The International Schools Review Forum

Wait for it... wait for it.... THERE IT IS! The goalposts in this intellectual game of footie have been moved again, shifting from "percentages might not be very useful" (they are useless in the context of a UK student, as UK teachers understand) to "they have a conceptual understanding of percentages" (which are still useless to a UK student).

Relevant and meaningful are absolute drivel when it comes to percentages in the UK school system.

@Sj

Theres no goal posts being moved, percentages are percentages. My UK students knew what percentages were/are. They are not useless, they have meaning, just not meaning thats very useful when referring to marking schemes.

@PG - when used as an assessment tool for UK students in a UK school, they are meaningless and students want their predicted standards-based grade. It's what they know. Your stating that they "understand percentages" is disingenuous - because the UK system does not use percentages as a grade.

@SJ

Your position that percentages are meaningless is inaccurate, they have meaning, they just arent useful. As I wrote earlier, this isnt a big deal, provide your students with a conversion scale and percentages are fine. The percentage gives them an evaluation score with more precision and the scale allows them to translate their percentage to a predicted score. If percentages were meaningless than you couldnt do that.