MLS Jan 2018 Local Attachment MLS local report final | Page 47

for multiple tries, depending on the student’s disposition on that particular
day), allows for authentic assessment of student ability.
Secondly, that assessment need not be purely based on summative
grades, or arriving at the “right” answer (which, unfortunately, is the
nature of a majority of our assessments today in Singapore). To deepen and
assess student learning more meaningfully, I have always believed in
alternative assessments beyond a sit-down, one-time, written paper, and
this is aligned to the approach that FGS takes in assessing their students’
learning – that is, through the students’ behaviour. As such, in tandem with
this approach, the staff appraisal of teachers’ teaching and learning is not
through performance grades of their students, but through evidence of
value-add and improvement in a student’s progress in behaviour in the
form a portfolio.
The third point that stood out strongly to me was gleaned in my
conversation with an FGS teacher. The conviction she exuded as she shared
how her colleagues (including herself) had laboriously developed a scheme
of work and accompanying set of assessment rubrics for 7- to 18-year-old
students in their school, and that it was (and is) all possible because the
team of teachers truly believe in the importance of a set of standards to
guide the teaching and learning by teachers throughout a particular level.
The implementation of the scheme of work and assessment in levelling up
students’ learning worked beautifully because the conceptualization of the
details was not top-down, but bottom-up, and there was, most importantly,
buy-in by the very people who are in the frontline of delivery – the
teachers.
In contrast, while KidZania purports to bring about joy of learning
through the activities that each of its establishments provide as a
mini-’work’ experience for its ‘customers’ (the children), in the absence of
assessment, I wonder if true learning has taken place. The couple of days
spent in the KidZania corridors, watching excited children scuttling happily
from one establishment to another - it is without doubt that there is joy and
fun inherent in what the children were engaged in. Definitely, the children
were exposed to different kinds of vocations, as they gleaned a preview of
what each establishment offered, together with the key essence of what
work in that industry entails. However, to say that the experience has
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