From the lowest grade to five: Traditional marks are dropping out of school

1. The principle of evaluations is generally called into question.

Irina Mishina

For most subjects, the results of the USE-2021 coincided with last year's, plus or minus tenths of a point. And they grew up in subjects such as literature, computer science, mathematics, physics, English and social studies. Officials from the Ministry of Education and Science hastened to report: "Our teachers passed this exam with 100 points!"

School grades have indeed become an indicator of the performance of teachers rather than students in recent years.

“Teachers are forced not to give two marks and not leave students for the second year. The school reports on progress and wants to be in good standing. If the performance is low, the director may have problems. As a result, the laggards are pulled up by three, conflicts arise around this. Teachers who give deuces have conflicts with the administration. You can fall out of favor in this way. After all, all schools are fighting for ratings. In these conditions, the teacher is obliged to demonstrate that success is growing, the average grade in the class is increasing. This condition is laid down in the provision on incentive payments. Incentive payments are linked to children's academic performance. And if the teacher's salary is small, he will most likely overestimate the grades in order to get stimulating ones", - Olga Miryasova, executive secretary of the interregional trade union of pedagogical workers "Teacher", told Novye Izvestia.

Recently, a resonant post appeared on social networks in which one of the parents was indignant about why his daughter's classmates were given only fives and fours, and those who did not do their homework were not given two. “Those who studied in Soviet times remember very well that there were poor students and repeaters in Soviet schools. There have never been very many of them, nevertheless, already in the 1990s, the number of “ignoramuses” began to decline rapidly. And by the beginning of the 2000s, Losers and Repeaters had actually become an element of folklore. Where did they disappear and what was the reason, really the success of the education system?", - the blogger asks.

There is an opinion that a deuce is a way of educating a student. However, if we turn to history, many of the famous people did not shine with grades in school.

The most intelligent Anton Pavlovich Chekhov brought in bad marks from school on a regular basis. Geography and arithmetic are subjects for which he was twice left in his second year in third grade.

The founder of the modern Russian language, Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, was a real headache for the teachers of the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum. They did not find any reason to give him a mark in mathematics - Pushkin had a “zero” in this subject.

Leo Tolstoy , who created War and Peace, did not go to school - there were enough nannies and tutors in his parents' house. They could not instill in the child a love of science, and when entering the university, Tolstoy failed geography. Thanks to influential family friends, Tolstoy was still able to enter, but his studies did not go. He failed exams in the history of the Russian and German states, and eventually left his studies without completing the second year.

The founder of cosmonautics, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky , is one of the most brilliant people who ever lived on the planet, self-taught and a poor student. The reason is that as a child he suffered scarlet fever and, due to complications, was practically deaf. Classmates laughed at him, and he greatly annoyed the teachers.

Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain, who led his country to victories in two world wars and received the 1953 Nobel Prize in Literature, was a failure. In his certificate they wrote: "Out of 13 students - 13th"...

Are there any Losers and Repeaters in modern schools? Their total disappearance is an exaggeration. In the Electronic Journal in the section "student rating in the class" there is a column "Number of twos". My daughter's classmates receive twos and, judging by the menacing letters from teachers, quite often. True, her deuce had nothing to do with her studies. This year she was given a two for the fact that her neighbor on her desk wrote off her math test. Her classmate, who has been studying English almost since kindergarten, got a “two” in this subject for forgetting a dictionary at home. So school deuces often have nothing to do with knowledge. But they "distribute" them more than willingly. However, the school in which the daughter is studying is most likely not an indicator: the cherished points are brought to her not so much by her academic performance as by the successes of gifted children in Olympiads and competitions.

“We have both Losers and Repeaters,” says Efim Rachevsky, director of the Moscow educational institution School No. 548 Tsaritsyno . - But it's all called differently now: academic debt. Children stay in the "second year" for various reasons - for health reasons, in connection with a difficult life situation, for example. Look at the statistics of the exam: for example, in 2029, 6% did not cope with the tasks. 4 people did not pass the OGE in my school. I know all the “poor students” well, I have excellent relations with them. Academic progress reveals problems, and you need to deal with them, solve them. If you want to know my position, it is necessary to put "two". If everyone is given “fives” in a row, a person, having entered the university, will not be able to write an elementary dictation. Evaluation, in my opinion, also carries an educational meaning. If you stroke the head all the time, we will teach you to lie from an early age, ”says Efim Rachevsky.

