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Certificate: Many children and young people await their grades with great excitement

Photo: Maria Berentzen/dpa

What does a school grade say about a student’s actual ability? Almost nothing, at least this is the sobering conclusion reached by a new study by the Institute for Quality Development in Education (IQB), which is part of the Humboldt University in Berlin. The study has now been published in the Journal of Educational Science. A team led by educational researchers Nicolas Hübner and Malte Jansen compared the performance of more than 55,000 ninth graders in the IQB education trends 2015 and 2018 with their school grades. The investigations focused on the subjects of English and mathematics.

Same grade, different skills

“The results suggest that students with the same school grades have substantially different skills,” write the authors. This also applies vice versa: with a similar level of performance, the young people examined sometimes received completely different grades. These fluctuations were less apparent between federal states, but rather within the same school and between schools in a federal state.

In English, only 19 percent of young people's school grades matched their performance in the educational trend test. In mathematics it was at least 27 percent.

The authors of the study see several possible reasons why the differences between the grade and the tested skills are so serious:

  • Different requirements: The grade measures the extent to which the student has met the requirements in class and in exams. These requirements, as well as learning and examination content, can vary from teacher to teacher, but also from school to school or between federal states.

  • Individual factors: The authors refer to past studies that show that certain personality traits of students such as conscientiousness or hard work can sometimes even have a greater influence on a school grade than the actual measured performance.

  • Consideration of the students' individual developments: The grade is awarded in comparison to current and previous performance - and not based on a standardized assessment standard or an objectively measurable learning goal.

  • Consideration of class performance: The student is evaluated based on the level of performance in the class. "This implies that students with identical performance in a low-performing class receive better grades than in a high-performing class."

  • Requirements from the federal states: For example, the Berlin School Act describes that individual development processes must also be taken into account when assessing performance, while corresponding specifications cannot be found in the grading regulations in Baden-Württemberg, according to the paper.

  • Judgment error: The grade does not reflect the “true performance,” as the paper states, but rather the “teacher’s performance assessment.” Here too, there may be deviations. The entire process of grading is “prone to errors of observation and judgment.”

Finally, the authors discuss the question of whether full comparability of school grades would make sense at all. If grades were primarily used for micro-management within the class, for example to give students feedback on their efforts and to motivate them, nationwide comparability would not be necessary.

Impetus for debate about the meaning of school grades

The researchers rate the attempt to make grades completely comparable and eliminate all uncertainty factors as “hardly possible in practice”. One solution could be standardized performance tests that replace grades “at important points.”

more on the subject

  • School of the future: Are grades dispensable? And if so, in which subjects? By Silke Fokken and Armin Himmelrath

  • Grade inflation: high school diploma? Certificate of participation is enough!The SPIEGEL editorial by Miriam Olbrisch

  • Suggestions for education reform: The Left wants to abolish homework, grades and sitting

The study is likely to give new fodder to the debate about the need for school grades. Some education experts have long been arguing for the fundamental abolition of school grades.