What is the fair criterion to rank primary schools?

[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

[corneyAmber]

verykiasu2010:

ksi:

[quote=\"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[/quote]:rotflmao: ya right!

[markfch]

You people are right. St Hilda’s certainly cannot be considered as a neighbourhood school. I was thinking more in terms of its location of being in the midst of neighbourhood heartland but as ksi rightly pointed out, then Tao Nan & the other schools are also in the same bracket.


Side track a bit. I sensed a lot of anxiety from parents on the PSLE threads on selection of secondary schools, especially those borderline cases. Eg parents with kids scoring 259/260 would be wondering whether can try RI/RGS or not? The dilemma & tension is palpable. Just wondering why don’t MOE publish the top 3% & 10% T-scores so that parents of P6 kids can be spared the agony of finding that out themselves? I’m assuming these figures will give a good estimate on any revision of the COP from previous years.

I mean it’s not as if they don’t tell, then we can’t find it out. Eventually we will anyway, haha.

[cantbearit2]

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.

:goodpost: Felt that the statistics presented each yr by MOE is skewed. Some non GEP sch may have overall better standings even though they may not make it to the honor roll. Just my 2cents.

[autolycus]

I think the statistics issued by MOE every year are not skewed. Rather, our society is skewed. Looking through KSP forums tells us that we’ve come to believe that numerical measures of success (which are not even true quantitative measures) will allow us to give our children better chances even when those measures are not significant in themselves.


And the reason we do that is that we feel helpless and uninformed because of the sheer complexity of the market. All we want is the best for children, but there is no non-complex way to determine it. In fact, there may be no way to determine it at all!

And why is the market complex? Because the market includes everything we do in it, so we are trying to second-guess our own second-guessing. It is like playing on the stock market for a few days every year.

What is the nett effect? The COP for schools generally changes not more than 1-2 points a every year. And the stress that goes into finding that out is enormous…

[art_n_i]

autolycus:

I think the statistics issued by MOE every year are not skewed. Rather, our society is skewed. Looking through KSP forums tells us that we've come to believe that numerical measures of success (which are not even true quantitative measures) will allow us to give our children better chances even when those measures are not significant in themselves.


And the reason we do that is that we feel helpless and uninformed because of the sheer complexity of the market. All we want is the best for children, but there is no non-complex way to determine it. In fact, there may be no way to determine it at all!

And why is the market complex? Because the market includes everything we do in it, so we are trying to second-guess our own second-guessing. It is like playing on the stock market for a few days every year.

What is the nett effect? The COP for schools generally changes not more than 1-2 points a every year. And the stress that goes into finding that out is enormous...

Hi autolycus,

I tend to agree with you. We try to apply too much science in our decision-making process but in actual fact, almost all of the decisions made by us are based on art and alot of emotions involved. We just want to lend science & statistics into it to make it sound rational.