Grades in primary school

There is a “new hype” trying to enter the Swedish school system about grades in primary school being a good thing. A hype telling us that our young learners would benefit from getting graded sooner in our schools. I strongly disagree with this. Nothing would take a turn for the better for Sweden’s young learners with grades earlier than what we have now. The youth of today have enough to worry about without getting grades telling them that they are not good enough.

Children of today grow up with stress none of us grown ups can even imagine. They are expected to wear fashion clothes, play with the right toys and watch the right TV programs in a much larger extent than ever before. Children are not allowed to grow up in their on pace anymore. Why add to their burden by grading them during their primary school when there is no use? Let the children be children for as long as they want to; that is something they really would benefit from in the long run.

Once in a while you hear that early grading would help the teachers, but would it really? We already have national tests in all four of our major subjects carried out in the fifth grade, and we are introducing national tests in the third school year now to make it even easier for the teacher. What more would the grades do? My opinion is that every form teacher in primary school knows all about their students’ weak and strong subjects without the grades. The teacher meet their students every day watching them grow from children to youngsters. The result of this idea would only give more work for the teacher. Time teachers could have put on preparing for upcoming classes would be lost to giving out grades; this would mean that teachers would have to stick to the books at hand a lot more giving the young learners a less satisfying school day in the end. We would give our young learners a less intresting school by giving out grades.

A strong argument for using grades in primary school is that it would be easier for parents and children to know where the child's weak and strong sides in school are. But that is nothing short of nonsense. Today we have a terrific system were children, parents and teacher sit down for at least half an hour every semester talking about every student’s progress, and more often if the child is what could be called a “slow learner”. With this, existing system, all parties concerned gets a very clear picture of how the young learner’s progress is progressing and this without a paper telling the child he is failing one, two or more subjects.

Let’s face it; when we look at this idea it is easy to se that it is an idea not worth perusing. Giving out grades in primary school will only leave the teacher with more work but no help for the young learners becoming better students. A “slow learner” will not benefit from bad grades telling him or her she is falling behind. A text précising the problem how ever could help. That way all parties would really know what the young learner needs to practice more on instead of a piece of paper saying fail, fail, fail…