public humiliation

[WeirdOne]

My DS, 13, was recently upset by the way marks for a routine class test were given out. Everybody was made to stand up and the marks were then read out from highest to lowest. Each child was allowed to sit down once their mark had been read out, so the children with the lowest marks were standing until the end.

I wondered what the educational value of this might be and whether this kind of approach is encouraged or discouraged in schools and during teacher training.

Sorry to intrude on your teacher space - I know how hard you all work, but I wanted some perspective from teachers not parents!

My training was back in the 90s bambambini and we must have covered assessment but types of feedback probably did not cover what is to many sheer common sense. Sometimes I did rookie mistakes without realising for which I apologized and did not repeat (top of my head: this, giving out a whole class detention, giving out my phone number one time to a student worried about their homework, criticizing some handwriting (in fairness only compared with rest of their book not peers), toilet permission. You make mistakes in the first couple of years. Hopefully you learn from them. Hopefully your good points outweigh the bad ones.

It's cruel and the education you get from that sort of exercise is not a positive 1.

Teachers discussion grades on an individual basis is fine - expressing disappointment if you are sure a child could have done better is fine too if done alongside a troubleshooting of why they might have underperformed.

I don't agree with it and would never do it.

However, there is an up and coming breed of teacher/head teacher who think this is motivational. Kids are little snowflakes and we need to toughen them up. Lots of parents like it. Those lazy little tykes at the bottom will soon change therir ways!

Is the school one of the super strict type schools?

It's not good (or nice) practice. I would raise it with school. Doing things like this benefits no one. I'm always careful to not do things like this and to use praise/constructive feedback, as are my colleagues. Public humiliation is very 'last century' and rightly so.

No it's not super-strict.
Quite relaxed and friendly in lots of ways.

If is not one of those bonkers Toby Young type academies the school will probably be appalled.

I would never do this. I usually return work individually to each student. If they feel the need to tell others then that is up to them. I have heard of whole year groups being lined up in order of their grades so that everyone can see who is top/bottom. These initiatives tend to come from organisations that schools pay lots of money to to improve results!

That's appalling, OP. I would be very unhappy.

I don't like it, but I do get people telling me that some children will try harder as a consequence.

I think it adds to my DS's anxiety!

I had a number of teachers who did this on tests, homework, essays... I don't think that there is a value beyond trying to encourage the lowest scorers to up their game to avoid being there next time, but I doubt this effective for the majority of students. (I can think of certain cohorts of students where this would be an effective tactic, however)

I don't entirely agree that all marks should be always be completely confidential, however. One of the most useful things I did for English Lit GCSE was read some of the essays that one of my classmates had written that were A grade standard, when I didn't know how to get mine from B to A. I wouldn't have known to ask her if I could read them if I didn't realise that she was doing so much better than the rest of us

I wd speak to the school. But go in with an open mind (not ranting!) and be prepared in case it didn't quite happen in the way your DS described it to you. But if it was exactly as yr DS said, then I think it wd be fair for you to tell the sch he found it demoralizing.

There are some schools (praised by Gove) that pin up the test results ordered from worst to best for the whole year group in the corridors

I just searched, I posted about it in 2011
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/education/a1351552-Competitively-rank-students-by-results-say-Gove

Thanks Noble - very interesting.

I had a teacher who did this. One of the few classes I remember really well all these years later. I studied so hard for those classes and the homework for that class was always done first. Maybe it worked.

Is that you, Michael Gove?

Seriously, I'm a teacher. I would never do this.
I have occasionally read out the highest scores but in my experience, teenagers can be just as embarrassed about coming top as about coming bottom, so now I just give back the papers and offer a word or two of individual praise but put my constructive feedback in writing for them to read themselves.

I have offered the children in my class an incentive for all of them handing in their homework every week (they're Year 5) of a class game for the wet play box. I make a note of who brings it in each week. This is proving to be much more effective at getting them all to do it.

I sometimes do something similar in reverse when they've peer marked a vocab test or fact test. I'll get them all to stand up and then get everyone who got less than 10 to sit down, then 11, 12, 13 etc. The last few kids standing get clapped by the others and get merit points. The other way around sounds very different and not at all nice.

I can just see it demoralising those who put in the effort yet still are at the bottom even further.

My ds has SEN. School is hard enough for him without being told his full effort isn't good enough.

Yes, that's the issue for my DS - he worked very hard for that test only to be shown up as a failure.

There's no way I'd do that.

Fuzzy wizard please stop doing that.

Why?

Because you are publicly humiliating the ones with the lower scores. read this thread and see that's it not good practise. I would be fuming if anyone did this to my kids regardless if whether they were top, bottom or in the middle. Someone will always be bottom and feel even shitter now that everyone knows.

Doesn't matter if you do the lower ones first.

Except I always start at 10/15 so that the ones with lower marks all sit down at once. Nobody knows who got the lowest score.