Sekolah Bogor Raya

Our International Competitions and Assessments for Schools (ICAS) results are available now. They are summarized in the table below. We have started a program of sponsoring a group of students from each of grade 4, 6 and 8 each year. Students are selected from among the better students, and each student wrote all three tests.

P = participation; C = credit; (H) D = (high) distinction; G = gold medal.
High Distinction: top 1% of students in each Year level in each region (percentile band 99% – 100%). Gold medal is awarded for the highest score in the country in each year level.
Distinction: the next 10% of students in each Year level in each region (percentile band 89% – 98%).
Credit: the next 20% of students in each Year level in each region (percentile band 69% – 88%).
Participation: all others (percentile band 0% – 68%).

The ICAS results can be used for both internal and external comparisons.

External
At first glance our school results seem to show:
• we are well above the regional average in maths
• we are slightly above the regional average in science
• we are below the regional average in English.

However, it is worth taking a minute to examine these results in greater detail. A critical question is what is the average to which we are compared? Indonesia is lumped together with the Australian state of New South Wales, which contributes more than 95% of the participants. According to the ICAS test center in Jakarta, Indonesian data will only be separated when there are 10,000 Indonesian participants. This year the total of Indonesian test-takers reached about 8,700.

So how do our kids stack up against the majority-Australians? In math we truly are more advanced at 11.1% above the regional average, as expected, since Asian countries generally are more advanced in math than western countries. Our science result at 9.2% above the regional average is a surprise to me. I expected we would be much lower. And our English result is as expected; we are, on average, 10.3% below native speaker standard, or, in other words, our kids achieved 90% of native speaker ability, as measured in these tests, which is an excellent achievement. English is our second language, but these scores are compared to first language speakers.

What would increase confidence in this interpretation of the results? I have asked around the Association of National Plus Schools to see if some schools are willing to pool their results to make an ‘Indonesian standard’. So far no success; the schools say their results are used for internal comparisons only. It is perhaps worth mentioning that in the results of last years ujian nasional our grade 9 scored an average of 9.13 in English, which is said to the highest for West Java, beating even a well-known international school in Jakarta.

Internal
The real power of the ICAS comes from internal comparisons of different classes, results of previous years, and different types of questions. Because the questions are categorized, it is easy to spot a weakness and deal with it. For instance, in English, our grade 6 kids are weakest in vocabulary, which is not the case for our grade 4 or 8 students, who were weak in several areas, but not vocabulary. The English test primarily covers reading comprehension, which, while important, is not all there is to measure in language ability.
Our mathematics results indicate that grades 4 and 6 are weak in two areas, measures & units and space & geometry, while grade 8 is weakest in chance & data. Our science results show weakness in reasoning/problem solving for grades 4, 6 and 8. Grades 6 and 8 are also weak in investigating. These diagnostic results will be used by teachers, who will focus on our weaker areas.