There is a strong desire to scrap the Territory-wide System Assessment (TSA) for Primary Three children

(aged 9), with critics of the exam claiming that the extensive drills and practice are counterproductive in nurturing
young minds. The government seems to accept the recommendation from a working group that 90 per cent of
primary school pupils could be exempted from taking it this year.

In fact, the TSA problem is just one symptom; it is not the core issue. The major challenge in Hong Kongs
education system is the exam-orientated culture, which has largely gone unrecognised in the recent debate. I
am not saying exams are a bad thing, but it is inappropriate and ineffective to spend all our time and effort
focusing only on examinations. If we do, the learning process will be distorted, restricted and far from pleasant.

Hong Kongs education system has been undergoing major reform, with the idea of making the learning process
more enjoyable. The setting up of the TSA to replace previous tests of childrens ability is a classic example of
how a projects implementation and impact can be distorted once it is part of the system. Indeed, there is still
much debate about how the education system should be run.

Our exam-orientated culture allows the system to identify the 18 per cent of students who can go on to publicly
funded tertiary institutions. Meanwhile, the other 82 per cent are studying a curriculum which benefit them very
little.
It is the parents prejudice, plus limited choice of jobs for young people, that has helped create this reality

Students have no choice but to concentrate on exams to meet university entrance requirements. There are local
alternatives, such as vocational training courses, but these do not appeal greatly to students, or to their parents.
It is in fact parents prejudice, plus the limited choice of jobs for young people, that has helped create this reality.
Thats why every stakeholder currently emphasises success in exams, and it also explains why after-school
tuition classes are such big business in this town.

I ended up sending my son to Australia to continue his high school education at the age of 14, due to the very
demanding local curriculum. He tried, and struggled, for a while and it didnt take him long to lose interest in
studying, instead preferring to play soccer and be with his school friends, which is of course normal for someone
his age.

In Australia, his school has more open space and the curriculum was much friendlier. He learned much more
holistically; developing his interest and self-esteem, and regaining his confidence in studying. Now, he has been
offered a place at the University of Melbourne, one of countrys top institutions. When he was in primary school,
his teacher suggested he should repeat a year to catch up. My son tells me now that it would have been bad for
his psychological well-being to have had to do the year again.

It seems that its not a lack of intelligence that defeats our children, but the exam-oriented culture and demanding
curriculum. Sometimes, a childs potential cannot be realised in the present system. In Australia, almost every
child finds a suitable college or university course that they are interested in. They also find a job after graduation
that pays them a decent wage.

Empowering problem-solving skills and promoting self-esteem have been shown to be instrumental in enhancing
well-being. However, local schools have difficulty in finding time and space for these activities. Teachers teach
more but students learn less. A packed and demanding curriculum only makes things worse. Thus, the learning
process can be quite discouraging, especially for those who are not academically gifted.

The Quality Education Fund has provided support for promoting the well-being of our children. It is timely, given
the increasing trend in youth suicide among students. In the past six months, more than 20 young people have
killed themselves, including seven university students. Have we missed something in our school curriculums?
Have we got the priorities right? Can we do better?
Teachers teach more but students learn less. A packed and demanding curriculum only makes things worse

Providing education for overseas students has been an important source of income for Australia; many Hong
Kong children now head abroad to continue their education. It can cost a fortune, but the children are being given
alternatives. However, there are many who cannot afford it. It is sad that even with so much government money
being spent in Hong Kong, we still have not managed to change our exam-orientated culture.

Many direct subsidy schools have been set up in the past decade, only deepening the disparity between the
haves and have-nots. The not-so-well-off children are being deprived of opportunities. Surely, some bright
students who manage in the existing system would do even better in a more favourable learning environment.

Of course, not all performance assessment and benchmarking in schools is wrong. It is how schools and parents
respond to these measures that counts. The current issue with the TSA is just a symptom of a larger problem.
This requires an overhaul of the system, to provide more opportunities and alternatives for our children. At the
same time, the pay for non-graduate jobs needs to be reasonable so that everyones potential can be realised
and their talent nurtured, for their own well-being. Promoting an interesting curriculum and inspiring learning
environment can only be good for our next generation.

