Social promotion

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Social promotion is the practice of promoting schoolchildren to the next grade, to keep them with their peers, regardless of whether they are capable of doing grade-level work. Some advocates of social promotion argue that keeping children together by age (together with their age cohort) is an intrinsically important factor, and that being "kept back" would be inexcusably painful for a child emotionally.

Opponents of social promotion argue that it cheats the child of an education and can hide teacher ineptitude. Most children who are behind will probably end up staying an extra year in high school which clearly defeats the purpose of keeping them with their peers. The term is called retention in which advocates against social promotion use frequently in their arguments. Supporters of retention have maintained that it sends a message to all schoolchildren that weak effort and poor performance will not be tolerated. In this case, it teaches underachievers to get serious and get ready for the next grade unlike social promotion. Critics of social promotion argue that it discourages promoted schoolchildren by placing them in grades where they cannot do the work, sends the message to all schoolchildren that they can get by without working hard, forces teachers to deal with under-prepared schoolchildren while trying to teach the prepared, gives parents a false sense of their children's progress, leads employers to conclude that diplomas are meaningless, and dumps poorly educated students into a society where they cannot perform.

This is however a controversial topic.

External links

• Taking Responsibility for Ending Social promotion
• Retention and Social Promotion