What is the fair criterion to rank primary schools?

[markfch]

MOE recently published the list of primary schools with kids scoring 275 and above for PSLE. There were 20 schools that achieved this feat this year. I know that MOE never intended this to be used as a measurement for ranking, but they understimated the creativity of us kiasu parents :lol: . Do you think that this is a fair gauge of a school's performance?


Currently MOE leaves it to the schools to slice and dice whatever information they decide to publish on their PSLE results. Some schools don't even publish anything. Should MOE 'encourage' all schools to conform to a standard template of information such as % of passes, % of A*, % of qualtiy passes (A* & A) and (the one I'm especially interested in) average T-score? For GEP schools, maybe schools can even break into sub-categories for GEP & non-GEP so that parents can better gauge which schools are more value adding.

I fully understand MOE's rationale for not publishing ranking which I assume is to reduce the competitiveness during enrollment, but I suspect that we parents will still internally rank the schools based on whatever limited information is available anyway. So isn't it better than to give us more comprehensive information, rather than allow us make the wrong judgement due to incomplete information?

As seen by this year's record number of balloting under 1km enrollment, MOE's objective for not ranking primary schools publicly did not achieve its aim of reducing the competition in popular schools. If anything, the hot schools just got hotter :shock: . So my argument is that maybe it's better to make ranking public. Just my 2 cts. What's yours?

[jtoh]

Using the top scorer’s aggregate as a ranking is definitely not the best way. There may just be one exceptionally bright student in the cohort with a high aggregate, with everyone else in the middle range. Take for instance 2009’s top scorer from Qifa. She scored 290 but I understand that the next highest score after her was 260+.


A better way to gauge a quality school is measured by how well the entire cohort does. The number of quality passes and average t-score would give a good estimate. While it may be questionable if schools should release these figures to the public (as MOE is so keen to avoid comparisons), schools should at least make this information available to current students. Some schools do not even bother to announce this to the P6 batch on PSLE results day. Students and parents are left trying to figure it out for themselves resulting in a lot of misinformation.

[jasmineong]

I was thinking that if the school has a good reputation then it will naturally attract good students, students who come from families where the parents are more savvy and know which good education or tuition centres to send the children to. Like I find some of the neighbourhood schools which did not do well, their cohort is made up of children who may not have that much advantages (according to teacher friend of mine) or they cannot afford expensive tuition so the school could be good but they have a weaker cohort.


So I still find it hard to gauge the school by the results. Maybe they should assess the students at P1 and compare the them to students from other schools with by using the same cluster paper and then compare the results at P3 and at P6 finally and see which school has the best improvement?

[verykiasu2010]

jtoh:

Using the top scorer's aggregate as a ranking is definitely not the best way. There may just be one exceptionally bright student in the cohort with a high aggregate, with everyone else in the middle range. Take for instance 2009's top scorer from Qifa. She scored 290 but I understand that the next highest score after her was 260+.


A better way to gauge a quality school is measured by how well the entire cohort does. The number of quality passes and average t-score would give a good estimate. While it may be questionable if schools should release these figures to the public (as MOE is so keen to avoid comparisons), schools should at least make this information available to current students. Some schools do not even bother to announce this to the P6 batch on PSLE results day. Students and parents are left trying to figure it out for themselves resulting in a lot of misinformation.

very agreed

as for the Qifa 290, it was said somewhere that the PRC student is one year older than her peers as she need the time to brush up her English, hence more mature, etc etc

some schools do publish the info that markfch mentioned.

the \"trick\" is go to the target school's website and download those ppt soon after the result is released. the ppt may be taken off after sometime

overtime, a picture will emerge from those data

[markfch]

jtoh:

Using the top scorer's aggregate as a ranking is definitely not the best way. There may just be one exceptionally bright student in the cohort with a high aggregate, with everyone else in the middle range. Take for instance 2009's top scorer from Qifa. She scored 290 but I understand that the next highest score after her was 260+.

A lot of schools will allocate additional resources to 'groom' their top classes or even the select few students identified with super-high potential. Since we know that school's resources are limited, this may even be detrimental to the rest of the cohort as in the rest of the best may have lesser resources allocated to them as a result. That's why imho using top scorer's aggregate score to rate schools is not a good benchmark.

[markfch]

jasmineong:

I was thinking that if the school has a good reputation then it will naturally attract good students, students who come from families where the parents are more savvy and know which good education or tuition centres to send the children to. Like I find some of the neighbourhood schools which did not do well, their cohort is made up of children who may not have that much advantages (according to teacher friend of mine) or they cannot afford expensive tuition so the school could be good but they have a weaker cohort.

Think you hit the bull's eyes on the neighbourhood schools being disadvantaged compared to popular ones. That's why I'm especially impressed with schools in neighbourhood heartland such as Rulang & St Hilda's doing so well in her PSLE.

[markfch]

verykiasu2010:

some schools do publish the info that markfch mentioned.

the \"trick\" is go to the target school's website and download those ppt soon after the result is released. the ppt may be taken off after sometime

overtime, a picture will emerge from those data

From my observation, schools with stellar results are more likely to publish their results on the web. I remembered when I was comparing between 2 neighbourhood schools last year, one school only published their top 10 pupils' aggregate scores & the other school only published their CCA achievements. Like that, I've no basis to compare them academically.

But if MOE encourages all schools to publish their average T-score, then straight away all parents can do apple-to-apple comparisions. Isn't this way better? Especially since we already able to compare public sector services such as health care charges, HDB resale flat prices. Why are education services exempted?

[toddles]

markfch:

Think you hit the bull's eyes on the neighbourhood schools being disadvantaged compared to popular ones. That's why I'm especially impressed with schools in neighbourhood heartland such as Rulang & St Hilda's doing so well in her PSLE.

St Hilda's is not a neighbourhood school though... think ever since it started GEP, it's been so hard to get in, such that even PV got to ballot. and those living within 1km have to ballot.

same thing, those parents who have resources all fight to get their kids into St Hilda's, then with the attention and enrichment that they can afford, school doesn't have to value add very much to produce good results.

[corneyAmber]

markfch:

Think you hit the bull's eyes on the neighbourhood schools being disadvantaged compared to popular ones. That's why I'm especially impressed with schools in neighbourhood heartland such as Rulang & St Hilda's doing so well in her PSLE.

Hello St Hilda's(GEP school) is by no means a neighbourhood school. In that case, Tao Nan and Rosyth also neighbourhood schools or St Nicks... :lol: :lol: :lol:

[verykiasu2010]

ksi:

markfch:

Think you hit the bull's eyes on the neighbourhood schools being disadvantaged compared to popular ones. That's why I'm especially impressed with schools in neighbourhood heartland such as Rulang & St Hilda's doing so well in her PSLE.

Hello St Hilda's(GEP school) is by no means a neighbourhood school. In that case, Tao Nan and Rosyth also neighbourhood schools or St Nicks... :lol: :lol: :lol:

EVERYONE is a neighbourhood school in their respective neighbourhood