There was nothing much to do, not anything to do with proper lessons or official school activities in class. Its the period of time teachers and students can look forward to and appreciate. Post-exam period is relaxing to a certain extent, at least there's no lesson, just paper work, lots and lots of score updating and ammendments. I relish the paper work, though it can be quite tiring. The earlier part of the period is hellish, marking scripts is a terrible ordeal which strains your back and blur your vision. Leaving school at wee hours of 7, all I can do is to go home and sleep. Yes, 7 is considered late for a teacher to be going home, considering that I report to school at 7.30am. The second half of the period, which will be the next coming week, would be heavenly. Papers have been marked. Score have been entered into the database. Student's remark is done with. Promotion excercise is completed yesterday. I was "dumped" by my co-form teacher, my collegue who should have been there with me to oversee the whole discussion. Well, I was called into action as I was asked to comment on one of my students in the consideration of advancement to the next level. It was so stressful. Well, I always hated to speak in front of the public. Now, they expect me to speak in front of my HODs, V-Ps, Principal and all the teachers. A little too much to handle for a new UNTRAINED CONTRACT teacher who was given five classes to teach and to be a form teacher of a class while the other permanent teacher with more years of experience than me, to be the Co-Form of my class. AND she's not even present to speak for the class. On the other hand, let's be positive a bit and view it as a good experience. It does. I mean it is really good that i expose myself to mass discussion like this to gain the insights into the perspective of streaming. I consider the segregation of students into express stream, normal academic and normal technical to be classification according to intellectual capabilites. And this inherent characteristic is measured in view of his academic performance. During the discussion, some views are quite contradictory. I dont understand.....at first i thought i do....then i don't noe anymore about the purpose of the whole excercise. It seems to me that promotion to the next level is a certain thing, to give students a second chance. Given the attitude problems and poor performance, students will still move on the the next level instead of retaining or shifted from express to normal. The reason given for not doing so is to fear that such a degrading move will further deteoriate the student's performance and attitude. I have to agree that this will have a impact on the student's morale. But that is the problem of streaming in the very first place. So what justifies a poorly performing student to remain in the express stream? Sec 1 still young, still can give chance? Ok, i think i will buy that for now. Fair eoungh, Let's be a bit more forgiving and give chance. But who can give the students in normal academic a second chance, who in the first place is demoralised by streaming already. There are students who adavnce from normal academic to express, the minorities..... What about the majorities, who will still continue to spiral down, to a bottomless pit...into abyss......