Paul Yip is a professor of social work and social administration at the University of Hong Kong

While many children spent Christmas cramming for Januarys common entrance exams and my colleagues await
the publication of the Secondary School Performance tables, as Head of a non-selective independent school, I
have to ask myself the question; What are these exams actually measuring and what are the long term effects
of pushing children and young people through the process?

With the Institute of Directors (IoD) criticising schools for failing to prepare children for the workplace with the
skills and knowledge they need to succeed, it begs the question whats the point of our obsession with exam
results? Have we just become exam factories as claimed by the IoD? How are we measuring intelligence? What
about creativity and valuable interpersonal skills - are they worthless?

I take inspiration from the likes of Sir Ken Robinson who argues that schools cannot meet the needs of the future
by just refining what we have done in the past. Todays education system, which was designed and conceived
in a different age, is based around the thinking that there are only two types of ability academic and non-
academic. This has led to many brilliant people thinking they are not intelligent as they are being judged against
this sadly limiting mindset.

There is somewhat of a production line mentality to our education system ringing bells, children educated in
batches based on date of manufacture (their age), siphoned off into separate subjects and separate facilities.

Instead of nurturing skills that are valuable in a computerised age, the current model stamps out innate creativity
and divergent thinking, with standardisation being the main goal. I firmly believe that its time to change the
paradigm and move away from an archaic system where the focus firmly remains on testing.

The factory analogy is pretty accurate as it seems our system is more at home in the industrial age and not the
current knowledge era. Schools are still squashing children into an antiquated education machine, which spits
them out as either bruised and battered rejects or as conformists; experts in rote learning and memory challenges
rather than deep thinking and enquiry.

The skills that are useful to employers are almost the opposite of the skills that are applauded in our education
system
I favour a system that has a wider set of values, focusing on students wellbeing, without cramming or hot
housing. In my experience, a gentler and more rounded approach to education encourages students to perform
well not only in exams, but in life in general.

The IoD calls for students who are imbued with curiosity, open-mindedness and the ability to make connections
between seemingly unrelated bits of information. They are NOT looking for students who have been trained to
simply recall information to pass tests. The skills that are useful to employers are almost the opposite of the skills
that are applauded in our education system the ability to be effective in team working and to find good solutions
through collaboration rather than the being able to provide a single correct answer in isolation under exam
conditions.

Universities also have a critical part to play if we are to change anything. Offering entry by grade only and a well
written personal statement means that individual talent and ability is lost. And even they are becoming unstuck
as this model unravels. As declining applications bite home, the likes of the University of Bristol are lowering
entry grades for students from disadvantaged areas and giving guaranteed places to every school in the city.
While I welcome the change, I have to ask is this really shifting the paradigm or is it just a sharp business move?

Fortunately, we in the independent sector are less shackled by the constraints laid down by the Government,
meaning we can take brave steps and lead change.

However, we can only offer new approaches if parents are brave enough to embrace them. For many families,
exam results are the main driver when choosing a school, but there are many others who are relieved to discover
an alternative to the hot house environment.

We must all be more aware of the never-ending pressures on young people and the potential long term impact
on their self-esteem and mental health.

Educationalist Guy Claxton believes that children should be encouraged to ask questions and think
independently
There are a number of strategies that can be implemented to help provide young people with a more balanced
learning experience. My school works with Educationalist Guy Claxton, who believes that children should be
encouraged to ask questions and think independently - not at the expense of Shakespeare or the Periodic Table
- but alongside these.

We use learning wheels to map skills with values to inform our pedagogy, while ensuring that children feel safe
and confident to speak out and be listened to. Our diverse programmes are developed to foster leadership,
adaptability and resilience in all students.

Of course, our students will sit exams in the end and be judged against the same criteria as every other student
in the country. Outcomes will continue to be important and of course, qualifications are the passport to a young
persons future career.

