Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion School lowering the bar.

I live in a country where retaking is commonplace, both at school and university.

I don't have an issue with retaking per se, but I do have an issue with the way it is implemented here. There is no penalty for failing several times because only the last retake scores are recorded in transcripts. There is no incentive not to fail several times for the same reason. This results in a culture of lazy high school and university students, who aren't penalized for not studying for tests the first or second time around, and a culture of teachers and university professors wasting their time preparing and grading multiple retakes.

Add this to a grading system in which scores outside 50-90% are rarely given (and so indeed 50% on an exam can mean 50% or 40% or 30%) and indeed the education system here has lowered the bar way too far.

As a university professor I am currently fighting to include not just the final retake score, but also previous scores, on transcripts so that diligent, hard working students are rewarded and graduate schools/employers have more information about whom they are hiring. I respect a student who retakes a hard course to get a better grade; I don't respect a lazy student who needs multiple retakes because they aren't studying and their transcript shouldn't conceal this behavior.