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February 21, 2017

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Home » District » Minhang

Schools adopt star grade system

ELEMENTARY schools in Minhang recently changed their scoring system by replacing numerical grades with stars. The switch has left many teachers and parents confused.

Students are now being graded by their performance in solving different categories of problems, such as memorization, logical deduction and mathematics application. Each category is graded with different numbers of stars.

Li Qun, director of elementary schools in the Minhang District Education Bureau, said the purpose of the new system is to break the stereotype that a high score equals high ability.

Parents are trying to understand the new system.

“It is a bit confusing,” said the mother of a fourth-grader. “Without a score, it is not easy to measure my son’s performance in a more direct way.”

But she does understand the idea behind the new system.

“It shows more clearly my son’s strong and weak points,” she said. “We know where more needs to be done.”

Teachers, however, said that the new system heaps on additional work.

“We have to count stars one-by-one for each category of assessment,” said a teacher. “It took me twice as long to grade papers from two classes.”

However, most teachers agree that the grading system places better emphasis on quality educational analysis of how students are faring.

“We are developing an online platform to help teachers use the new system,” said Li. “That should help ease the workload.”




 

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