Saturday, 5 June 2010

Too many monkeys, too few peanuts

>>Link<<

Reading both the Barefoot Investor's blog and the Star in the morning puts a new spin on some things, for example the title of this post. I'll assume you know what I'm talking about after reading the news article from the Star.

So it seems that the PSD has run into the same problem again - too little money and too many "bright" students demanding scholarships.

If we look at the way the education system has been revamped, nothing has really changed. Introducing the A+ system hasn't really helped filtering and classification. Not until the Ministry decides to reveal the actual marking and grading system. How is the public to know whether the grades published in newspapers are the grades before or after statistical adjustment? It is purported that grades are sometimes artificially inflated by the marking system. If so, the introduction of the A+ system is pointless. Hence the "bright" students might not be that bright after all.

So... do we demand a review of the transparency of the marking system? I'd say aye. It's high time we realised how markers are [if they are] skewing the statistical distribution of our students' marks. That right-skewed curve might be a sign of something else in the future..

Note: Statistical adjustment refers to cases such as the grading method used in the SAM finals results, where the final grades are a reflection of the statistical distribution of grades in the total student population in the SAM programme.

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