Should students be allowed to earn a 7 on a reassessment? 

Muskaan

This year, ISM has a new reassessment policy that states that a student can only get a maximum of a 5 on any reassessment. But what if the student attended tutorials and was able to really learn everything they needed to? When that student does a reassessment, it could be that they excel with flying colors. So is it fair not to give them a 7? Is it fair that the maximum they can get is a 5? I think the policy should be changed so that students will be able to get the maximum grade of a 7 to make up for their mistakes and show what they actually learned. 

In contradiction, people might say that the students just didn’t want to study or get good grades. I’ve done my research that proves that there are many more stories behind getting bad grades and not just because the students didn’t want to study or because they were too lazy. 

First of all, the students might get a bad grade because the students might not have had enough time in their day to manage to get all their subjects done. This leads them to do some all-nighters. On the day of the test, the students can’t focus due to the all-nighter, so they are in a sleep mode and can’t give all their attention to the test. Let’s be realistic, we all have gone through that phase whether or not we want to admit it. This can happen at the end of the quarter or semester. Students might cram to get all their work and revisions done, and need to pull an all-nighter. But it is known that when you are sleeping your brain slows down to process all the important information from the day, and throws out anything that is not needed, in order to improve learning. Erratic sleep is when your circadian rhythm is disturbed and you sleep any time you can. Students might fall asleep while they are in class because of the all-nighter that they pulled, and they might not remember most of the information they had been trying to learn.

Secondly, students may get a bad grade on a test because they might be going through a family loss or family drama. When you go through family loss, your mind is always on it. No matter what you do or how you try to deal with it, it always comes back up with a surge of feelings. During times like these, focusing on your school tasks is a very hard thing, and as a result, you may get a grade that you are very disappointed with. 

These are just some of the reasons why students might not get a good grade on the first version of an assessment. In conclusion, I would like to argue that students should be able to get a 7 for their reassessment. All of the reasons above show and prove that students should be able to get a 7 for the reassessment.  

Affan

Students have had an opportunity to reassess and get a new grade for tests in which they got a grade of 4 or below for a long time. But this year, the reassessment system changed so that the highest grade you can get in a reassessment is a 5. Should this change to the reassessment policy become permanent? I believe that it should for the reasons below.

Every student receives feedback after their assessment is graded. This feedback from the teacher tells ways how the student can improve and get a 7. This gives an unfair advantage to those who reassess as they can just listen to the feedback and work on what they  did wrong on the assessment. This makes it unfair as getting a 7 is thus not hard and those who get a 5 or 6 and want a 7 don’t get to reassess, thus giving an unfair advantage to those who did bad on the test the first time around. The fact that you can’t get higher than a 5 on reassessments balances this out so that students who reassess won’t get an advantage over those with a 5 or 6.

Some may even say that students shouldn’t be able to get a 6 or 7 in a reassessment because they didn’t put enough effort in the first assessment. Many students take the tests and some are able to pass with exemplary grades, while some cannot. Every teacher believes that every student has the capability to get a 7 if they put enough effort into studying. Then it doesn’t make sense if they didn’t put the effort into the first test and yet got a 7 on the reassessment because of the feedback.

However, some may argue that they had a lot of assessments at one time and they were studying for some other topic. This may be true, but the reader must take into consideration that other students also have multiple tests in a short period, and yet are able to get good grades on all their tests. This proves that it is possible to be able to get good grades for each subject that has a test.

In conclusion, students should not be able to get a grade above 5 in reassessments, as the feedback after the test gives an unfair advantage to those reassessing, and that they didn’t put enough effort and just used the feedback of the test. Reassessing should only be kept as a way for students to get a 5, an average grade, as to solve the problem of whether reassessing is fair or not.