As things stand, I expect we're heading towards a 2010 like result at the next GE - but with Labour having around 305 - 310 seats rather than the Tories. SLAB being useless will deny Labour a majority, but they'll still be the largest party by about 50 seats. But the Tories - unlike Labour in 05-10 parliament - can possibly turn things round if they dump Boris.
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
That's completely and demonstrably false. IQ tests are a learnable skill like any other academic skill.
Nope, over half of IQ is determined by genetics and cannot be learnt
I'm not sure that's true. There's lots of evidence that one can get better and better at IQ tests by learning the patterns inherent in them.
That doesn't mean you're more intelligent - it means you're better at getting good scores on IQ tests.
Mrs J attended a top school in her home country. That country ranks all students at their equivalent of A-levels, so you end up with a number from 1 to ~700,000. She ended up ~200 out of that ~700,000.
I'm not saying this to brag (*), but for this reason: her best friend took the same classes. And ended up one position ahead of her.
They didn't cheat: but they studied and revised closely together. Two students at the same school ended up with adjacent places, out of hundreds of thousands.
What you are taught matters massively. Training for tests matters. The same goes for IQ tests, which Mrs J is very sniffy about.
She likes to rub her results in, because I really mucked up my A-levels. Not that that's really something that's sent me into the gutter...
(*) though she is hyper-intelligent with a high IQ, and she is also a bit of a muppet.
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
That's completely and demonstrably false. IQ tests are a learnable skill like any other academic skill.
Nope, over half of IQ is determined by genetics and cannot be learnt
I'm not sure that's true. There's lots of evidence that one can get better and better at IQ tests by learning the patterns inherent in them.
That doesn't mean you're more intelligent - it means you're better at getting good scores on IQ tests.
Mrs J….
She likes to rub her results in, because I really mucked up my A-levels. Not that that's really something that's sent me into the gutter...
(*) though she is hyper-intelligent with a high IQ, and she is also a bit of a muppet.
Some excellent post on the last thread guys. I mean really good.
Re poor Comprehensives in deprived areas I agree, but this is probably a lot more to do with the issues of the area than anything else. The answer certainly isn't going back to Secondary Moderns.
I see @HYUFD is continuing to compare stats on Grammar schools to Comprehensives and ignoring the samples are completely different because the Grammar has selected.
If you lived in a deprived area 50 years ago you could go to a grammar school if intelligent.
Now your only choice would be a comprehensive likely to be a secondary modern in all but name if you do not have wealthy parents who can send you to private school
That doesn't answer the point.
It does. Unless you live in a wealthy suburb or rural area (or go to a comprehensive or academy where admission is based on church attendance) comprehensives are often just renamed secondary moderns effectively.
@MikeSmithson is correct. It doesn't answer the point. As usual you just raise another point and don't address the point raised. It is a moving target.
Re your point on living in a poor area and being able to go to a grammar, this is very naïve. What actually happens is the middle class and well off in surrounding areas get tutored for the test and fill the spaces. The bright kids in the poor areas don't and they still don't get in by and large.
I lived in a relatively poor large village with 2 primary schools. Only one boy got into the boys grammar school and no girls to the girls grammar school. And that boy dropped out. I have no memory of even taking a test let alone getting tutored. After O levels a whole bunch of replaced those that had dropped out. The system is crap at selection and selecting at 11 is far too soon.
There are limits on how much you can tutor for 11+ and 13+ tests which are designed to test raw iq not subject knowledge as such. Indeed very often even a few bright kids from council estates got into grammar schools even without tutors and then onto Oxbridge or other top universities and professional careers. That path is not open to them to the same extent now if they live in a deprived area and just get sent to the local very average, if that, comp.
If you were well off and had a kid who was not so bright and would not pass the 11 or 13+ you could still send them private however and still do. Most wealthy parents did not send their children to secondary moderns and do not send their children to comprehensives and certainly not comprehensives or academies which are any less than Outstanding. So the rich generally don't use comprehensives anyway while the bright but poor no longer have the opportunities grammars provided. Most grammars of course also have entries at sixth form level too
a) You can tutor for IQ tests very easily. Not sure where you got it that it was difficult. There are lots of techniques.
b) In between our posts I have been chopping wood and did a rough mental calculation of how many should have got into the grammar school from my village all other things being equal (I know how many classes there were, the size of them, the fact that our village was a 3 member ward and how many councillors there were in the borough). The answer is about 25. There was 1 and he dropped out. If that doesn't give you an idea of the disparity between poor and middle class areas nothing will.
c) If you think the well off don't send their children to Comprehensives you live in a different world. I live in a well off area now. I am wealthy by most peoples measure as are most of the people I know. Nearly all use the local comprehensive, which I grant you is good, but that is not what you were saying.
d) Moving to a Grammar at sixth form is too late. The damage has been done. Many won't go who should. Many who were at the Grammar who shouldn't have been have dropped out.
