Over the past few days there have been a few pieces on social media from school principals on whether results should be published or not. On the one hand of the spectrum is the craze to publish the number of perfect scores, on the other hand those that refuse to publish anything. The IB continues to publish grade averages and pass rates, has celebrated the number of students attaining 40 points or more, but will not publish the number of perfect scores or results that bring about crude comparisons:

the IB decided to discontinue the publication of data highlighting the number of IB students achieving the highest top mark (45 data points), to discourage the use of assessment results for comparisons among students, schools, or communities. IB students and World Schools are diverse and have varying contexts, socioeconomic positions, and cohort sizes. Additionally, IB students’ individual achievements go far beyond their assessment scores. Given these considerations and the long-term impact of the pandemic as well as other global challenges, the IB has decided to refrain from sharing assessment data to prevent generalized comparisons. 

(IB students worldwide receive their results)

There is an egalitarian philosophical argument: everybody succeeds, why should we single out the top performers only? Then there is a meritocratic argument: we should recognise hard work and performance and celebrate it. This philosophical debate trickles down into events such as graduation ceremonies and the types of prizes schools award; whether the school has an honour roll or not and how much importance is attributed to it. However, the egalitarian argument doesn’t match up to the elitist realities of examination scores, the bell curve used to describe results and the ranking obsession that overshadows the end of high school summative assessment. Thus, schools are thrust into the paradoxical if not cognitively dissonant space of developing holistic learning, celebrating all types of gifts in students, being there for every scholar, and yet trying to live that philosophy out in a world where terms such as “elite”, “top-tier”, “high-ranking” and “superior” are bandied about by the media, parents and often Boards too.

The situation is more complex than it might appear at face value: the schools that pull out of league tables and choose not to publish results are often highly selective, with very strong academic results in the first place, perhaps treading a type of inverted snobbery in their aloofness. On the other hand,  those who are eager to share results might be competing to survive or dealing with tremendous exogenous pressure to perform. Those who look down on schools publishing results point out that result publication is a type of  signalling, stating who owns the market, who is “the best”.  

Then there is the question of accountability. Assessment data helps a global understanding of the impact of curriculum on society. If education is understood widely, as it should be, to be a real driver of social mobility, wellbeing and democracy, then it stands to reason that attainment should be carefully tracked and shared. However, the manner in which attainment is wrought from students in school systems, essentially through high stakes narrow testing, is unlikely to support wellbeing and actually exacerbates competition, individualism and can create moral hazard (cheating and corruption for example). In other words, the overarching positive effects of an education might actually be undercut by the short term practices used to prove its impact: a rabbit hole of contradictions!

In my book, all complexities considered, it’s a mistake to cloud out transparency over assessment results, since academics are important and results are central to the daily lives of millions of students throughout the world. It would be hypocritical to hide them on the day of attainment. However, we must create metrics that celebrate academics and other types of learning: sports, arts, social impact work, interculturality, health literacy, as well as intrapersonal and interpersonal competences.

This is why the Coalition to Honour all Learning continues to fight for a better assessment system which is broader and more inclusive, so that every star might shine, in some way, and every bird might fly, even if each bird will fly differently. And the stars that shine bright and the birds that fly high should be celebrated, it’s a wonderful achievement and we should all be elevated: your success is my success, your strength is my inspiration, your achievement is my pride.

As we make our way through successive cycles of attainment, let’s not lose track of what’s important: what we are assessing and why we are assessing it. 
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(Photo by Museums Victoria on Unsplash)