However, there is far more to learning. If we take the time to nurture our young people, we have a greater chance
of equipping them with the values and attributes they need to become engaged learners and achieve long-term
career success.

Iain Kilpatrick is Head of Sidcot School.

Ever since the board results were declared last week, there has been a lot of brouhaha on social media with
people uploading, flaunting or rather announcing the ninety-fives and ninety-sixes. Board results! Are you
serious? Does that even matter? Will those who have an aggregate of 75% be denied the right to a proper and
respectful life in the future? But, this discussion is perhaps futile to the millions of students about to take the
board exams and more so for the parents of such students. I am not an educationist, but an average academician
who feels extremely sorry for kids who are caught up in the rat race of securing the highest percentages in the
boards. So, this is what I want to say to them.

For the kids:

Dear Kids,
You are more valuable than the percentage you hold. Hard work and determination always result in success. In
other words, your success is in proportion to the effort you put in. So, now when you have the result of your
performance, learn to accept it as it is. You cannot go back in time to improve it anymore. But then, if you have
not achieved a ninety plus, it is not the end of the world for you. Board exams are always a turn in life; they help
you realise your interests, your inclinations and your near future. The mark-sheet that shows you the level of
performance in each subject is merely based on your efforts, but are not a pre-condition of your future. Today
you may not have fared well in Mathematics but tomorrow you might become an author, a lawyer or a teacher.
You have a whole world with a plethora of opportunities in front of you. Your future lies in your passion for
exploring this wonderful truth.
Now, for the kids who have secured above average marks, it is indeed laudable for friends and family that you
have obtained a good result. Even you should appreciate yourself, but please abstain yourself from being
overshadowed by the thought that is your ultimate success. This is not the final destination of your life or for your
education. It is a turn where you are expected to move ahead with fortitude and purposefulness. And finally, just
do your best and leave the rest.

For the parents:

Dear Parents,
Your worry, pride, disappointment and happiness over your child are understandable and justified to the extent
that you accept the situation that your child is in. Again, board results are not the ultimate destiny for your child.
Think about your times. You too had taken the boards, but how much have the results affected you so far? Did
your marks ever help you through the difficult times in your life? Did they make you a better or a worse person?
Your anxiety is justified considering that the competition is extremely difficult for kids today with the ever soaring
cut-offs of the colleges, increasingly tough entrances examinations and the race to secure admission into a good
college all of which is very taxing. However, when your kid was born, did you not wish that he or she grows up
to become a fine and virtuous person? Please do not be swayed by how much marks the neighbours son or
daughter has secured and do not compare your childs progress with that of someone elses. Instead, consider
the sincere effort that your child puts into studying. Dont let exam fear engulf your child. Your child is more
precious than the boards, the competition, the percentage, the neighbourhood talks and the prestigious college
seats.

For the teachers:

