Posting students grades publicly - motivating or humiliating?

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When I was in college, our exam/essay results were posted publicly. When these were posted, the class would go together and discuss EVERYONE'S results, particularly interested in who had the highest mark. For the first year, I was producing results which placed me within the top 10 out of 70 students. Not only did it feel great to do well, being publicly praised for it was even better. That is, until my final year where I dropped to 14th out of 30 classmates :(! Similarly, in University, a piece of paper would be pinned on our notice board with who had passed the year, making it obvious who hadn't and creating an awkward atmosphere around those who hadn't passed.

Sure, when I was doing well, I thought it was a great idea! Afterwards, I thought it was unfair that everyone had access to that knowledge and thought of it as quite insensitive. So I'm a bit torn on this debate and will let you guys be the judge; should schools/universities publicly post students grades?

As always, I will present you with arguments for and against the debate:

ARGUMENTS FOR PUBLIC POSTING
- May motivate those who are underachieving to do well.
- Students should be publicly acknowledged for doing well.
- Encouraging competition may serve as life skills for future job opportunities.

ARGUMENTS AGAINST PUBLIC POSTING
- May cause stress to underachievers who lack the resources to learn e.g poverty, learning disabilities.
- It is "immoral" and can affect self-esteem.
- It may generate unnecessary anxiety before exams even take place, impacting their studies.


The debate is now up to you! Good contributions will be rewarded with reputation throughout the thread and the member who makes the best contributions throughout the month will win the Debater of the Month award, 2 weeks VIP, as well as 250 tokens. Creating interesting member debates will also win you reputation/tokens!


This debate will close on the 7th of November so get your views heard!

[Matthew]

im not really sure.

I think its different for different people, some people will look at it and go 'oh i did badly compared to most, i need to try harder' but im sure others would look at it and find it humiliating/stressful as you said.

my uni does it where it posts the results but instead of names just has everyone's unique anonymous IDs. I suppose this is a decent mix as you can see if you did well/badly compared to the other results, but noone else will know your result. The problem with that though i guess is if you tell someone your result, they could use it to work out your anon ID, and so effectively they know all your results for the remainder of your time.. so if you did well once and share it, you lose the privacy if you then do badly and dont want to share it. maybe this would be better if the anon ID changed each year then, idk!

but yeah im not sure. I do think people doing well should be recognised, but by default that is going to leave the people who didnt do so well to receive no recognition, and then we have the same issue as publishing the results. i personally think its fine to post the results as long as there's enough support for those who struggled to help them, hopefully, get closer to the top.

but yeah its a tricky one imo

[Samantha]

My results have never been publicly revealed, but I can see why it could be good and why it could be bad also - you know your results yourself and there's no reason why there should be your name added onto the result that corresponds to you, it could just be a list of percentages and then those who haven't done as well as they expected can aspire to be like someone who got X percentage rather than Y person.

When I finished college I was a little worried about my results being published in the paper, in case it also had the grades we got with it as although I passed, they wouldn't be technically classed as good 'passes'. Fortunately, it just said our name and the A levels we received, which for mine was English Language, ICT and Media Studies; however, with this as the names were used I could look at my old friend's results and saw that one of my former best friends only got 1 A level in a subject he didn't really thrive in.

I believe it should be up to the student if they want their name published on their results publicly or not, as after all, they are their results and they don't really need to tell many others. If they opt for them to be public, their name can be there, if not then they could just have the level/percentage they got.

[Matthew]

My results have never been publicly revealed, but I can see why it could be good and why it could be bad also - you know your results yourself and there's no reason why there should be your name added onto the result that corresponds to you, it could just be a list of percentages and then those who haven't done as well as they expected can aspire to be like someone who got X percentage rather than Y person.

When I finished college I was a little worried about my results being published in the paper, in case it also had the grades we got with it as although I passed, they wouldn't be technically classed as good 'passes'. Fortunately, it just said our name and the A levels we received, which for mine was English Language, ICT and Media Studies; however, with this as the names were used I could look at my old friend's results and saw that one of my former best friends only got 1 A level in a subject he didn't really thrive in.

I believe it should be up to the student if they want their name published on their results publicly or not, as after all, they are their results and they don't really need to tell many others. If they opt for them to be public, their name can be there, if not then they could just have the level/percentage they got.

but what if everyone but one person allowed their name to be there, then effectively the last person is also named too by a process of elimination

[Samantha]

but what if everyone but one person allowed their name to be there, then effectively the last person is also named too by a process of elimination

That would be where the cons begin, perhaps just keeping it completely anonymous unless you share your results yourself would be the better idea.

It's definitely one of those that can have its pros and cons depending how well you do - especially if you expect much higher results than you receive then when they eventually come out and you don't do as well as you wanted to then those, who know how much work you've put in and everything would know how badly it's gone wrong too. That happened in my English Language class during college, we had received our exam results and someone had done worse than expected (I think they scraped a D when they were an A grade student) and you could just tell from her negative expression and upset that she'd done bad. However, that wasn't public, so again I guess it's up to the person if they want to say or not. I was a little weird with exams and the like, I didn't get worried or stressed about them, I cared sometimes what my results were and whether they'd be announced, but I also didn't care too much if that makes sense - I would be one of those that if I did well I'd be fine - I know in geography GCSE once my teacher put our grades for a small test on the screen, I had studied and everyone else got less than their target or just scraped it whereas I got an A and it felt so good since I was predicted a D lmao, but in some cases I wouldn't want/need people knowing.

You could also do it whereby instead of having it published by the school/college/university itself, it could be available online, the student could input their grades themselves then that way it's only there because they want it there - obviously this would need a verification method so the student couldn't lie about it etc.

[Red]

I wouldn't like my results to be posted publically ans thankfully ours were emailed. I know they do that at Cambridge, where students then go and take photos and post it online. Definitely would make people more competitive, which isn't an atmosphere I would have wanted to be in either. Exams are a stressful enough time without that added on.

[MotorStefan95]

I personally wouldn't want my results to be shared publicly, I'm glad mine are sent by email. Yeah sure, its nice when you see you've passed and got good grades, but if you didn't then everyone can see that you didn't pass and may tease you about it. Exams are very stressful and to have that kind of stress on top of it is not a nice situation to be in.

I think getting sent the results is better because then you can see how well (or not) you did then you can chose to share with others if you wish.

[Yawn]

wow i was a painfully average student i'd hate that!!!!!!!

i dont need to see JUST how average i am and how many ppl are better than me and how much better they are than me and then have everyone else know all of this as well

[Katy]

I don't think that the results should be shared publicly. Although it's great for the people who did well I think it would be really unfair on the people who didn't. Lets be honest, why would you want everyone knowing if you hadn't done so well? It just leaves students open to being humiliated and bullied, which in reality kids are cruel and would do.

In my school our results were never shared, when the results of a test, assessment or anything else with results came back the teacher often called us up one by one and told us ours, giving us the option to discuss with each other and share our results if we wanted to afterwards, or the teacher would shout out in class and ask us if we wanted it said out loud or said quietly to us giving us the option.

I don't think it would encourage anyone to do better when people have done better than them because if you tried your hardest what else can you do? I think it would definitely knock some students self-esteem and probably be quite upsetting for them.

I do think that the students doing well should be praised but I don't think that it should be done by comparing them to the students who can't do as well as them. Maybe post the top 5 results publicly or give them some kind of reward.

[Expling]

nah

as most people have already said, yeah it'd be nice for the people who done good but wouldn't be fair for those who didn't do so well - I think they should definitely remain private between the student and teacher

tbh even those who done well could be bullied
"ur a nerd u smart ass ha ha loser" etc.