Teachers union calls for more consistent grading criteria in comprehensive schools

Via Yle Uutiset: Teachers union calls for more consistent grading criteria in comprehensive schools. Excerpt:

Teacher trade union OAJ has called for better guidelines for grading comprehensive schoolwork in Finland, stating that the current evaluation criteria (in Finnish) issued by the National Agency for Education have proved problematic across all subjects.  

"There are too many criteria and they are too complex. […] We have insisted that they cut them back, as every single one contains many things that are open to interpretation. The criteria should be far more straightforward," says the OAJ's development manager Jaakko Salo. 

A 2015 study of year 7-9 maths competencies from the Finnish Education Evaluation Centre found that "the grades of students doing equally well but studying in different schools could have a systematic difference of up to two points".  

Salo says the spread is probably closer to four different grades for the same skill set.  

Comprehensive schools in Finland follow a somewhat illogical 10-point system in which there are actually only seven grades: 10 is the highest possible grade for excellent work, followed by 9 (very good), 8 (good), 7 (satisfactory), and 6 (fair). 5 is the lowest passing grade and a grade of 4 indicates that the pupil has failed. 

Benchmarking against fellow pupils 

National Education Agency evaluation criteria lay out the performance necessary in each subject to achieve a "good" grade of 8. The teachers' union says this is part of the problem. 

"We feel that criteria should also be at least drawn up for a grade of 5, or minimum competence. It has apparently already been decided that new criteria for grades of 5, 7 and 9 should be outlined," Salo says.  

He says using only grade 8 as a reference puts too much emphasis on comparing the pupils on a classroom or school-wide basis, making grading decisions highly relative. 

"The rest of the student body becomes the teacher's benchmark. At its worst, this means that schools with poorer overall performance divvy out better grades for weaker competencies. This should not be happening," Salo says.