Dear Teachers,
A great social responsibility lies with you. You are the ones who create the future citizens who carry the world
forward on their shoulders. But the ultimate goal of teaching is to create a good human being. I request you to
nurture the habit of acceptance in kids from a very young age. Their marks, mark-sheet, performance and exams
should not be the ultimate object of their lives. Therefore, they need to be taught to look beyond such concerns
and instead work for a higher purpose in life. Let not a ninety be the goal of the student, let the goal be to apply
the best effort and aim for the best. The ability to accept success and failures as they come should feel natural
to them. So, encourage them, motivate them and inspire them, for you alone can create a generation of
responsible, upright citizens.
 It was a joyous day for Asha when she received a doctorate for her study on mythology and classical
dance. At a celebration dinner held that night, all her close family, friends and her many disciples gathered to
shower her with flowers, praise and gifts. It was a moment of triumph for her, but her thoughts flew back in time,
briefly, to dwell on her school days, when she got her Class XII mark sheet. She had been devastated her
total marks were dipping a bit, just low enough to ensure that it would be very difficult to get the B.Com. seat in
a popular college that she had set her heart upon. At that moment, it had seemed like the end of the road for
Asha who could only imagine a career in commerce and business. It would have been a terrible time for her, if
only her teacher Alison had not noticed her crying in a corner and started talking to her.
New horizons
As she talked to Alison, Ashas fears subsided. From being convinced that she was good for nothing, she
came to see that she had many talents and capabilities, and even if she did not get a B.Com. seat, there would
be a million possibilities available to her, if only she would open her minds eye and see them. As she received
yet another bouquet of flowers, Ashas mind jerked back to the present, but not before dwelling on the numerous
bharatanatyam shows she had done, her huge network of rasikas, her dance school which had about 150
students and her latest achievement, a doctorate. In every sense, she had found success all because of her
teachers guidance to seek new horizons, and because she had seen beyond the boundaries imposed by scoring
low marks in one subject.
Ashas story is far from unique. There would be a million examples of people who had done badly in their
school exams and yet shone like stars in later life. Famous examples abound, from Srinivasa Ramanujan to
Steve Jobs.
Know yourself
Long ago, exams were devised to give the teacher a measure of how effective the teaching has been,
but now it has evolved to a stage when everyone students, parents, teachers and the managements just
use it to judge the capability of the student, says Dr. T. S. Natarajan, professor in IIT Madras. While the
obsession with marks is to be condemned, teachers and parents should rather understand what the student is
good at and help him or her develop in that direction instead of pushing them towards their weak areas. Thus it
is important to know yourself not in the sense of knowing how much you are capable of scoring in an exam,
but in knowing your own strengths and weaknesses.
Consulting elders
One of the things that hurts most about getting low marks in a subject is that it could upset the plans a student
has made about which course to choose. If this happens, rather than trying to face the situation alone, it is good
to talk to knowledgeable elders about it. Teachers often have ample information on options open to study further
as well as train for jobs. Says one mathematics teacher who does not want to be named, Nearly 20 per cent of
the students from my school have opted for a diploma after Class XII, even though the necessary qualification
is only Class X pass. Companies like TVS invite students to undergo a certificate training programme followed
by a job in the company. Even some chartered accountant firms come forward to take up intelligent apprentices
whom they train in accountancy and encourage to do B.Com. by correspondence.
So there are options galore for one who has the mindset to look for them. A simple chat with an informed adult
can remove the feeling that one is at a dead end.
Not everyone can do everything. For example, a student who does well in mathematics may be poor in chemistry.
Another, who has brilliant language, may be lost when it comes to history, which may be someone elses forte.
Fortunately, at present, there are opportunities for doing well and gaining a good career in many fields. You just
need to look around and find what suits you the best.
Class XII marks are very important, of course. If a student scores enough to gain admission in the course and
college of his or her choice, there is nothing like it. But this almost serendipitous state of affairs is not something
one can guarantee.
If this happy coincidence does not occur, instead of being resigned to what one perceives as a failure, one has
to look beyond. Students must see that many years later, this will appear minute and insignificant to them, after
they have gone about their own achievements.
Bar topnotcher: Every law student dreams to be one. Law professors, administrators and deans share that dream
with their students, inasmuch as professors focus on preparing the students for the bar exam, and administrators
craft curriculums and offer courses mostly intended for the students bar exam performance.
This has been the trend in the past decades. But this has to change if we are to keep up with the movements
shaping the 21st century: regional integration, geopolitical power play, globalization, and rapid societal and
technological advancement. Otherwise, we will be left behind.
