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The practice of teachers manually adjusting, or "bumping
up" students' marks by a small number of percentage
points for interim or final marks, is unacceptable and unfair
to all students. This practice occurs in a variety of situations,
for many different reasons; however, in almost all these
cases, increasing marks is absolutely unfair.
Even increases of a single percentage point are normally
unjustified. While this may seem like an insignificant amount
to add to a deserving student's mark on a report card or
university/college mark download, it represents a large
increase in academic effort. This could have easily been
the difference between a 70% and an 85% on a term test.
Mark increases are frequently made on a highly subjective
basis, in which only certain students receive this favourable
treatment. Oftentimes, marks are modified when individual
students approach the teachers to request adjustments, citing
reasons such as ensuring post-secondary institution acceptances,
maintaining admission offers, scholarship requirements,
or dissatisfaction with the mark. This is unfair to students
who may have worked equally hard and have achieved the same
mark, but feel it is inappropriate to receive an arbitrary
increase.
Because the process of mark adjustment is completely at
the discretion of school administration and/or teachers,
it is beyond the scrutiny of higher authorities. Thus, there
are no standards or codes of ethics governing the practice,
which only exacerbates the issue of inconsistent marks between
different schools.
Some teachers only increase certain marks in order to make
them end up at round numbers. For instance, a 79% would
be rounded up to yield a more pleasing 80%, while an 81%
would remain a satisfactory 81%. Only the students who were
fortunate enough to achieve specific, arbitrary marks receive
such benefits.
Clearly, it is only logical that marks should only reflect
a student's achievement on the evaluations required by the
curriculum, rather than being vulnerable to the indiscretions
and impulses of teachers, or the demands of opportunistic
students. The arbitrary mark increases are unfair to both
the benefiting student who likely does not deserve the advantage,
and his/her peers who do not receive this treatment.
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