Select by subject on an ongoing basis throughout the child's education.
a) You can't. IQ test results are in part based on genetics, they are difficult to tutor for unlike subject knowledge based exams.
b) And all of them would likely have gone to a sink comprehensive otherwise, at least 1 still got to a grammar.
c) If the wealthy send their kids to a comp it will only be an Outstanding comp they have bought their kids admission to by buying a house in its catchment area, meaning there are well above average house prices for that catchment area. You buy a place at an Outstanding comp or academy much like you buy a place at private school effectively or else you go to church more regularly to get a vicar's reference for a top church school.
d) Sixth form entry for A levels and top university is fine for late developers
a) you can - just allowing children to sit a few past papers so they understand how the questions work allows children to know how to answer the questions quicker allowing them more time to concentrate on more difficult questions.
You can understand the format of the questions but it is harder to prepare for the specific questions that will come up as they are logic and reasoning based, not subject knowledge based which are more tests of memory
As someone who has got 3 of 4 children into local grammars and sent the other private, I can confirm HYUFD doesn't know what he's talking about here, as well as constantly missing the point.
Tutoring makes a massive difference to ability to tackle the 11+. You see it all the time with kids that got tutored and then struggle to keep up once they're in.
It may make a marginal difference to borderline candidates but if you have an iq of 130+ you will get into a grammar school with no tutoring at all even if you live on a council estate
@HYUFD as usual you are pontificating with certainty about something on which I am guessing you have no knowledge whatsoever. It has been pointed by many on here how you can tutor for IQ tests / 11+ not least by just practicing papers, but there are many other techniques as well. I have some experience in this (as I am sure do many others on here) as it was a requirement of a development centre of one of the largest computer companies at the time at which I was a manager to take an IQ test and score at least 130. All undergraduates on the milk round had to do so before an interview. I would interview between 20 and 30 undergraduates on the milk round each year so I was very familiar with these test.
I couldn't do anything for someone who is stupid and could probably only add a point or two to a genius, but for a reasonably bright person I could probably get 10 to 20 IQ points added. Here are some ways how:
a) Just get familiar with the tests by practicing loads and getting your timing right (basic exam technique, but not something an 11 year old without tutoring has a clue about).
b) If you get a sequence of numbers and can't see the next number start subtracting each number from the next number. If the sequence doesn't become apparent then do again until it does. This takes just seconds to do and usually results in the answer. I've not seen one on an IQ test that doesn't.
c) Another common question is an arithmetic question which is too hard to do in the time but with an multiple choice answers so estimation is required. Someone with maths knowledge can do this easily, but someone who hasn't can be given about 5 easy tricks to solve these quickly.
d) Similarly a series of shapes at IQ test level is normally fairly straightforward, but again someone without the ability can be given half a dozen things to look out for in advance.
e) If you are given a True or False tests from a short paragraph and can't get it immediately you can convert it into a logical formulae (if you know how) and these tend to be so simple you can do it very quickly. I have to say that is something I find very useful to this day as I struggle to hold a lot of words in my head but can do logical formulae easily.
I could go on.
In response to the other items on your reply to me. You said 'at least one got to the grammar school'. You obviously missed the point that 'he crashed and burned'.
You also say 6th form is ok for late developers. Where did you get that from? It certainly wasn't for me. I missed out on so much. It was worse for others who were good enough but didn't get the chance. Also what about all those who pass the 11+ and then crash and burn because it isn't appropriate?
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
Where on earth did you get the idea that I hated the 6th form grammar school? I didn't I loved it. I also had a very good secondary school prior to that. You seem to read stuff into posts that aren't there. The problem is that by selecting at 11 I missed stuff that was only available at the grammar school and the grammar school boys missed stuff that was only available at the secondary school. Pointless separation and also doesn't allow for streaming by subject properly across all the pupils.
If you don't think you can tutor for the 11+ how do you explain my example from a poor area with only 1 getting into the Grammar school whereas all things being equal it should have been 20 - 25. It is not a few, it is a lot. The idea that you think Grammar schools are not in anyway heavily biased towards well off parents is just bizarre. They are very heavily weighted against poor areas.
Why should it have been 20-25? Unless they all had high IQs. How many of those 20-25 would be high earning professionals if they did not even have a chance of a grammar school but their only choice was a sink school? Likely 0.