The obsession with landing in the Top 10 has limited our legal education to training law students intensively and
exclusively in all fields of Philippine law. Thus, they do not have the opportunity to choose specific fields of
interest. More importantly, law curriculums have left no space for specialized courses on issues and realities that
challenge us today. As a result, law students are practically trained to become general practitioners, and
eventually are left on their own to decide in which field to specialize when they graduate.
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In 2011, a top law school, UP Law, dropped noncore electives in favor of bar-review and bar-related ones. Before
then, it was said that UP Law was not focusing on the bar exam but on the students future outstanding law
practice. But because of its graduates relative dismal performance in the bar exam, particularly the glaring
decline of graduates landing in the Top 10,
UP Laws administration has somehow ridden the tide of the Top 10 obsession.
Another top law school, San Beda, has had a rigid curriculum for decades in which students have no electives
at all, except for a two-unit subject, banking. In addition, fourth-year subjects are mostly bar-review ones.
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Ateneo de Manila, another leading law school, is somehow a saving grace. It has retained 22 units of electives.
Some electives are useful for the challenges presented by the Asean integration, geopolitical conflicts, and
globalization, such as international taxation, international moot court, international economic law, and European
business law. But these are few and rarely offered.
The trend should be reversed. Schools should not be bar-focused as the bar exam is a licensure exam that only
tests ones understanding of Philippine laws. It does not test ones working knowledge on pressing issues of a
multinational level, and preparedness in dealing with non-Filipino nationals, lawyers, institutions, and
governments, including international bodies.
Although passing the bar exam is an essential requirement for law practice, a bar-focused student is ill-equipped
for the challenges arising from the movements shaping the 21st century. It is true that new lawyers generally go
through general practice (in a law firm, corporation, or the government) for years. Most new lawyers will not dare
go straight to what they want to specialize in. And worse, most will not dare leave their comfort zonesthe
Philippine settingprecisely because they have been intensively and exclusively trained to be lawyers for the
local stage.
With due respect to the Supreme Court, together with the media, they have somehow conditioned the public that
the Top 10 examinees are assured of a highly outstanding career. As far as this writer is concerned, there is no
difference in the cognitive and legal skills of any of the top 100 examinees, and any of the Top 10, as an
examinees bar exam score is partly determined by the examinees luck (e.g., he or she had luckily focused on
the exact topics actually asked) and the examiners whim (e.g., he or she may not like the examinees
handwriting, or is in a bad mood while checking). What will determine a lawyers greatness is not his or her exam
scorea tool of leveragebut his or her actual performance in the practice of law: Does the lawyer gloriously
winand graciously losecourt cases? Is he or she a revered professor or author? Perhaps these are some
reasons there are no Top 10 lists in developed countries.
What should then be done? Amid rapidly growing societal and technological complexities, the profession is in
dire need of specialization. Schools should provide specialized, nonbar-related electives, such as law and the
internet, and law and emerging technologies. A specific, fairly recent case that left us troubled was the Uber
issue, which had our lawyers naiveness exposed. There were no local legal authorities. In the name of
advancement, we instead heavily relied on the legal application in other countries.
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Furthermore, as we are faced with regional and global realities, students should have a stronger grasp of
international, regional, and even individual foreign laws. Electives such as international human rights law,
comparative Asean law, and Indonesian mercantile law, should be offered. With these electives, future Filipino
lawyers will be academically trained so that they, equipped with a firm foundation and coupled with some
experience, will be at par and will be able to work effectively with their foreign peers, and will be able to appear
before or work with foreign institutions and international bodies.
Thus, it is essential that students be able to explore other areas. Schools can only start offering such subjects if
they are not pressured to produce Top 10 graduates. It is then respectfully suggested that the Top 10 examinees
no longer be publicized.
Legal education should not be bar-focused; otherwise, our future lawyers will fall into an abyss of complexities,
or will have great difficulty in reaching their full potential for the regional and global stages. Schools, through their
professors, should not put all their efforts on strategizing how to produce Top 10 graduates, or how to outperform
other schools average passing rate. Instead, they should prepare the students to be great in practice not only
locally but also regionally and globally.
The world has become overly complex these past decades, and will continue to do so. There are too many
lawyers prepared for general practice, but there are too few who have legitimate specialized knowledge. And
there are too many lawyers trained to tackle domestic issues, but there are too few who are well-prepared for
the realities, beyond our shores, facing us.
Jose Luis O. General, 29, is a linguist-supervisor, a published translator, and a senior law student.