GRADING IN UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOLS AND THE MATRICULATION ... · matriculation examination is most...

GRADING IN UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOLS

AND THE MATRICULATION EXAMINATION

Faculty of Behavioural Sciences/ Centre for Educational Assessment / http://www.helsinki.fi/cea/ Sirkku Kupiainen / Forum Criteriorum 2015

John Bishop (1998) has singled out CBEEES as the form of examination

most germane for advancing student achievement.

He defines CBEEES through five characteristics:

• student’s accomplishment in the exam has real consequences

• the exam defines achievement relative to an external standard

• the exams are organized by discipline and keyed to the content of

specific course sequences

• the exams signal multiple levels of achievement in the subject, and

• the exams cover almost all secondary school students

The Finnish matriculation examination has traditionally aligned well with

the model, reflected in status as qualification for tertiary education and as

feedback to schools regarding their implementation of the curriculum and,

hence, working as a guideline for assessment in the different subjects.

CBEEES CURRICULUM BASED EXTERNAL EXIT EXAM SYSTEMS

Sirkku Kupiainen / Forum Criteriorum 2015

Yet, major reforms regarding both the upper secondary syllabus

and the matriculation examination have endangered the role of the

matriculation examination as providing this feedback due to

fracturing the student body into different subgroups sitting for the

different exams comprising the matriculation examination.

• Reform of the structure of general upper secondary studies.

• The abolition of the mandatory status of the exam in the other

national language (Swedish / Finnish).

• The dividing of the earlier one exam for all the natural science /

socio-humanistic subjects to ten different subject-specific exams.


During the 1990s and early 2000, the traditional three-year structure of

the general upper secondary curriculum was abandoned and the syllabus

of each subject was divided into independent six-week-long courses,

offered successively within five periods during the school year and ending

each with a course-specific exam at the end of the period.

The mean of these forms the ‘grade point average’ (GPA) used when

applying into the universities of applied sciences.

Students are to build their own syllabi from these courses, most often

including to their programme five or six courses per period.

THE UPPER SECONDARY SYLLABUS


Students’ choice of courses is governed by the distribution of lesson

hours stated in a Government decree (FNBE, 2003, pp. 252–258) with

the compulsory syllabus comprising eighteen subjects.

On side of these, many students study additional foreign languages at

either the advanced (continuing from the comprehensive school) or at the

basic level and many schools offer a variety of additional courses.

The requirement for graduation is 75 courses of which 47 are mandatory

(51 for students of A-level mathematics).

In addition to these, the matriculation exam in each subject is based on

‘national specialisation courses’ which all schools have to offer regularly

not to impede students’ examination plans (FNBE, 2003, p. 255)


The number of both the mandatory and the specialisation courses per

subject varies considerably, leading to widely varying personal syllabi

and, reflecting this, to exam choices in the matriculation examination.

The matriculation examination comprises 39 different exams in 24

subjects (some at different levels).

Each student has to sit for at least 4 exams (mean 5.5) of which Finnish /

Swedish (mother tongue or as ‘second language) is mandatory.

The other three exams have to be chosen from among: mathematics (A-

or B-level), A-level foreign languages (E, G, F, R, S), the other domestic

language (A- or B-level Swedish or Finnish), and any of the ten exams in

the natural and socio-humanistic subjects.


Mandatory Specialisation Total

Finnish/Swedish 6 3 9

A-level language 6 2 8

B-level language (S/F) 5 2 7

C-level language 8 8

A-level mathematics 10 3 13

B-level mathematics 6 2 8

Physics 1 7 8

History 4 2 6

Biology 2 3 5

Chemistry 1 4 5

Psychology 1 4 5

Religion / Ethics 3 2 5

Philosophy 1 3 4

Geography 2 2 4

Social studies 2 2 4

Health education 1 2 3

The Finnish school grades run from 4 (failed) to 10 (excellent)

SUBJECTS & COURSES IN THE SYLLABUSFINNISH/SWEDISH/SAMI AS MOTHER TONGUE AND/OR LANGUAGE OF INSTRUCTION, SWEDISH/FINNISH AS THE SECOND NATIONAL LANGUAGE, ENGLISH AS THE OBLIGATORY ADVANCED-LEVEL FOREIGN LANGUAGE, MATHEMATICS, BIOLOGY, GEOGRAPHY, PHYSICS, CHEMISTRY, HISTORY, SOCIAL STUDIES,PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY, RELIGION OR ETHICS, HEALTH EDUCATION, PHYSICAL EDUCATION, MUSIC, ARTS, AND EDUCATIONAL AND VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE.


