Education - Examination Based System or Not - Discussion - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 21, 2012, 04:51:33 pm
content: for so long, our country has been exercising "examination based" education system, meaning... for primary school (year 1 - 6, 6 years old to 11yrs old kids) there is one big exam at the end of year 6, which will determine where the kid will go for secondary school (normal, excellent or technical school) based on their result on subjects, high math or/and science mark will make them eligible to apply for science/excellent school. for secondary school (form 1-5) we have two big exam, one at form 3, one at form 5. same story, will determine which stream you will go or/and make you eligible (higher priority to get selected) to go to higher education school/university.these 3 big exams are general/global exam, synchronized by the ministry throughout country. ie it will be made and checked by them, not internal of the school where the pupils study. so teachers are out of control of it. teachers only follow what sillabuses they are asked to teach.now this time our education ministry decided to make a big change, ie there is no more big general exams. students will be examined in-house, ie internal of the school, and periodically throughout the years. as how to determine where to place the student at higher level education is still unclear to me since this is very new. and we are only asked to implement this "school based examination" and the details how to implement it this mid year starting at year1,2 and form1 students. and not full details, only part of it i believe since they are also ammending and formulating high up there in the ministry, quite a havoc for teachers down below. and i believe for high edu such as university, "the end of semester exam" is still implemented, no change yet announced. so the problem now only for primary and secondary schools.the main difference between the "conventional general exam" and "school based exam" is that, for general exam, the same questions set will be answered by all students in the country at the same predetermined time. where "school based exam" system, the questions (the so called "evidence") will be made by each school/teacher, so there is no synchronization in term or questions asked and the time the exam is conducted, ie it will be done periodically (say one exam at each month or each topic taught) and the result will be at the teacher's/school's discreation.so to my question.... can you share your education examination system in your country? do you think "general country examination" is better than "in-house school based examination"? or vice versa? what i'm afraid so much is that what if the ministry is wrong? (since the first time this thing was raised, some political motive was involved, the governments tried to please parents so they can gain support in election i think) and produce less quality post graduates in our country as a result? since there is no more "general examination", the students will take their education lightly. and the ministry quoted they are using "developed countries" education system, is it true? i hope to hear some opinions from friends oversea.fyi: i have relative who studied outside, and the culture for the country is the parents will get sued by the court if they fail to send their kids to school for no good reason (MC etc), that is good i think for less education awared parents, like most in our country, esp my place here. but thats no sound of it to be implemented, and coupled with this "school based exam" i'm afraid things will get worse for our young generation.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 21, 2012, 05:01:45 pm
content: For reference:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleven_plus_exam

author: T4P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 21, 2012, 07:29:51 pm
content: You know where i am at,and i can tell you a lot since clearly i just escaped 11 years of primary and secondary educationThey have both general exams and school exams, the last exam like 'N' or 'O' level for the secondary education and PSLE ( Primary school leaving examination ) for the primary educationI know 40 years earlier malaysia was using a slightly different system, not calling 'O' by O's i forgot, but anyway, that's what my dad went throughthey are deciding to change the system here quite a bit, like they want to grade the students by what they are good at ( Well, you can unluckily get into the worst stream just because you aren't chinese-proficient or something. I have absolutely 0 power on chinese so don't bother )So yes, SG has been using the model for my entire 11 years schooling, ( NOT NOW! I'm in a technical college! )Well mecha, i guess ya know my country's education modelAND that even though the world's something like 70% english as a common language yet malaysia used to make malay a primary language and english a secondary

author: saturation
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 21, 2012, 08:21:51 pm
content: In the USA last I recall, there is only one big test, the SAT, which is used to determine college eligibility or not. But its not a government mandate, the different schools use the SAT as a screening test, which allows them to prioritize applicants using many other criteria, each not entirely identical for each school.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_admissions_in_the_United_States#Overview_2The US system does not put full weight on one exam, what happens if the student happened to be ill on that day? How can one reconcile a student with good grades through his life, and had a bad SAT, or vice versa? So, they use many criteria rather than all eggs in one basket.Decades ago, not only did I take an SAT like exam, but some colleges I applied to gave separate test apart from the SAT that the school administered, then there was an IQ test, and several psychometric tests.

author: slateraptor
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 21, 2012, 09:06:43 pm
content: Quote from: saturation on July 21, 2012, 08:21:51 pmActually, 2 big tests: SAT and ACT, the latter tending to favor those with greater competency in mathematics.

author: PeteInTexas
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2012, 04:52:17 am
content: I've said it before, a lot of people have unreasonable expectations of education and of educational institutions. Some years back, I remember some special interest group thought it was evidence of a failing education system that "typical" college graduates could not name all US states in a blank map. REALLY?!! WTF??!!As to your question though, I'm torn. I value equal education opportunities for all regardless of socio-economic status. The only way to know which schools may need more resources is to have national standards of achievement. On the other hand, I also value unique educational experiences.I'm definitely opposed to a be-all-end-all-the-fate-of-the-rest-of-your-life-on-one-test. But on yet another hand, I'm opposed to using public resources for people to "find themselves" in college.