The principles of Efim Lazarevich Rachevsky, a teacher with 46 years of experience, are admirable. But today, alas, they are not typical for all Russian schools. In 2016, a scandal erupted in St. Petersburg. Dmitry Gushchin, a computer science teacher who received the title of "Best Teacher in Russia" in 2007, said that the headmaster of his gymnasium was falsifying students' grades - correcting them to higher grades, and trying to force him to do the same. But he did not want to, for which he was fired. The situation was publicized, the facts were confirmed, and the director lost her position.

In April 2018, in Rostov-on-Don, a month before graduation, the teacher of Russian language and literature Natalya Sapegina had to quit after the twos, which were received by half of the 9 "B" students of gymnasium 76. The principal teacher refused to overestimate the marks for the sake of good performance. She wrote a complaint against the actions of the gymnasium management to the Ministry of Education of the Rostov Region and the city education department. At the same time, the teacher openly stated that this was not a private conflict, but global problems in the system of modern education, where not the acquired knowledge came to the fore, but the "beautiful" reporting of the educational institution on academic performance.

Obviously, grades today are more likely a teacher's leverage on a negligent student. But will a bad grade make you study better, will it instill a desire to acquire knowledge? The question is more than controversial. In this regard, the initiative to change the grading system at school has been discussed for several years. Supporters of the school “coup” propose to move from five points to 12. Increasing the range of grades will supposedly give teachers more opportunities to measure academic performance.

However, there has been no unified grading system in Russian schools for a long time. Yes, in the majority of educational institutions, in the old fashioned way, the usual "fives" and "twos" are given, but formally an educational institution can switch to another regime or refuse grades altogether. Such a decision may be chosen by the Governing Council of the school , which includes the administration, teachers, parents and the students themselves.

By the way, there have been more and more supporters of the abandonment of school grades among teachers lately.

“I have noticed for a long time that many children already in grade 7 do not need our grades: if they are interested in learning, they study without paying attention to grades, and if they are fed up with everything at school, then they spit on grades. The exception is the "correct" children, whom their parents taught that assessment is the most important thing in life, but, fortunately, such children are becoming less and less. Before the introduction of the GIA, grades were needed: you can't get a job with a bad certificate. But now no one looks at the certificate, everyone is interested in the results of the GIA and victories in the Olympiads. Grades are needed for those parents who want their children to correspond to a certain standard (often already outdated) and do not require special attention from them, "says Vsevolod Lukhovitsky, a teacher of Russian language and law at the Intellectual School.

Who then needs grades?

“There are very good teachers for whom grading is hard work, more unpleasant than writing any reports. I do not want to consider here the situation when the teacher uses the assessment "for educational purposes", especially since it is prohibited. Those who need grades are our bosses - directors and education officials. Since they don't know how to do anything other than write - based on ours - progress reports, grades are their bread. Do we need to take bureaucratic games seriously and believe that the quality of our work is determined by the number of fives children receive? In my opinion, no”, - sums up Vsevolod Lukhovitsky.

So is it possible to do without these "twos" and "fives" at all, and what will come of it? There are schools with unmarked teaching, and their number in Russia is increasing every year. One of them is the Moscow School of Self-Determination Education Center # 734. The grades in this school are "descriptive": the teacher analyzes the student's work, most often in writing. That is, not just talking about whether the work was done well or badly, but explains what was done right and not very well, where there is growth, and where it is necessary to work.

Within the framework of the "New School" project, junior grades of 38 educational institutions in the Lipetsk region have abandoned the usual marks and introduced special achievement sheets for assessing children's knowledge. In them, the teacher writes which topics the student has mastered, and which ones need to be paid additional attention. According to teachers, this approach teaches students to make their own decisions. Students say that it has become easier and more interesting to study with such a system.

In Lyceum No. 9 in Krasnoyarsk, the traditional five-point system for assessing knowledge has ceased to exist. Lyceum teachers are sure that grades are not able to stimulate students to acquire knowledge and fully appreciate them. Now in the Lyceum of Krasnoyarsk, teachers maintain an electronic journal where they write about the achievements of each student, his degree of progress and difficulties in learning.

Many private schools also try to avoid grading systems. Indeed, human knowledge is not measured by points from two to five. A child's intelligence, ability and interest in knowledge also defy these narrow criteria. In fact, the school education system itself is sometimes far from being considered the standard of knowledge. “The school has nothing to do with education at all,” Winston Churchill believed. So what does the assessment have to do with it?

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