Does Your Child Have Equal Opportunity at the Gymi Examination?
It is becoming increasingly clear that preliminary grades determine success at the entrance examination for the long-term gymnasium. A top result on the examination is no longer sufficient if the preliminary grades are not excellent. This raises the question of whether all primary school students in the canton have the same chance of passing the Central Entrance Examination (ZAP) in the Canton of Zurich.
The very idea of the Central Entrance Examination is that all children should be treated equally. However, this is undermined by the strong relevance of preliminary grades. Primary school teachers cannot possibly grade in exactly the same way, because school classes are far too heterogeneous. Grading inevitably relies at least partially on a comparison with classmates rather than on defined criteria, competencies, or abilities, so that the grading of one and the same performance will turn out better or worse depending on how good or poor the other students are. Furthermore, each teacher sets different requirements—if a particular teacher has high expectations of their students, they grade more strictly, and the examination candidate must take the examination with poorer preliminary grades than they would have received from another teacher. There is also the additional problem that in low-performing school classes, the examination-relevant topics sometimes cannot be learned and practiced at all, because the average class level does not permit this and teachers often find it difficult to provide individualized support. Here too, affected students face a disadvantage for the Central Entrance Examination for which they bear little responsibility.
A thorough preparation course is the best option to counteract both of these factors of unequal opportunity. On the one hand, it enables the essential optimization of preliminary grades throughout the entire 6th school year; furthermore, it ensures that the student is familiar with all examination-relevant topics and has had sufficient time to practice them.
