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List:       suse-linux-uk-schools
Subject:    Re: [suse-linux-uk-schools] Plans for a Linux distro
From:       "'Frank Shute'" <frank () esperance-linux ! co ! uk>
Date:       2002-02-05 0:57:14
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On Mon, Feb 04, 2002 at 10:35:05PM +0000, Ian wrote:
> On Monday 04 February 2002 15:13, 'Frank Shute' wrote:
> > On Mon, Feb 04, 2002 at 08:06:28AM +0000, Ian wrote:
> 
> 
> > Yet my understanding is that people doing the hard technical subjects
> > at A level is falling & universities are failing to fill their places
> > for engineering/sciences.
> 
> Falling because there is more choice in a whole range of other things. That 
> simply makes it even more competitive for the relatively small number of 
> maths students with straight As.

Fair point.

> 
> > Admissions tutors know that a good pass in any of these subjects
> > (but especially maths) indicates they've got a student who can think
> > logically and is bright.
> 
> Yes but there are too few of them to go around. That's my point. So some 
> students who can't hack A level maths to Computer studies, GNVQ ICT etc and 
> the universities need to fill places so they take students that they would 
> not have done a few years back.

That's my point too! They're taking students they really shouldn't be
taking because a decree has gone out that 50% of people should go to
university. So irrespective of the individual merit of an applicant,
university's are feeling compelled into dropping standards to fill
what is by any stretch of the imagination a bogus quota dreamed up by
some think-tank.

> 
> > Computer studies at A level? From the sounds of it, it's a glorified
> > MCSE in a lot of cases without the pupil necessarily having even
> > programmed in a proper language or with an understanding of the basics of
> > how a microprocessor works.
> 
> Whatever, that is not the real point. The thing is that these students get 
> access to the courses otherwise quite a few university lecturers are out of a 
> job. 

As I indicated, I don't really care. Why give people jobs if they
aren't worthwhile?

> OK I agree these courses could be improved but you also need sufficient 
> teachers capable of teaching mathematically more rigorous stuff and they 
> simply don't exist in the numbers required.

Now we are beginning to suffer the consequences of the more
choice/falling standards/lack of people doing intellectually rigorous
subjects.

The few who do go and do maths/engineering at university get
immediately cherry-picked by industry for well-paid jobs thus leaving
education to pick up the crumbs for maths/sciences teaching. The
result is declining teaching standards & even fewer students going on
to do maths/science at uni.

It's a vicious circle.

> > > > Schools are driven by bogus league tables that mean their and their
> > > > pupil's & staff's success is gauged by exam passes.
> > >
> > > If you look at any situations where league tables are introduced,
> > > standards rise. Look at Rugby Union.
> >
> > You're looking at the wrong thing. 
> 
> No I'm not. If you take the NHS, it is pretty easy to argue that standards 
> might well have fallen further without the league tables since under-funding 
> is the main limiting factor. (Culture is 20 years out of date too but that is 
> just another non-controlled variable)

Example: A govt edict goes out that hospitals should reduce their
waiting lists, the hospital managers pressurise the consultants to
sort it out. After much moaning from the consultants the difficult but
more severe cases are pushed to the back of the queue & the people
with ingrowing toenails, piles etc. are dragged in to be operated on. 

Result! The govt has turned the health service around & they've got
the facts to prove it - waiting lists are coming down and the hospital
league tables indicate that less hospitals are `failing' and meeting
the Stalinist govt's bogus targets.

But there's a price to pay - the patients with the more important
problems now have to wait longer to be treated, the consultants are
pissed-off because their clinical judgement with regards the urgency
of treating patients has been ridden over rough-shod and money and
time has been wasted treating elderly patients with ingrowing toenails
who if you'd given them a few months would have snuffed it anyway.

I can give you any number of examples from the health service because
that's one are that I'm familar with.

Now repeat ad nauseum for other scenarios and other public services.

The fact is that huge amounts are being wasted to meet the bogus
targets which do nobody any good except the government because they
can then advertise how `successful' they've been & hence get re-elected. 

They then whinge about `years of under-investment' which people
swallow whole & have then got the hide to raise taxes in order to
`sort things out'. The newly raised taxes are then spent on building
MPs the most expensive office space in the country whilst building
hospitals on the never-never.

