FOR MANY students, the last two weeks of the school year signal the start of their vacation and a well-deserved respite from their academic classes; for most teachers however, it is a prelude to a lot of paper work, year-end reports and seemingly endless discussion and deliberations on the fate of some of their students.
Imagine this typical day for most teachers in the basic education as the school year is about to end: running after students who, despite being given a second or even a third chance have not yet submitted the needed requirements in a particular subject; getting in touch with parents who, after repeated messages, texts, phone calls and other possible means of getting in touch with them have given endless excuses and reasons in failing to attend a highly-needed parent-teacher conference since the first quarter; trying very hard to submit all the reports on or before the deadline set by the academic coordinator or the school principal, and completing more stressful tasks that seem to drain the energy and wits of most teachers.
Some of you might be too quick to judge that is the teacher’s fault for prolonging his or her own agony. After all, the teacher could have easily decided on the student’s grade after failing to complete the requirements. This is easier said than done. If teachers do everything in their power to motivate, challenge, guide, and help their students achieve a passing grade, the question perhaps is, when can teachers give their students a failing mark? When does a failing mark become a lesson itself for both a student and a teacher?
It must be noted that the K to 12 Basic Education Program uses a standard and competency-based grading system that is found in the curriculum guide for each learning area. All grades are based on the weighted raw score of the learners’ summative assessments. The minimum grade needed to pass a specific learning area is 60, which is transmuted to 75 in the report card. When the Department of Education introduced this grading system at the start of the SY 2015-2016, many in the basic education considered it as learner-friendly. A passing grade is already available for the taking by any student; it will only boil down to the student’s willingness to pass. And by that, I mean discipline and hard work – two things that many students always take for granted.
Truth be told, failing a student is more often than not, a teacher’s last resort. Teachers do not find even an iota of joy in making their students suffer miserably or get a failing mark in any learning area. Admittedly there are a few power trippers who feel very highly of themselves, thinking that they can make or break a student’s future with their decision to pass or fail a student. But these are the exception rather than the rule.
Giving a student a passing mark, and consequently promoting him or her to the next grade level, even if that student has not acquired or mastered the required learning competencies is nothing short of a disaster. This is not even a question of the grade attained by the student but rather, the actual transfer of learning that occurred inside the classroom. No wonder some schools encounter incoming Grade 4 students who could only read CVC words, incoming Grade 7 students who have not mastered the four fundamental operations in Math, or even incoming senior high school students who are either poor or non-readers.
I honestly believe that receiving the grade that you deserve is a preparation for the real world outside the four corners of the classroom. Failure and rejections are part and parcel of our lives. When your boss returns a report you have prepared saying it needs to be revised, you do not find ways to justify the errors but work on it immediately. When the HR head in your company tells you that you fell short of the employee of the year award because somebody else was more deserving, you do not ask you parents or your barangay captain to talk to the HR head and change the results. Rather, you work harder and more consistently so you will be a shoo-in for that award next year.
Don’t you think it is high time that our students get to experience receiving a failing mark as part of their learning process? Let us remind them that a failing mark does not define them as individuals, neither does it limit them to what they can do in the future. Instead of looking for excuses and desperately asking a teacher to change a failing grade as a last-ditch effort, students should learn from them and make a firm commitment not to earn a failing mark in any grading period next school year, and even in the many school years to come.