author: vk6zgo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2012, 05:38:38 am
content: Quote from: PeteInTexas on July 22, 2012, 04:52:17 amI agree.They hype up these tests as if they were the final arbiter of your value to society,but hundreds of people who do not qualify for University entrance at these exams,later qualify for "Mature Age"entrance,do the same Degree as the little snots who qualified out of school,& get the same sorts of passes at the end of the course.The thing in education which freaks me out is "Outcomes Based Education".It is probably OK for Primary & Secondary schools,but for Technical education,they turn out people who can do a few "monkey tricks",but often lack the basic knowledge for increasing their skills.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2012, 06:14:46 am
content: Here you are lucky to leave school being able to write your name, let alone anything else. A DOE that cannot deliver textbooks to schools still ( July and many schools are awaiting delivery for last years books, while the books are being burnt by the supplier as they are "surplus") and a change to the system every year that means there is no effective standard, poor teacher motivation and training, schools that are little more than a shell with no roof, a generally ineffective management, such that there are thousands of ghost teachers who are paid and who are non existent and a general level of idiocy in the system.Then you get the private schools, where the fees are high, but they have few of the above problems.The universities are instituting a remedial year for all students so as to be able to sort those who are able to be taught from the rest, as the standards are dropped each year to reach the required pass point. It does not seem possible that the top is so stupid, but they set a pass percentage and have dropped the fail point now to under 20% to get the "desired point" to be in the data.

author: Mki
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: July 22, 2012, 07:06:00 am
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on July 21, 2012, 04:51:33 pmThis looks like a leap towards the kind of system we have here in Finland. You might want to look for documentary "The Finland Phenomenon", which explains the system quite well. But as one who is been inside that system 18 years (9 yr elementary, 3 yr vocational, 3 yr polytechnic and 3 yr poly/university - slow learner), i would recommend to take that information with grain of salt.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2012, 01:47:48 pm
content: @DaveXRT: sorry pal, i'm not that aware of singaporean education system. but skipping primary and secondary school is a recipe for trouble in my place. once upon a time, we are ruled by english and they introduced LCE (low cert edu) and MCE (mid cert edu), its now changed to PMR and SPM (just a malay translation of it) after independence. its been 55 years, we are now moving to this new system. just read more details from the ministry site...http://www.moe.gov.my/bpk/v2/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=135&Itemid=419google translation:http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ms&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.moe.gov.my%2Fbpk%2Fv2%2Findex.php%3Foption%3Dcom_content%26view%3Darticle%26id%3D135%26Itemid%3D419now it sound better since we still have centralized (general) exam but counted as 40% according to the site. we have 4 elements including psycometric test. the trouble is, we have not been briefed on full detail of this, we just asked to do the first step (school based exam and gathering "evidence") and not being told whats next. do you know the feeling of being told to do a thing but you dont know where its heading or end? i will feel like a fool this way. its quite disturbing. and we've been told (maybe just rumours) that there's no more general examinations (not what i've read in the above link) and the methodology we are asked to do right now seems confusing and unbalanced. ie we are asked to change the evidence/exam to easier one if a particular student unable to pass it. to ensure all students are able to pass the exam, so each one of them have different level of difficulty of exam questions set, what a cr#p? we've been discussing this among colleagues and yet no definitive conclusion.maybe we are heading US style education system as saturation mentioned of psychometric test etc and to avoid one-test-fate-deciding only system. at least at the end of the year, there should be an indicator for a student of his/her capability, knowledge and skill level to move on to the next level. i hope government knows what they are doing (they should, and i should believe as well). and hopefully no political influence involved and "rushing things up" in this "critical decision" on future generations education and life quality.@Mki: maybe a short sysnopsis to the "phenomenon" might help since we need to pay for the full documentary.fyi: 10 years back we've been implementing teaching math and science in "english", now its been withdrawed (back to teaching in national language) since maybe its not effective and complained from our scholars. i feel sorry for those students that have poor english and unable to learn the true content of math and science (language barrier) all these years.

author: Mki
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: July 22, 2012, 03:16:03 pm
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on July 22, 2012, 01:47:48 pmThe document mainly explains the finnish system and compares it to US counterpart. Here is one web page with some key points:eduratireview.com/2011/03/the-finland-phenomenon-a-film-on-schools/From this list my nag with the finnish system is especially with points 6 and 7. Those noble things may be true in the comprehensive school, but they don't reflect to the higher education.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2012, 08:34:38 pm
content: from the keypoints, it seems finland education is a success? what about your real life experience with it? are finland engineers and human resourses better comparable to the rest of the world? from that simple description, it seems not hard to copy finland's system for our country since we have basically the same structure, ie mostly we have government schools here, and teacher's union we have both local and global/centralized. except we are more and more lacking at fund and facilities such as healthcare, support for teacher's and students etc. and our sillabus is fixed throughout nation, we just teach according to it and at the end the students will attend the exam based on the sillabus. "fund to school" is critical nowadays, we have to collect our (or students) own money to organize some activities. until the goverment solve this money issue, i think goverment is not up to this "big jump" decision. the new method requires each student to have their own record/files (+evidences) and a specialized room to keep all the records, and this requires alot of paper and copyprinting usage, this alone give problem to schools supplying, let alone the fund for facilities/building improvement/repair. we only can do what within our capacity, taught and available to us teachers.

author: T4P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2012, 11:12:55 pm
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on July 22, 2012, 08:34:38 pmAnd the scary part is that the malaysian government is very indecisive