She had to pass her N level examinations before she could be promoted to Secondary 5 to complete her O level examinations. Or, with the N level passes, she could have gone over to the Institute of Technical Education, where she could get some form of "tertiary" education. In any case, she had completed her 10 years of mandatory education, stipluated by Singapore law.
Yet, since she had decided to attend Secondary 5, an almost inordinately tough additional year to obtain her O level certificate. One of the reasons for the difficulty is in the difference between the syllabi to be tested at the two years. Another reason, which might or might not be true, is that while the O level certificate has international recognition, the N level certificate has none.
What's my point?
I was invigilating a paper where this student placed her head on her table and dozed off less than 30 minutes into a 75 minutes Physics paper. She was not alone sleeping in the middle of the paper.
Being a responsible invigilator, I went round waking people up. There was no way the 75 minute paper is going to be completed in 30 minutes. I couldn't even do it myself. And when I tried waking this thing up, she lost her temper and threw a tantrum.
I begin to wonder if we have gotten it wrong. If so, what went wrong? And finally, what are we going to do about it?
3 comments:
Amusing.
Nothing is wrong. Its just that she didnt get enough sleep the night before...
you are so kind! i didnt know part of the job scope of invigilator is to ensure students stay awake throughout their exam. if i were the invigilator i will just let that student sleep, because she didnt bother anyone (unless she was snoring loudly and her classmates were disturbed by it). 2 sayings come to mind : dun waste your energy doing something for someone that he dun appreciate (chi1 li4 bu4 tao2 hao3) and beware of the dog that bites the kind soul (gou3 yao3 lv3 dong4 bin1, bu4 zhi1 hao3 ren2 xin1)
someone told me once : dun you know it never pays to be kind in this world?
Post a Comment