Should our school abolish grades?

We asked ourselves if our school should abolish grades or not? It is a question that is often debated in classes and schools around Germany.

 

If the answer is yes, the students would get several written feedback with constructive feedback  instead of regular grades. We  do not  think that this would be good for students.

On the one hand, you could say that it might be good for some of the students because they wouldn`t get in trouble or in the worst  case get punished by their parents if they got a bad grade. Secondly, you can say that students would not stress as much because they are scared to do a bad job or fail to graduate.

But on the other hand, you can say that it would not be good to forbid grades because if you get a written feedback instead of a mark, which says that you should improve your concentration or speaking skills in English, a student might not improve in this things because they might think they are not that bad. But if you get a bad grade in  English the students can clearly see that they really have to be more concentrated or have to learn more.

The most important thing is that if you are searching for a job or a university they might not want to read 12 pages of written feedback about each person that sends a letter of application. They want to know if you are good enough for the job by looking at a few numbers.

To put everything in a nutshell, it would be good for some students to “lose” grades but for the majority of students it would not be that good. You can also see this in our survey.

 

 

We asked one houndred students, teachers and other adults the same question:

Should grades be abolished in our school?

 

Here are the results:

58% teachers/students      -> grades should not be abolished

42% teachers/students      -> grades should be abolished

 

written by Joelle & Elisha