Grades do not lead to better learning

Grades rate and rank students. Grades encourage students to compete with each other, and not  concentrate on learning and improving, but doing it because you have to. As opposed to having feedback, which will be different for each student, and will allow them to only compete with themselves!

Also, grades are subjective, and not for discussion, in general, as opposed to feedback and evaluation which can be done together. Even though many systems (including the International Baccalaureate) have criteria to help grading, teachers still regard work, depending on their personal thoughts on different aspects which they think are more important and worth more points. Additionally, the student might have memorized material for a test, which often gets forgotten right after. Therefore the grades do not entirely reflect what the student has learnt. On the contrary, with feedback a lot more information is passed on to the students, without stressing them. In addition, there might be a discussion of the feedback, reflection, and self-evaluation. In this current assessment system, the number distracts from the feedback.

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