Mandatory Mandatory & SpecialisationB-level mathematics 7,05 6,98

B-level Swedish 7,06 7,00

A-level mathematics 7,39 7,31

A-level English 7,54 7,49

Biology 7,59 7,57

Chemistry 7,66 7,45

History 7,67 7,68

Philosophy 7,73 7,71

Finnish/Swedish 7,74 7,69

Social studies 7,78 7,77

Religion 7,79 7,78

Geography 7,81 7,83

Physics 7,86 7,48

Health education 7,92 7,94

Psychology 7,97 7,86

COURSE GRADES (SAMPLE OF 2000 STUDENTS IN 37 SCHOOLS)


Female MaleB-level mathematics 7,04 6,85

B-level Swedish 7,33 6,57

A-level mathematics 7,39 7,25

Chemistry 7,45 7,43

A-level English 7,47 7,52

Physics 7,51 7,41

Biology 7,64 7,48

History 7,66 7,70

Social studies 7,82 7,70

Geography 7,85 7,80

Philosophy 7,88 7,47

Finnish 7,96 7,32

Religion 7,98 7,49

Psychology 8,10 7,54

Health education 8,23 7,54

GENDER DIFFERENCES


It is apparent that the number of courses and the grades awarded in

them guide students’ choices regarding both the subjects studied at

school and the exams included in the matriculation examination.

This is especially the case for weaker students – and girls – who do

no aim into the STEM fields.

This can be seen especially in the sky-rocketing rise in popularity of

Health education once it was introduced into the examination in 2007.

COURSELOAD, GRADES, AND EXAM CHOICES


• The correlation between students’ school grade in a subject (mean for all

courses) and their grade in the respective exam in the matriculation

examination varied between r = .49 and r = .80 (Religion/Ethics and A-

level English, respectively) with a mean of r = .69.

• The relations are relatively low with students’ school grade explaining on

average only 48 % (24 % – 64 %) of the variance in their exam success.

• Among the natural science / socio-humanistic subjects, only the grades

in Physics, Chemistry, and Psychology explained (or predicted) more

than 50 % of the variance in the matriculation exam.

• This might provide too little information to the student but offers even

less to the schools regarding the students who study the subjects at

least to some length but do not partake in the exam.

• Yet, the correlation between students’ overall matriculation examination

attainment (mean of all exam grades) and their GPA was relatively high

at r = .79, with no gender difference, implying the force of both as a

general indicator for academic achievement.

RELATION OF SCHOOL AND EXAM GRADES


The unfairness caused by the Gaussian grade distribution in the

matriculation examination is most apparent in the relative success of

students – especially girls – sitting for the A-level math exam.

Their grade in Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry can hardly represent

correctly their relative aptitude in them!

And the students of B-level math should not even bother to try them...

ATTAINMENT BY MATH AND GENDER


2,5

3,0

3,5

4,0

4,5

5,0

5,5

Fin

nis

h

Mat

h

A-E

ngl

ish

B-S

wed

ish

A-L

angu

ages

C-L

angu

ages

Bio

logy

Geo

grap

hy

Ph

ysic

s

Ch

em

istr

y

His

tory

Soci

al S

tud

ies

Ph

iloso

ph

y

Psy

cho

logy

Re

ligio

n/E

thic

s

Hea

lth

Ed

uca

tio

n

No Math Female

No Math Male

B-Level Female

B-Level Male

A-Level Female

A-Level Male

Differences between schools are statistically significant for most subjects

both for the matriculation examination and for school marks (p ≤ .001,

effect sizes between eta2 = .073 and eta2 = .215).