> 
> > Look at the NHS, standards have
> > fallen. You can't gauge the performance of a public service
> > empirically 
> 
> You can judge exam performance. If you want exam performance improvements 
> (not necessarily an improvement in the educationservice as that depends on 
> your point of view) you can set targets etc and it will improve - it has! 
> That doesn't necessarily mean anything other than exam technique has improved 
> but since so much store is put on exams its still an important indicator.

It's an entirely useless indicator. It indicates precisely nothing. It
could be one of many things:

* Teachers have got better.

- as I've said before I think they're about as good/bad as they always
  have been with the exception of maths/sciences where there are too
  few to go around.

* Exam technique of students has got better.

- Possibly, but then you should make the exams harder in order to get
  more comparable results year-on-year.

* Students IQ has improved.

- Although it's said that IQ has improved, I personally think IQ is
  another entirely bogus statistic & can't be measured satisfactorily.
  In fact, Darwinism would seem to say that since the brain-dead can
  live on social security and procreate, people should be getting
  thicker.

* The exams are easier.

- Look at papers now & papers 30 yrs ago and judge for yourself. IMO
  they are a country mile easier.
  
> 
> > > The fact is that there are many many more students
> > > in the system and in the pre-league tables era, many of these would never
> > > have passed a GCSE or an A level let alone gone to Univ.
> >
> > Yes there are. But what are they studying at uni? And why are more
> > passing? More are passing IMO because the system is such that you can
> > effectively `buy' an A level certificate from an examining board by
> > hunting around and choosing the one with the easiest papers.
> 

> Gross exaggeration. Exams might or might not be easier. Independent
> studies suggest they are different but no easier. 

Then the studies suck and are done by people who are far from
independent.

> But in any case lots more kids go to universities to do a wide
> variety of things. My youngest son is doing a degree in film making
> and some of that course was on data storage formats. He is one that
> did not go through a conventional A level route so in my day he
> would not have been at uni. I am glad he is and what he is learning
> seems useful to him in what he wants to do - set up his own business
> making films for companies. 

I'm glad he's enjoying it but IMO he would have been better off doing
a more `hands on' subject at a traditional Poly or College like he
probably would have done 20 yrs ago. Back then they managed to
integrate such a subject well with job experience and such like.

There was a more varied education available then: Unis, Polys,
Colleges, apprenticeships...and everybody could find their niche. Now
the whole damned lot is being dumped into university in order to
fulfil a govt's entirely political target.

> So should we deny these kids on the grounds they can't pass A 
> level maths?

No, you should deny them on the basis that university isn't the best
place for them to learn such a subject. Education needs to be
stratified but not just on the grounds of academic ability. 

> 
> > > If we believe getting more students into HE is a good thing the
> > > current problems inevitable. OTOH if you believe HE is only suited
> > > to a minority, you have a point and we should be requiring A or B
> > > grade at A level in say 4 or 5 subjects for anyone to enter any
> > > University.
> >
> > HE per se is a good thing but that doesn't mean that 50% of students
> > (or whatever the govt's 10 yr plan says) should do it. Whilst going to
> > university is equated as being the ultimate in educative success, as
> > determined by the bogus league tables, then the system is skewed into
> > sending people to university whether it's suitable for them or not.
> >
> > > Bear in mind this would also
> > > mean redundancies in university teaching staff.
> >
> > So be it, they can always get jobs elsewhere.
> 
> Maybe but perhaps its just as easy and cost-effective to change the nature of 
> universities to be rather broader in their scope.

Broader scope means less real choice as to what sort of education you
get - universities are just becoming higher education comprehensives
and IMO comprehensives are good for no one except the politically
correct.

> > You're right in that it's symptomatic but not the real pathology of
> > the problem, but ICT in schools as it currently stands is shameful.
> > Yes, there are good schools but is there anything more than guidelines
> > for them to follow? There should be examples of best practice for them
> > to follow rather than the current seemingly ad hoc approach.
> 
> I agree with this for the most part but until you have 10s of thousands of 
> good IT graduates coming into teaching and some of the so-called IT expert 
> decision makers at the top who actually know something about technology that 
> is going to be very difficult to change. Let's fight battles we can win.

