The 17 year-old daughter of a friend of mine was asked to leave her school recently. The reason? She was ‘only’ getting Bs and Cs in her A levels, rather than the As and Bs that the school wanted and so was not considered ‘suitable’ for entry to the next year. It turns out that this is a familiar story and at least one school is facing possible legal challenge over the practice.
It upsets me even to think about it; from a moral point of view for any school; and doubly so for a publicly funded school whose duty is (obviously) to serve the public, of which my friend’s daughter is surely one. However, I want to explore why schools adopt this practice. They do not want to target precisely those students who need extra help; but I would argue they are lead to this by a dangerous and (in some quarters) pervasive view of education. Before that however, let me be clear: I believe that schools should have a place for any of their students who are working hard regardless of their academic grades. That’s different to schools having the right to select at entry – but once a student is in, if they are committed to their learning then schools have a moral duty to see them through. My position is that there should be no place for expulsions due to low academic attainment in today’s world – such a practice should belong in the past along with caning and hazing.
That said, let’s look at the pressures that schools face with public exam results. Each year we hear from some parents about how we do not do enough in this respect. Some are very vocal indeed; and this is despite record academic results this year, and an exceptionally successful list of College destination. In our extremely competitive Singaporean market, we could likely bump our average up very significantly by asking some students to leave (or like happens elsewhere, just engaging in ‘cohort manipulation’ to boost results). In some systems of schools, where one school has a much higher average than another, the former moving their less academic students to the latter (against their will) can actually raise the averages of both schools – to both sets of parents’ delight. You can see the temptation to go down this route, and the temptation is even more alluring if we view education as we view a manufacturing business – where the bottom line can be captured in relatively simple sets of statistics. But schools need to have the courage to look beyond the grades to the individual students whose lives they are shaping, for better or worse. Without this explicitly moral outlook; without a focus on individuals with their attendant strengths and weaknesses, then children become components to be optimised to fit the mathematical models.
That’s not right for individuals or right for organisations as whole. While pushing up averages and alleviating some pressure on the school from the most vocal parents, academic expulsions do not actually improve the school for the remaining students whatsoever. In fact, the stress of the threat of expulsion will ruin the schooling experience for many, cause poor practices in teaching, and will be a mental health threat for the most vulnerable. So such a practice is profoundly against what schools should be about. My friend’s daughter moved school to one where her many talents are recognised. She is flourishing there, and looks certain to gain entry to College to pursue her dreams. Good for her; but shame on any system that creates perverse systemic incentives that misalign organisational and individual interests.
I have written elsewhere (see here and here) about why schools should not follow a free market model; but this is another powerful argument – that the free market purpose leads us to value the wrong things (at least in the short-term). The great thing here is that this notion is not some lofty naïve idealism, but in the long-term, is actually an intensely pragmatic approach. We know that to support our UWCSEA Mission to make education a force to unite people, nations and cultures for peace and a sustainable future we should not expel the academically struggling. Far better to set up systems so the academically gifted see that others without those gifts deserve respect not on the basis of raw intellect, but on moral character, kindness, creativity, ability to bring people together. These and a dozen other attributes are precisely the skills and qualities that the OECD and others say are more important than raw academics for the future of work anyway. So let’s move the conversation on. Grades are indicators of something – something important – but they are not our purpose.