In most subjects, school and exams grades are relatively highly correlated

but there are clear differences between schools in this.

Somewhat surprisingly, the difference is bigger in subjects that most

students include in their examination: Finnish, A-level English, and A-level

mathematics, taken by nearly all students who study the advanced

syllabus – so all differences are not due to exam selection.

For example, the school grade in A-level math of students receiving a ‘cum

laude approbatur’ – the middle grade awarded to 24 % of examinees – in

the matriculation exam varied between 5.1 and 7.3 on the scale from 4

(failed) to 10 /(excellent).

BETWEEN-SCHOOL DIFFERENCES


The differences in B-level math might indicate real differences in grading

or just that there are between-school differences in the share of students

who do or don’t include math in their matriculation examination – 20 % of

all but closer to 30 % of female examinees.

A-AND B-LEVEL MATHEMATICS


-1,50

-1,00

-,50

,00

,50

1,00

1,50

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 4

Math Basic

Math Basic in GPA

-1,50

-1,00

-,50

,00

,50

1,00

1,50

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 4

Math Advanced

Math Adv in GPA

The discrepancy between students’ school marks and their attainment in

the matriculation exam is especially harsh (for the student) in subjects

read to the full and included in the examination only by the best.

Hence, also the feedback for schools is not of much value as even if they

would know the exam results of other schools (reported yearly by one of

the TV channels) they do not know the share and kind of students sitting

for the exam, i.e., the level of pre-selection which most probably varies by

school.

STUDENT / EXAM SELF-SELECTION


-2,50

-2,00

-1,50

-1,00

-,50

,00

,50

1,00

1,50

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 4

Biology

Biology in GPA

The finding that the mean for school marks varies considerably between

subjects from the 6.98 for B-level (basic) mathematics to the 7.94 of

Health education is disconcerting.

The average grades in most of the more ‘demanding’ subjects (course

load during the studies and hence to be revised for the exam) fall below

the mean of all subjects (7.65) while the grades for all the ‘easier’ subjects

(fewer courses) fall above it.

This can be expected to have a direct impact on students’ choices at

school, especially for those who enter the general upper secondary school

without a long term plan for their future.

This, in turn, through the choices made, might affect their future chances.

•

DISCUSSION


It is easy to see that setting explicit criteria for even all the 205 courses

covered by the matriculation examination is a hard endeavour (including

the three Samí language unities taken only by a small number of students

but leaving out the courses covering contents that are not examined in

the matriculation examination but might be studied by the examinees).

Yet, from the point of view of the role grades undoubtedly play in guiding

students’ motivation and course choices, carrying all the way to their

examination choices and possibly to future careers, it is clear that the

current situation is far from ideal.


The first step might be for the respective subject teacher organisations to

prepare guidelines and sample school exams for at least some of the

courses – preferably beginning from the mandatory courses as many

students make their initial decision for or against continuing their studies

in a subject already based on the first graded paper they are handed at

the end of the very first course.

An effect of this has been seen many times in beginning students’

propensity to change from A- to B-level mathematics – a phenomenon

which will hopefully be alleviated by the new curriculum with its first

common-to-all math course (hopefully with clear criterion-based guide-

lines for grading).


Yet, already before that, discussions should be opened up in each

school among all the teachers regarding the discrepancy between the

grade means in the different subjects.

Do they reflect differences in the (lack of) clear criteria, in the relative

difficulty to derive explicit criteria from the descriptive course-specific

goals set in the curriculum, or do they imply that the criteria for some

subjects simply just are harder to meet than those in some other

subjects?

If the latter, is it fair to make the students pay for it with their grades and

maybe future choices?


THANK YOU!


GRADING IN UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOLS AND THE MATRICULATION ... · matriculation examination is most...

Documents

Transcript of GRADING IN UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOLS AND THE MATRICULATION ... · matriculation examination is most...