A question for British members

@ArishMell I don’t understand what you mean by “incompetent”. Mine were simply exam or test results, ranked with others in the class. As such they were matters of fact, though of course to be treated with caution and only used alongside other forms of assessment.

@MartinII I did not call the exam results or they the way they are assessed "incompetent".

The "incompetence" is behind the decision to make pupils entrants in a competition that has no meaning or worth; but is likely to be more harmful than beneficial. People are not automata, and it does not matter how good every one is, in any class of 30 pupils someone will be "bottom" or "top" no matter their abilities or any artificial test results. It would be incompetent and indeed cruel of any school, let alone dopey but ego-driven parents, not to realise that.

In fact none of my school reports even mentioned tests or exams. They were assessments of individuals' own progress in learning the subject through the School Year. We did not have formal tests throughout the courses themselves (this was before all this SATS stuff!), and the examinations were independent of the school.

@ArishMell You actually referred to an “incompetent ranking”, but no matter. As to the substance of the discussion, I think you must have attended a rather unusual school for the time!

@MartinII Yes, artificial ranking against one's fellow class-mates; not against the marking system of internal tests and certainly not of the real, externally-moderated examinations.

As far as I was aware my school was no different from any other British LEA one within the national education system of the time (mid-1960s), though it did have two streams by relative ability for the GCE Ordinary-Level courses*. I forget how and when you were put in which stream.

I had heard of people being colloquially called "top" or "bottom" or whatever of the class, but until now had no idea it once existed in reality beyond perhaps the occasional throw-away comment by some teacher or parent. Certainly never as a formal Report judgement!

Perhaps governors and head-teachers were give more latitude then, so some might have run these absurd class-level pseudo-"competitions" by which a pupil can be called top or bottom of his or her class - overall or by subject though? If that did happen, I hope it has long gone.


*(I was in the "lower" one, which taught only French, not French and Latin, and General Science rather than separate Physics, Chemistry and Biology courses. The extra hours this gave were dedicated to practical subjects: Domestic Science for the girls, Woodwork or Metalwork for the boys, and Technical Drawing. The subjects were all to GCE O-Level and the ones common to both streams (Maths, English Lit. & Lang., History, Geography) were to the same syllabi.)

@ArishMell Yes, the rankings I remember were for individual subjects. I don’t think anyone attempted a comprehensive ranking for all subjects taken together, which would indeed have been absurd.

At my (direct grant grammar) school, after the first year we were divided into “fast” and “regular” streams. “Fast” was meant literally. The fast stream took O levels after four years rather than five, and to facilitate that took fewer subjects than the regular stream. In those days, unlike today, specialisation was the watchword. At the beginning of the second year those of us in the fast stream had to choose between studying German, Greek or Geography. Those three were chosen, I liked to imagine, because of their common initial letter rather than for any better reason.

@MartinII Interesting! A very different approach.

Ours had the same 5 years for both the "Latin" and "non-Latin" streams, but the former seemed to add to their curriculum, rather than reduce it. I think they offered German as an option as well.

That does seem a curious choice - I can understand a choice between three languages, but not between two languages and one non-language subject.