Topic: No fail, good or bad idea?

[Sadly-confused]

In the second TSW there was a debate running regarding the vexed question of the so called Government policy of ?No fail?, this debate was killed off in the last version of TSW. Can we try here and reopen the debate to allow teachers to have their say on the issue, either for or against. I would ask that if it is reopened that we as teacher try to maintain some decorum on the issue and not start a flamewar with people who take an opposing view. Rather we should debate the issue using facts and informed opinions to try and get to some sort of consensus as to how we feel about the issue.

[Rick_BKK]

I think there is a time and a place for no fail policies. Certainly when working with younger children, it is not always appropriate to fail them, because of the impact this may have upon them emotionally and motivationally. However I think you do create problems when no fail policies are overused, as students no longer take examinations seriously and in general I feel the quality of the students work suffers. Certainly at some stage, children are going to have to take exams that count and they will have to suffer the consequences of failing those exams.

I think in Thailand the balance is not correct. No fail policies are overused and as a consequence students do not always put in enough effort or enough study to progress as they should.

[Sadly-confused]

It?s a strange thing, Thailand seems to be obsessed with the idea of taking/giving exams, I have watched in amazement kindies having to sit through two days of testing twice a semester. Now at this young age they have not yet come to the understanding that regardless of how they perform they will pass. So they get all the trauma for the test and all the worry for no reason. Surely pre Prathom there is no need for any form of assessment!
I also agree with you partially that assessment can be detrimental to younger students but some form of assessment is necessary. Too many times we see classes made up of children of vastly different abilities, assessment can help to quantify these abilities and thus lead to some sort of efficient streaming such that the students can get more from school, other wise we get a situation where the really bright and the really backward students miss out because the teacher has to cater for the mainstream.
If you can get some of the older Thai teachers to talk about it, they will tell you that some 20 years ago when it was only mandatory to do 6 years of education there was a graduation test. Failure at this test required the student to retake the final year until such time as they passed. Further enquiries and the teachers will admit grudgingly that many M6 students nowadays could not pass this old exam, dumbing down or what?
 

.However I think you do create problems when no fail policies are overused, as students no longer take examinations seriously and in general I feel the quality of the students work suffers.

Not just exams, but most of their schooling becomes, in their minds anyway, not worth the effort.

Certainly at some stage, children are going to have to take exams that count and they will have to suffer the consequences of failing those exams.

The new university entrance exams being a case in point, there will need to an exchange of huge amounts of tea money to get the kids through these new tougher tests.

[Rick_BKK]

I think that failing and assessment are two completely different things. Continually assessing the children is part of a teacher?s job. If you were to teach in the UK for example you would have to do IEP?s etc. You would have to set learning targets for each child and assess how they progressing with the National Curriculum.

Too many times we see classes made up of children of vastly different abilities, assessment can help to quantify these abilities and thus lead to some sort of efficient streaming such that the students can get more from school, other wise we get a situation where the really bright and the really backward students miss out because the teacher has to cater for the mainstream.

I am not sure about this. I think it depends upon what kind of teaching you are doing and what support you have in the classroom. In the UK, as in many other countries, inclusion is now being practiced in schools more and more. This means that even in a mainstream school you may not only have children of differing ability in your class, particularly if you are teaching in a primary school, but you may also have children with Special Educational Needs (SEN). It is required by law in the UK that you cater adequately for all these students and not just teach to the middle. This means that you have to differentiate tasks, and set different groups or even individual students different work depending on the ability level they have. Failure to do this would mean that you wouldn?t get your threshold payments and even more seriously could lead to a poor report from the Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED). However in this set up you would usually have at least one classroom assistant to help you. Also the class size would usually be around 30 children.

So for me, the issue is not having mixed ability classes, it is having very large classes with little or no classroom support that causes the problems.

[Sadly-confused]

When I used the term assessments I did so in the broad sense to include testing, exams, homework and other forms of continual assessment.
We cannot compare Thai schools with most if not all western schools. Yes I agree that inclusion is starting to work there now, but the teething problems were immense and possibly caused irreparable harm to the outside the box students during the initial phases. Since I have been teaching in Thailand I have taught in two Matayom schools (state) and one private Prathom, in all three there were between 9 and 12 classes per age group. However in only one school was there any form of academic streaming, in the others it was purely financial, i.e. those who paid the most tea money got their kids into the /1 and /2 classes those with the least or none ended up in /12.
Yes class sizes and assistance or lack of it do have an impact but it should be remembered that the old Jesuit missionary schools regularly had classes in excess of 300 and still managed to attain good results. This was achieved by instilling a sense of competitiveness in the students and having rigorous testing and thus positioning within the class. In Thailand where class sizes are around 50 there should not be a problem if there was adequate discipline and motivation and some sort of achievable goal to show to the kids. That and failure being an option, with failure ensuring a revisit to the same academic year again, with the loss of face that this would entail.
The Thai national curriculum is vague and there appears to be no oversight to ensure that it is implemented, in many schools I doubt that the envelope has even been opened let alone the document has been read. I have rarely been given an adequate syllabus and when I have it bears no resemblance to the national curriculum. With so much mal-administration its little wonder that school admins adopt the no fail policy.
The reasons for failure are numerous, inadequate teaching, facilities, motivation, lack of discipline and many more, but none of them are aided by the no fail policy except by hiding the reasons.