It is going to be difficult to change, but the way I see it the IT in
schools agenda is still very much up for grabs.

> > > > Too right. Linux and open source software needs to be seen in the
> > > > wider perspective of what IMHO is a failing education system & it's
> > > > political context.
> > >
> > > The education system has been failing for years, in fact ever since I can
> > > remember but in reality for the most part, my observations show better
> > > teaching than when I was at school. That doesn't mean everything in the
> > > garden is rosey but neither is it all doom and gloom.
> >
> > My guess is that teachers are about as good/bad as they've always been
> > it's the system that they work under (performance tables etc) that
> > means that the students they are pushing out are quite frankly not up
> > to very much in my experience.
> 
> Some are. I taught a kid who won the British Physics Olympiad and he was 
> quite bright ;-). He went to a bog standard comp too. The students will seem 
> weaker if you come across more who are below the 10 percent or so that used 
> to get to uni. You don't suddenly change IQ by that many percentage points 
> across the population even with vg teaching.

That's right, it's no longer the top 10% who go to university it's the
top 30% and that's not because all of a sudden 30% of the populace
have got an IQ of >x rather than 10% a few years back.

BTW, my understanding of IQ is that you can't change it by teaching full
stop. It's whole premise is that a bright Aboriginal with no education
whatsoever can have an equivalent IQ of an Oxford don.

> 
> > > > To kick off with, league tables should be binned along with the
> > > > present exam boards.
> > >
> > > You forgot IMHO :-)
> > >
> > > And what are you going to put in their place? OK ban league tables but
> > > with the wonders of modern technology the Daily Mail will do unofficial
> > > ones.
> >
> > Ban the Daily Mail & do us all a favour? ;)
> >
> > > Ban exams boards and replace them with what? No exams?
> >
> > Get rid of the current exam boards & replace them with a not for profit
> > organisation which isn't subject to political interference - a tall
> > order I know when we've got Joe Stalin's clone in no.10
> 
> Not convinced that this would change that much. I remember the exam boards 
> pre- all this and they made mistakes too. Also I swapped to AEB from Oxford 
> for my kids back in the80s because the questions were easier. Things haven't 
> changed that much.

I did all my O's with Oxford bar maths! I was in the bottom stream of
maths at school so they decided to go with AEB because the paper was
supposedly a piece of piss - it was too, as evidenced by my getting an
A grade and guys in the higher streams who were much better than me
had to sit the Oxford paper ... and some failed!

But in those days, 1977, all the boards papers were considered roughly
equivalent except Oxford and AEB - Oxford the standard being higher
and AEB lower. Now they're all jostling at the low-end of the market
and they know that the lower the standard the more revenue for the
company be it Edexcel or whatever.

> 
> > > I have some sympathy with getting rid of GCSE if most people stay on
> > > to 18 but ingeneral you need some measurement of performance and
> > > progress otherwise how do you decide who goes on which university
> > > course who who is qualified to do what job?
> >
> > ATM, the exams are not really indicative of performance. Clueless
> > bozos and brilliant students alike can get grade A's in most subjects.
> 
> Again not true. If it was as random as this employers and HE would just 
> choose students at random. Some people who get As have no other personal 
> skills and some people with Cs are very effective in some other fields. But 
> the IQ/EQ argument is another thread :-)

The exams are easier to pass, there's no question of this - the
results prove it. Hence, there has to be a wider gap between the
ability of those who scrape a certain grade & those at the top-end of
that grade. A distribution diagram will prove this point.

> 
> > Too much store is currently put towards not letting students suffer
> > failure & making them feeling worthwhile at all costs.
> 
> Again its a matter of balance so I would say yes and no!
> 
> > Let them fail and experience what life's like - it's not only success
> > but bitter failure too. Then they'll be better prepared for the
> > outside world.
> 
> A lot do fail. The key is to try and get everyone sufficient success to see 
> their failures from a position of strength and then admit them sufficiently 
> to improve. At all levels this is a very difficult issue in management.

Give them a good kicking for being thick, stand them in the corner with
a dunces hat on and they'll soon buck up their ideas.

(Just kidding ;)

-- 

 Frank 

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