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It sounds counterintuitive, but grades can kill motivation: students can work extremely hard on learning a new math skill, writing a paper, or doing a project, only to then receive a low grade. What they learn from this is that their hard work is irrelevant and it is the product that counts. Many also take the lesson that they are not smart, or not a 鈥渕ath person,鈥� or the myriad other narratives that derail their motivation to perform in schools.

When we remove grades, we encourage mastery. Students can resubmit every assignment until they have demonstrated the core competencies expected. Everyone knows how to improve and no one is left without key skills.聽

Grades also discourage innovation and risk-taking. Students learn early on that they are often rewarded by doing exactly what they think the teacher wants from them. Even when creative or critical thinking are encouraged, students are often afraid to try something new because the results are not guaranteed. And because grades impact post-secondary pathways, students quickly drop subjects they have less aptitude for. Rather than encouraging students to build new skills and gain new knowledges, we encourage them to stick with what they are already good at.

I have seen risk-taking and innovation skyrocket in the student work I receive now that grades are not a factor. Students are free to innovate, experiment, play, and as a result they are achieving higher and higher levels of excellence. Even when a project flops 鈥� that happens sometimes with risk-taking 鈥� students develop useful things: some grit in sticking with something challenging; finding out what works through failure and trying again; in addition to problem-solving and teamwork 鈥� all invaluable skills that are harder to instil when students fear a low mark.聽

One might object that grades are necessary to judge student knowledge and more. But grades are already becoming increasingly irrelevant: AI technologies like ChatGPT mean that students can hand in acceptable work without doing any learning. Schools are reeling, trying to figure out how grading should function in this new reality. An obvious answer, though, is to remove the impetus to cheat. Students often do so because they are afraid they cannot achieve the results they need on their own. But without grades, we demonstrate that learning is of inherent value.

Of course, some students will still cheat, whether there are grades or not. . But they will do it less often and with greater awareness that they are cheating themselves out of learning rather than cheating the teacher into thinking they did good work.

In addition to the challenge of cheating, grading has also become less relevant due to grade inflation having reached absurd levels. Every educator knows this. There are students with averages in the high 90s being turned away from post-secondary programs. Those teachers and schools who try to hold to a high standard, resulting in lower grades, are in effect punishing their own students who are being compared against those sailing into post-secondary programs with very high averages, even if they have very low skills. Grade inflation is like a runaway train. We are unlikely to stop it; instead, we need to reroute the system altogether.聽

There would of course be challenges to moving to a system of what you might call 鈥渦ngrading.鈥� Detractors will argue that we cannot do without grades. For example, entrance into post-secondary programs rely very heavily on marks. But even without the problem of grade inflation, there are likely better ways to assess a candidate鈥檚 aptitude for post-secondary success. Writing samples, videos, real-time problem solving tasks, interviews, would all allow programs better insight into their candidates than a number on a screen.聽

Others may argue that grades help students find motivation to do difficult work, especially where the intrinsic value of an assignment is not obvious. To that I say: there should be no assignments in which the inherent value is not obvious. School work has become deeper, more project-based, far more critically-minded, and with a focus on skill-building. When students are engaged and can see the real-world applications of their school work, they do not need external motivators like grades.聽

Another objection may be that schools should prepare students for the world of work, and workplaces are highly competitive in nature; grades help students get ready for such competitive atmospheres. We see, however, that in both school and work, there has been a shift away from competition towards collaboration. Many teachers are now promoting teamwork, learning communities, and projects that rely on students bringing diverging and complementary skills. The scarcity-mindset that encourages grade-based competition belongs to a world of the past that is changing. Sure, there is still competition in many workplaces; but in many others, employees and innovators need to be strong team players, and able to move projects forward with different kinds of people.

Grades by their nature rank students; but in the world of work there are rarely such definitive rankings. Rather, individuals are asked to perform and are held to the standards of quality the work demands. There is room for everyone to be successful. Classrooms are increasingly like this, as are workplaces.聽

Grades also often mean students do not wish to work in groups, fearing others will bring their mark down. It is hard to build the necessary skills of collaboration in that context. They also make success appear as a zero sum game; there are only so many As to go around. In reality, there is no limit on success and in many classrooms we find that everyone does better when everyone does better. We want students to be motivated by excellence and its pursuit, to hold themselves to a high standard, whether it will be recognized by the subjective grading of an external force. And this is another unavoidable reality: grading is almost always subjective, no matter how stringent the success criteria. Different people see different strengths in different work.

Teachers obviously still have a significant role to play in ungraded classrooms; it鈥檚 just that some of the pitfalls of grading are removed. In offering descriptive feedback, suggesting the strengths, challenges, and next steps for student work, teachers help guide students towards greater efficacy and excellence, without the demotivation that can come with a poor mark. We already have this system in place for athletic coaches, as one example. They don鈥檛 give their players marks, but they help build the skills for maximal performance. Teaching academic subjects can be the same.聽

Any significant transition in education is difficult. We would have to design new protocols for assessment, new tools to communicate student progress, new metrics for entrance into post-secondary programs, and more. But the system we have now is already not working. Grades, in the world of AI, grade inflation, and the complexities of assigning numbers to work that is often creative and risk-taking, are already starting to make less and less sense. But we can do better. And as we have found at Trent, the results aren鈥檛 simply about a new way of thinking 鈥� they are about better outcomes for the people who truly matter: students.