[Uncle Che]

I think the no fail policy is a good idea. Come on, Thai administration likes to give out a totally useless and totally inadequate syllabus and tell the teacher to teach the topics listed. The students are woefully unprepared to even understand the topics, but this being Thailand, if the teacher tries to help the students learn, the teacher will not meet their objectives and the teacher will lose face.

So the teacher will just teach what the administration wants them to, good, bad or ugly. And then they will give them a test and the students will all pass. Everyone is happy, the administration for the fact that every student passes, the teacher because all the objectives have been fulfilled and the students because they go on to the next grade.

[willie mays]

For the point of discussion I will say that I believe in giving failing marks.  I am  product of this system and a believer in it.

[Uncle Che]

Yeah, I believe in pass/fail as well, but the administration and co-teachers set the bar, unfortunately.

[Sadly-confused]

I assume that your last post states you position and the previous one was written tongue in cheek. I fully agree that the syllabus as handed down by most schools id not worth the paper it?s written on, and you are certainly correct that many students are ill prepared to learn even that (having been passed through the previous year without merit). We are however not powerless in this, as long as you are willing ti risk not getting a new contract.

Blindly passing student to accommodate the inadequacies of the system and administration just perpetuates the status quo and really does irreparable harm to the students. The knowledge that they are supposed to acquire in Matayom serves as a foundation to what they will go on to learn at  university, if they are blindly passed then they have very shaky foundations.

If the school insists on a ?no-fail? policy you can ask for an official reason for this. Normally they will say that it is MOE policy, so ask to see the official MOE directive on it and ask for a copy for yourself. As there is no official policy this will normally shut them up, All I do nowadays if grade fairly prepare the grade sheet and sign and attest it as being an honest appraisal of the students abilities, and hand these over. If the admin then decide to change them that?s up to them but at least your professional integrity has not been damaged. If you can make up the grade sheets and sign them and then scan them into a PDF and hand that in. That way they cannot make changed to your document.

Having a copy of the Thai national Curriculum 2001, the National Education Act 1999 and a partial copy of the official benchmarks also helps in backing up your argument. I shall try over the nest few weeks to scan and PDF my copies and make them available here. 

[MrQ]

If the students don't hand their work in I can't pass them.

If they hand it in late they get 50%. If it is copied obviously they get 50%

When it comes to exams I write the exam so the stupid kids can get the mininum mark needed to pass and the kids who work hard an have a bit of a chalenge and boost there marks to what they deserve.

Worked for the last three years with not to many complaints.

Oh and when I resit the kids who failed I write seriously difficult tests so that they fail two more times then its the schools problem whether or not they want to pass or fail them

Legallty I MUST give them TWO resits at the end of the year.

[Freddy Farang]

This is an interesting debate with some good points made. I personally think that students should not 'automatically' pass anything. If students don't do the work or don't have the ability in a certain area then they shouldn't be falsely credited with the fact they do.

Contrary to an earleir post, I do find and have found that abilities within a clasroom of students do vary, more so than in the UK and this does have a negative impact when it comes to testing and setting the levels of testing. In my personal experience in one class I had a blind student (who should have been in a special needs class), a self-harmer and a student who used to fall asleep in class through brain damage (yes brain damage; which resulted from a car hitting them)! 

Having said this it was my proudest teaching moment when my student with the brain damage actually passed one of his exams and it was the loudest cheer in the classroom, forget about the 100%'s this student was a real hero.

I think we have to bow down to commercial pressures, the schools most of us work in are business' and that there are kids in the classes who shouldn't even be there but their parents have the money to put them there. A shame really for all concerned, most of all the kids, who must feel lost and really insufficient.

One of my Thai friends and a parent of one of our students replied when I asked her, "what was it hard to get into the school", "it wasn't down to academic results just money". C'est la vie!

[snottgoblin]

as said commercial concerns outweight the values of educational achievement, linked with Thai ?teachers ( ) who are control freaks, result, one gets the Thai System .

Thinking is not to be encouraged as it is deemed reactionary and asking questions is tantamount to challenging the Thai teachers intelligence and more importantly their authority .

For the word " EDUCATION ?IT IS SUGGESTED IT SHOULD BE REPLACED WITH ?INDOCTRINATION !!

Chairman Mao, Joe Stalin, ?Mr. A.Hitler, and no doubt Ghengis Khan would all approve of the current scenario in Thai education .