RANKINGS FOR PRIMARY SCHOOL?

6 Sep 1993

        I refer to Ng Wei Joo's article: Schools can stop parents from 
lying and scheming (ST,5/9/93). In particular, I address his suggestion 
for ranking primary schools. 
        Mr Ng claims that this is a way to avoid an unhealthy rush for 
certain schools. However, it is equally likely to aggravate the problem, 
not to mention create new problems. A school ranked high on the list 
may be deluged with applications. Therefore, it is not a practical 
solution to the problem. It is also not creative to rely purely on 
numbers.
        Recently, Life! reported on a secondary school's plan to be 
exempted from the Normal (Technical) program in order to boost the 
school's ranking. There is no reason to suppose that primary school 
principals will be immune to the desire to boost their rankings. Will they 
try to improve the standard of their intake? It means then that the next 
"logical" step would be to rank kindergartens, pre-schools, play-
schools...reductio ad absurdum!
        We endow numbers with supernatural authority. But numbers 
cloak the subjective decisions that must still be made in choosing the 
factors to include in calculating the statistic. 
        Statistics can also be abused. As it is in the case of ranking 
schools. Let us not further extend what one principal called an exercise 
in  "pure silliness." Rather, let us move away from the unhealthy and 
unthinking worship of the Omniscient Rank to more accurate means of 
providing information on the strengths and weaknesses of a school. The 
information provided on the ECA offered and the particular strengths of 
a school in ST100 is a step in the right direction.
        This is not the howl of protest anticipated by Mr Ng, but a plea 
that we move beyond merely considering academic results in judging 
the success of the education of our children. Let us not further 
encourage the false idea that we can somehow quantify the non-
quantifiable. The publishers of such data cannot hide behind the 
defence that they are not responsible for the abuse of that data. By 
publishing such meaningless numbers, they cloak them in a false aura 
of authority and respectability. To that extent, they are responsible for 
perpetuating the mistaken idea that academic result is the only thing 
that counts.