Only an idiot would compare this year's results with previous years

Recently, Malaysia's 2020 college entrance examination results have been released, and the "good or bad" of the results has become the focus of everyone's discussion. The current Malaysian Education Minister Mohd Radzi Md Jidin even threatened that the 2020 college entrance examination results will be the best in five years.

As soon as this statement came out, it immediately aroused everyone's doubts. Are students who have been affected by the epidemic really doing so well? It is conceivable that everyone knows that this is a self-directed and self-acted performance by politicians.

But in addition to discussing how good or bad grades are and how many A's so-and-so got, have we discussed the meaning behind these scores?

First of all, it must be clarified that all formal examinations, including the college entrance examination, are a type of psychological measurement. (The so-called "psychological" not only refers to personality, feelings, opinions, but also includes intelligence, problem-solving ability, calculation ability, etc.)

The biggest difference between "psychological measurement" and "physical measurement" is that the former uses an "ordinal scale"; the latter uses a "ratio scale".

We can say that 30cm is 3 times longer than 10cm, but we can’t say that a person with a score of 30 is 3 times smarter than a person with a score of 10; we can also say that 0kg is completely weightless, but we can’t say that a person with a score of 0 is Completely incompetent.

In short, the order scale used in physical measurement has the characteristics of "fixed scale" and "absolute zero". The test scores and grades that everyone pays attention to are just a reference to the order of ability - it can only let us know what stage or position a certain candidate is in among all the candidates.

There are three factors that affect this "score":

1) [Difficulty of exam questions]. Assuming the exam questions are easier, people will get higher marks on the exam.
2) [Competence of the overall candidate]. Assuming the average ability is lower, so-and-so may also be ranked higher.
3) 【Score Criteria】. Assuming that the grading standard is wider, the test taker's score will also improve.

In fact, as we all know, the annual college entrance examination has different difficulty questions; each year's candidates are also a new batch of candidates; each year's correction standards are (possibly) different.

If someone is still obsessed with a reactive variable - grades in a situation where there is no fixed variable at all. Then it means that he/she may not have studied in primary school, or it may be vain.

If politicians want to fool the people, they will naturally lower the difficulty of the exam questions, or relax the marking standards. Then use it to praise yourself for your work.

So we should focus on what's behind the score --
What subjects or units are our students weaker in?
What proportion of the questions are low, medium and high thinking levels?

This is the scope of discussion, because these data are important for teachers' future teaching adjustment and academic research direction. However, politicians will not let you know these important data. Because it would expose the inadequacies of the entire education system in every aspect.

Therefore, other people can only use superficial achievements to "whitewash peace". It is conceivable that when the next PISA comes, the same problem will arise again - the education level in Malaysia will be criticized by everyone.

In the end, in the end, in the end, what I want to say as an educator is that if grades aren't used to give feedback to students, or to get teachers to adjust teaching, it's really only worth "labeling" test takers and "Classification".

But students are people, not garbage, they don't need to be sorted like recycling garbage. What our society needs to do is to face education well and improve our education system so that our education can really nurture people who will influence society in the future.

Therefore, the Ministry of Education should provide more comprehensive data to help teachers make teaching improvements in the face of a new batch of students. Academic researchers can also use this data to explore the weaker units or skills of students, and then develop more effective methods and tools to help educators in the first field.

At the end of the article, back to the beginning of the article, only an idiot would compare this year's results with the past. What we need to do is to reflect on our achievements this year and build a better future.

Currently, we still have a lot of academic research and technological improvements to deal with.

Let's all share.