Just sharing a thought here eh. The teaching profession used to have only 2 SEO positions in school. The P and VP were the only ones with that grade. The rest will be teachers with time based promotion and a fixed MI every year. Bonus was very much also shared based on ranks. Back then was GEO1A1, 1A2, 2A1 … etc. Over the years, the political leadership felt that there is a need to identify good and bad performers and EPMS came about. That’s was 2008.

Now if you think about it as a system point of view, you are simply taking the bonus from the “poorer performer” and gave it to the “better performer” There is almost no additional resources required but it makes the people in the system worked harder than they used to. It becomes a grinder of sort. It might make sense in the corporate world where costing and revenue are immediate on a year on year basis. We are talking about kids here. Can we be very sure what you do now has a big impact? What are the matrix involved in looking at success? What happen when a wayward child became someone 20 years later and attributed his or her success to the teacher 20 years ago? Will the teacher be rewarded then?

So back to the point of fairness in ranking. When there are people making judgement on others, biases are always there. There are always friendship of 20 years when the HOD are friends with the teachers since NIE, there are halo effect where officers have done something good in August and it was always amplified many times over while good things done in Dec and Jan seems to be forgotten. RO who are too tired or worried to spoil relationship, SLs who have preference for one over the other. The potential list goes on. So at the end of the day, in a school of 100, majority will always get C. Perhaps 15 will C+ and B while 1 or 2 will get A. Let’s not forget maybe 5 will get C- and D. If you see the numbers, for you to be elevated to C+ and above, you must be top 20 in your school. These include all your EOs such as KPs and SLs as well. Do you think your SEO officers are not ranked and their ranking pool is not the same as yours?

The next question is you have to ask yourself how much are you willing to give to get to top 20? I agree with one recent comment on sustainability and costing. At the end of the day, there is little control over promotion and PB grades since there is so much more subjectivity than objectivity. Your HOD could have seen 1 off event and marked you while for the whole year such event did not exist - maybe late for lesson as you were in toilet and a fight broke up. How this HOD interprets this incident depends on his perception of you, if he has selfish thoughts to push up his JHs, is he impartial, his personality etc etc.

I am in the ranking panel and have seen questions like that pop up all the time. However, I too stand to be corrected 🙂