School Reports (when teachers beg)

(c) Mags_cat, Flickr

It’s been a hard week.  Today was the deadline for the half-year reports so I’ve been tied up with checking the marks for the English Department for the last few days.  As always the deadline took a few of my colleagues by surprise (but they often get caught out by Christmas too, so I’m prepared for that now!)  We have a standardised grading system which is centrally administered.  The aim is to balance out individual differences between teachers as much as possible and to make the results for the kids as fair as we can.  Actually, this is less work than it sounds and results in the English teachers having rather less to do than some of their colleagues at this time.  The computer takes over the drudgery, and I pass out the result sheets.

And, as always, there has been a stream of kids coming to my office to explain to me why they should get a better mark.  “You’ve calculated it wrong,” is very popular.  As is, “I’ve worked really hard.“  Sometimes the explanations are truly impressive – “You’re ruining my life,” crops up once or twice a year.

This is all par for the course.  It’s part of the job, and once in a while you hear something so good that it makes the job worthwhile.  My favourite this week was, “I need at least a C or I’ll get Mr X again and I hate him.“  I had some sympathy with this, but sadly couldn’t do anything about it.  Of course, it’s a bit annoying when colleagues pass the buck when it comes to handing out bad news and refer the kids to me to give them their marks.  It’s even more annoying when fruitless appeals are passed on to me on the grounds that I, as the Department Co-ordinator, can change marks because of tears, demands, begging or flattery.

But this is all part of the job.  I expect kids to try it on.  I did it myself on occasions.  They’re growing up and pushing their limits.  That’s fine.

What’s not fine is when colleagues come to me and beg.  When an 8th grader tells me I’m ruining his life, I can usually manage to explain politely that I didn’t do badly in the tests, he did.  This normally has a calming effect, and after a couple of excuses the kids understands that the game is over.  But can anyone out there tell me why I should tolerate class teachers who adopt the same tactics?  “But he’s good in all his other subjects!“  Hmm, yeah, maybe…  “He tries really hard.“  Quite possibly…  “He needs the mark to graduate to a particular school.“  Then just maybe you should have told him to buck his ideas up a couple of months ago.  And yes, I’ve even had teachers crying.  This is quite simply emotional blackmail and oddly enough a lot of people still haven’t noticed that I’m pretty resilient to it.

The reason for all this is quite easy to identify.  I’m in Germany, and the class teacher is still the dominant factor in a child’s progress through school.  In many cases, one teacher is responsible to over two-thirds of a child’s marks.  This is damned unhealthy.  Specialist teachers are subjected to emotional blackmail all the time.  If your marks don’t fit the profile of the class teacher’s judgement, then you are going to be asked some questions.  I’ve just sat through the report conference and it’s amazing how many kids get very similar marks from their class teachers in a wide range of subjects.  Some class teachers develop a “mother hen” syndrome.  This can get to the point where the staff are asked to be nice and support an out of control delinquent because then he won’t get angry.  I think Chamberlain called it appeasement.  As I remember, it didn’t work.

For the teachers out there who’ve now got a pulse touching 180, I want to make one thing clear.  Yes, I am crticising some teachers out there who are not strong enough to do their job properly, but my biggest criticism is of a system which allows this process to continue.  Something needs to change fast.  Sadly the words change and fast rarely belong in the same sentence when it comes to educational reform.

What some teachers find it very hard to understand is that being nice to kids when it comes to grades, is not doing the kid any favours.  Sooner or later the kid is going to be confronted with the real world, where trying hard is sometimes simply not good enough.  Worse than this, other kids who come from the same school then suffer because the employer loses trust in the reports from that school and a kid with genuine marks from that school won’t get an interview.

Personally, I should be arguing for the system to continue.  Local employers often use me to carry out interviews of school leavers precisely because they don’t trust the school reports.  It’s good money for me, but it’s sad that it should be necessary.