This is where I hang out at 7am on Saturday mornings, proctoring exams with 9th and 10th standard.
When prospective teachers come in for an interview, they hand me three documents: their 10th-grade board exam results, 12th-grade board exam results, and university grades. Even if they are forty years old, this is what they wave at me, mark sheets from twenty-five years earlier.
That's why I'm trying to impress on our kids that the outcome of these upcoming tests is a very big deal and will affect them for decades to come.
This is our first year with a 10th grade at Rising Star, and our first time for board exam preparations. The exams will be covering English, Tamil, Science, Math, and Social Science. Unfortunately, they are fairly difficult. And somewhat irrational. And, unlike the SAT or GRE, there are no practice tests or simple way to study for them.
If students don't pass, they are finished with school, and are not permitted to continue on to 11th and 12th grade. But merely passing isn't enough, either. Kids must score in the 80-90% range in order to be secured a position in an Indian university after graduation. Scores also determine what they can study; if a student does poorly in Math, say, she will not be allowed to major in engineering in college.
This is all determined at the ripe ol' age of 15.
Oh, and poor handwriting will cost a student ten percent of the grade.
Ergo, 10th-graders (and 9th, whom we are trying to prepare early) have a demanding schedule this year. School starts daily at 7am with Science. They slog through until 3 with only a half-hour lunch break. Then they have Math and Tamil tutoring until 6, eat dinner, and have to be back in the library by 7pm.
Here we are around 9pm, some students faring better than others:
Teachers are constantly suggesting to me that the schedule is too lax. When they were in the 10th grade, they studied until midnight and were up again at 4 the next morning. And shouldn't we insert another Math class at 5am? Come January, one teacher wants to hold a Tamil class every evening from 7 to 10:30. Another wants to teach Biology all day on Saturdays and Sundays.
The exams are in April: wish us bonne chance!
When prospective teachers come in for an interview, they hand me three documents: their 10th-grade board exam results, 12th-grade board exam results, and university grades. Even if they are forty years old, this is what they wave at me, mark sheets from twenty-five years earlier.
That's why I'm trying to impress on our kids that the outcome of these upcoming tests is a very big deal and will affect them for decades to come.
This is our first year with a 10th grade at Rising Star, and our first time for board exam preparations. The exams will be covering English, Tamil, Science, Math, and Social Science. Unfortunately, they are fairly difficult. And somewhat irrational. And, unlike the SAT or GRE, there are no practice tests or simple way to study for them.
If students don't pass, they are finished with school, and are not permitted to continue on to 11th and 12th grade. But merely passing isn't enough, either. Kids must score in the 80-90% range in order to be secured a position in an Indian university after graduation. Scores also determine what they can study; if a student does poorly in Math, say, she will not be allowed to major in engineering in college.
This is all determined at the ripe ol' age of 15.
Oh, and poor handwriting will cost a student ten percent of the grade.
Ergo, 10th-graders (and 9th, whom we are trying to prepare early) have a demanding schedule this year. School starts daily at 7am with Science. They slog through until 3 with only a half-hour lunch break. Then they have Math and Tamil tutoring until 6, eat dinner, and have to be back in the library by 7pm.
Here we are around 9pm, some students faring better than others:
Teachers are constantly suggesting to me that the schedule is too lax. When they were in the 10th grade, they studied until midnight and were up again at 4 the next morning. And shouldn't we insert another Math class at 5am? Come January, one teacher wants to hold a Tamil class every evening from 7 to 10:30. Another wants to teach Biology all day on Saturdays and Sundays.
The exams are in April: wish us bonne chance!
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