Exam meltdown?

Water

As long as its 'SATS' only! I wouldn't like to be Gordon right now.

Henry

HMRC, the NHS computer farce, the doctor "interview" computer system which didn't work and left thousands in limbo, this latest SATs fiasco; are just examples of a much wider malaise which epitomises Britain under labour and gordon brown; expensive, over-rated, and unfit for purpose.

Nothing, thank goodness, which can't be fixed once we get some competent grown ups in charge again.

I look forward to the day...

Hysteria

when will people realise that there are very few questions to which "we will build a bigger computer system" is the correct answer?

ACM

As a maths teacher, I am more concerned about the Maths GCSE - the first exam is on Monday.

This year, the scripts are being scanned and marked on-screen. An examiner has told me that anything outside a certain box on each page will not be scanned, and so will not be marked. This could severely affect students' results if they do their working out outside this box.

When my school contacted Edexcel, they were unable to clarify whether this was information was accurate or not.

hacker

In industry, companies get themselves into trouble with computer systems and they sometimes go bust as a result. Computer companies have gone bust through being overly ambitious with operating systems and database management systems. There's the P/L and shareholders taking an interest. Customers also like these things to work, and get annoyed when they don't.

In government, it looks as if a bunch of sharp salesmen can unfold a vision of unparalleled orderliness for the Civil Service and endless control for the politicians. They're both putty in the hands of the these serpents. When it goes wrong, the punter has a history of throwing more money at it and that amounts to reinforcing bad behaviour. No one ever seems to be fried as a consequence of failure. There's nothing in particular to go bust and no one in particular to carry the can.

The extra money comes from us, and there really isn't any focus of discontent, so what's a billion or two more on the national credit card?

I don't know what the answer is, and I certainly wouldn't say that the government shouldn't be using computer systems, it's just that they don't seem to appreciate their own imposing limitations and can skate free of the consequences.

Depressing and dangerous. I don't know whether that's because these systems don't work and are a huge waste of money or because they might work one day and I really don't trust government in general and especially the current manifestation, with that level of control.

Austin Barry

As someone with an 0-level in woodwork obtained 40 years ago, why do I manage some very dim young people with a couple of degrees who don't seem to have read a book that was not part of their particular course? You make some allusion to, I don't know, Oscar wilde or George Orwell and they look at you with their blank bovine gaze and you know that their cultural horizons don't extend beyond Hello magazine. I suspect that a degree is now equal to an 0-level in technical drawing in 1966.

John R

Austin, I suspect you are right. I think it was York University who recently concluded that an A in maths A level today is equivalent to an E in maths A level 20 years ago. Also let's not forget that O and A levels were being dumbed down throughout the 80s too, so a comparison with 30 years ago would be even more instructive. It says it all, really, that it was possible to lump O levels and GCSEs into one exam at all. Os were already well dumbed down before that even happened.

Water

The zeitgeist equals parochiality.

Fergus Pickering

Hey, I got an O level in technical drawing about then. It was quite hard and I was quite good at it. Never could crack the woodwork though, just gouged bloody channels in my hands with a chisel. That wouldn't be allowed nowadays, would it? Actually I lied about the O level. But I COULD have got it. No. You're right. Book reading is a thing of the past. It will die with us. I don't CARE that they're so pig-ignorant but why spend all MY money to make them so. Halve the Education budget and import the indians to do all the clever stuff for us. And what can all the young peole do. Pull turnips, that's what. Arbeit, arbeit, as them Germans do say.

salieri

Austin, you actually make two distinct but equally important points. One is the simple plunge in examination standards, which is really beyond all sensible debate but of which there will shortly be the usual strident denials from people who are themselves under-educated.

The separate point is the wilfully narrowing scope of education. Just as no-one at my children's school even entertains the notion of playing a piece of music outside his/her Grade syllabus of the moment, so the idea of generalised study, straying beyond the strict boundaries of a particular exam course, is inexorably dwindling. We can see the results all around us every day.

I believe there are two basic reasons for this subversion of true education (= "leading out"): lack of opportunity (because of blinkered devotion to league-tables) and lack of properly educated teachers (a self-perpetuating spiral).

This makes your O-level in woodwork all the more impressive. I was actually asked to leave the woodwork class as my repeated failures were denuding the lumber store. The woodwork-master's final rebuke still rings in my ears: "Wood doesn't grow on trees, you know."

Ian C

It has to be saaid that Brown is the final nail in the coffin of pahse of modern educational teories. The Tories have been just as bad because they have gone with the flow (what else do political parties do anyway?).

Reality is now apparnet in the real world and under Gove in a Tory govt I would hazard he will not take prisoners - he won't last long, nor will the Tories, if he does.

Perry

[I’m sorry Fraser. I intended this post to appear here, rather than under ‘Celeb’. So I send again in case my fault can be corrected.]

It is depressing, as many accurate comments here portray. Those who tried to maintain standards in subjects requiring discipline and zeal, - for instance maths, physics, (real) english, and chemistry, - have been mocked, derided, marginalised, quit the system, or been shunted out.

Worse, the situation is perpetuated by new entrants, products of Noo-Lie-Bore ‘educashun’, who know no better.

[A strong case could be made that a similar situation obtains in the NHS where experienced principled people have been supplanted.]

David

Fergus Pickering commented above:
" And what can all the young peole do. Pull turnips, that's what. Arbeit, arbeit, as them Germans do say."

From what I have seen they won`t do this - they go on benefits instead.

Which reminds me that in my WW2 school years, we were occasionally yanked out of class, put on the back of open trucks and taken to the fields to bag potatoes or whatever to support the war effort because there was no one else to do it.

Mr Mhena

Austin Barry.

"Bovine gaze" of the graduate.

I think we must work in the same place.