Grades are great! The more the better.

The Centre-Right Swedish Government is going to reintroduce grades in the Swedish compulsory school through grades 6 to 9 (henceforth called ‘secondary school’). However, in the first five years (henceforth called ‘primary school’) there will only written comments will be given. However, real grades are beneficial in a multitude of ways as will be highlighted below.

Firstly, grades are provide an incentive to the students. Hence, grades given earlier will, to some extent mean, more studying and hence better educated children. This would be highly benificial especially when subjects subject to windows of opportunity are regarded, for example languages.
Secondly, by introducing grades (and accompanying tests) in each subject in secondary school, it will be possible to resolve the concoctions called ‘natural science orientation’ and ‘social science orientation’ into the individual subjects (e.g. biology, physics and chemistry). This would indeed be valuable, since each subject would then be paid proper attention. Besides, it would make it easier for the students to choose in what area to specialise – e.g. make the selection to the Swedish Gymnasium (students aged 16-19) easier.

Thirdly, grades help keeping focus on acquiring knowledge rather than irrelevant matters as caps and chewing gums. In primary school, introducing grades forces focus to be shifted from what may sometimes look like a day care service to more of education - i.e. acquiring quantifiable knowledge. School will become more of School – a centre for learning.

Forthly, grades will make parents informed in a considerably more concrete way. Today’s talks to the parents could certainly be useful, but real grades can give the true picture in brief. This way, parents may become more involved in the studies.

It is also very beneficial that the new scale consists of six grades (rather than four as today), since the grades will then be more accurate. There will be less need to resort to lottery to single out students for very popular programmes in Gymnasium and at university.

However, it must be pointed out what would not be a good grading system: a relative one. This is because by using relative grades, it is normally assumed that the acquired knowledge follows a normal distribution, which may not be the case. Besides, using relative grades would bring the risk of teachers using a normal distribution locally at a school or even in a single class, which would – for obvious reasons – be highly unfair to the students. In addition, it would make accurate comparisons between schools virtually impossible. Therefore, grades must be absolute in the sense that they should be related to certain learning goals; each student must be graded totally independently of the grades of the other students once the learning goals and hence the grading criteria have been decided.

Critics often argue that grades as early as primary school would make school be all about grades. But, that’s fine – as long as the grades accurately reflect acquired knowledge. But what about those students left behind getting low grades? The point, as seen by Minister of Education Jan Björklund, is that grades will help detect weak students. I agree that this would indeed be the case – not just in secondary school, but in primary school as well. By detecting students whose achievments are weak, it is possible to help her/him at an early stage instead of as often today postponing the problems until age age of 14.

To sum up, grades are useful in many ways. For the subjects, for society – because of better education and – of course for the students and their parents. Grades are great! The sooner the better.