tell them the top mark, the median (middle) mark, and "not many people got below..."
I didn't necessarily want anyone to know they were bottom, and choice of exactly which "low" figure I gave was sometimes strategic. A colleague's child fell below it one time, and her mum said it really made her buck her ideas up!
We also reported the median for exam results on reports - because what most parents want to know is how their child relates to the middle of the class.

Smarty pants? Sounds like you're not above a bit of score based judgement yourself, so maybe just encourage your dd to denigrate people based on how they do on their test.

It would be interesting to find out from your son and daughter whether other teachers do this, and if not, what they do instead.

Individual perspective varies hugely. To your DD it feels shameful but it's worth a chat about how much less significant her score will be to other kids' minds. They will be listening to a string of 30 numbers, mostly around their own score. Even if they notice it's she who has a much lower score it's unlikely to stay in their conscious mind very long. Put it to her, if they had a test in would she actually remember what score