Exam grading

The next day, all teachers spent most of the day grading exams. They did this by confining themselves to rooms by departments, allowing them to discuss and debate the finer points of scoring. The English teachers were no exception, and sequestered themselves for a couple of hours somewhere in the building. (I was at my desk throughout all the testing. I didn't really feel left out--I've seen enough of the process to know it's a lot of roundabout discussion to get everyone into a consensus. Due either to their preference or prefecture regulations, I don't get to do any actual grading, either.)

Kanemoto-sensei, finishing his first year teaching in an academic high school, has been the closest I've found to a war buddy. He's often as openly confused and exasperated as I am by the rigamarole of Tsushima High, which gives us plenty to talk about. At one point in the afternoon, he strolled into the staffroom and sat at the desk next to me. He told me the other English teachers were "debating philosophy."

Murahashi-sensei had graded some of the papers. As per protocol, Kurokawa-sensei had re-graded the same papers, and had disagreed on some small point. Similarly, Kanemoto-sensei had awarded partial credit to students who chose the proper verb root (play) but used an incorrect conjugation. (Playing instead of to play, for example.) This didn't sit right with the other teachers, and little things like this had launched them into discussions about English semantics and grading philosophy.

As he was talking to me, the vice principal strolled over, politely apologized for interrupting, and asked Kanemoto-sensei about some trivial aspect of the exams. I'm almost positive this was a hint--"Boy, those tests you're grading sure must be difficult"--but Kanemoto either missed it or chose to ignore it. He politely answered the question, and the vice principal diplomatically walked away.

A few minutes after this, Takahira-sensei came into the staffroom. Takahira-sensei doesn't stroll. A scatterbrained intellectual, he's always busy, and always making a beeline for wherever he's headed. (I'm not being mean; we can smell our own.) He approached Kanemoto, mentioned something not impolite but not nearly as diplomatic as what the vice principal had said, and Kanemoto returned to the grading room.

Before he left, though, Kanemoto-sensei taught me something very interesting. Having no idea how admissions work, I asked if the other teachers were trying to grade strictly in order to whittle down the number of accepted students. Kanemoto explained that, out of 500 points (five sections at 100 points each), students needed only 50 points to pass.

Fifty. Out of five hundred.

After the first round of grading, in which the teachers exercised their unrestrained judgement as to who passed and who didn't, the principal was given a list of those students who had failed. He called the prefectural board of education to notify them of the names and the reason for their failure. After doing this, however, the board of education apparently ordered him to admit those students. Out of 200 applicants, 200 were to be accepted.

That makes the tests all but meaningless. If every student who applied can get in, the lowest score--in this case, 50/500, or 10%--becomes a passing score. The same thing happened with last year's students as well. This explains why there's such a huge gap between the top and the bottom of the freshman class. I wonder why all the students were admitted. Do schools receive funding on a per-student basis? With the young population in Tsushima--and Japan in general--shrinking, are public schools competing for the increasingly fewer students?

Is it right to admit a student to a purportedly academic high school when that student scored 10% on the entrance exam? Doesn't that cheapen the effort of those students who busted their butts to legitimately pass? Doesn't it also set that student up for an agonizing experience in high school, when he or she will be expected and required to perform at the same level as those other students?