Why should it have been 20 - 25? See earlier post. I'm not repeating it. I did the maths.
Only one went to the Grammar school and he crashed and burned (I have said that so many times). We did not have sink schools. My Secondary school was excellent. My Grammar schools was good. I enjoyed it, but I didn't think the teachers were as good bizarrely, but I did well.
But here is the point you keep on missing: Pupils from both schools were failed by the system. I was lucky, but even I missed out on stuff, but the culture was so ingrained that many very bright pupils from the Secondary school just went on to do apprenticeships. Nothing wrong with that but many were capable of so much more. And many at the Grammar school dropped out after O Levels with just one or two who could have benefited from the Secondary school education. All because we decide the fate of a child at 11. Ridiculous.
If you live in a poor area your local school will be more likely to be a sink school.
There is also nothing wrong with apprenticeships, in fact the highest level apprentices earn more on average than most graduates except those from the Russell Group.
Germany for example has selective gymnasiums like our grammars but also high status apprenticeships too
I never said there was anything wrong with apprenticeships. In fact I specifically went out of my way to say so in plain English, quote 'Nothing wrong with that...'. Sometimes a conversation with you is a challenge! Try reading the 2nd half of that sentence '...but many were capable of so much more.' Eg me. I was lucky, many weren't.
Re poor areas having sink schools. Yes, but not always, particularly if the poor areas are pockets. I was brought up in Surrey, which is not renowned for being poor, but there are poor areas. So it is very easy to see how the 11+ failed pupils. All the Grammar school kids came from the middle class areas and none from the poor areas. I wonder why? I think most of us know.
Can I answer that for HYUFD - the children from poor areas weren't bright enough - after all you don't gain any advantage from a few practice papers.
I'm also wondering when someone on this thread will actually go and claim that grammar and "public" school children are genetically superior because they are so much more intelligent.
I always thought it was the case that 'public' school kids (by which I assume you mean the English version which is fee paying) were only there because they were too dumb to get into a Grammar school. Daddy's wealth is not a measure of IQ that I think is too widely recognised.
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
That's completely and demonstrably false. IQ tests are a learnable skill like any other academic skill.
Nope, over half of IQ is determined by genetics and cannot be learnt
I'm not sure that's true. There's lots of evidence that one can get better and better at IQ tests by learning the patterns inherent in them.
That doesn't mean you're more intelligent - it means you're better at getting good scores on IQ tests.
Mrs J attended a top school in her home country. That country ranks all students at their equivalent of A-levels, so you end up with a number from 1 to ~700,000. She ended up ~200 out of that ~700,000.
I'm not saying this to brag (*), but for this reason: her best friend took the same classes. And ended up one position ahead of her.
They didn't cheat: but they studied and revised closely together. Two students at the same school ended up with adjacent places, out of hundreds of thousands.
What you are taught matters massively. Training for tests matters. The same goes for IQ tests, which Mrs J is very sniffy about.
She likes to rub her results in, because I really mucked up my A-levels. Not that that's really something that's sent me into the gutter...
(*) though she is hyper-intelligent with a high IQ, and she is also a bit of a muppet.
Sounds like Turkey - where it's worth saying you do end up with a few 100s on the exact same level although they are then ranked in some random order.
And your position on the list determines whether you get into the uni course you want or not.
Have any R4 Today listeners heard Amol Rajan on there since the Royals TV documentary he did? I'm pretty sure I haven't, and I'd not be surprised to find out that his documentary and his absence were related somehow.
Apparently some issues.
Does Her Maj listen to Today?
"I can't bear that awful man and his dreadful glottal stops"
I suspect she does.
I too hate the way Rajan speaks - it sounds so disinterested and superior. That aside though he's not so bad. There's not a chance in hell he got onto the Today programme without being an ok guy.
He can talk proper. I was listening to a show he did three years ago to mark fifty years since the Rivers Of Blood speech; I think he got quite a bit of stick for having the whole speech read out. If he spoke like this on Today I'd be quite happy to hear his voice in the mornings on R4 https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b09z08w3
IQ tests clearly measure SOMETHING and whatever it is, it is closely related to what we generally think of as intelligence. If you speak to someone with an IQ of 60 and then speak to someone with an IQ of 140 the latter will obviously be much more “intelligent” than the former
Quicker, smarter, better with words and ideas. Faster on the uptake. Able to do difficult tasks at speed.
“Speed of successful information processing” is, in fact, a pretty good definition of “intelligence”
And it is commonly reckoned genetics accounts for about half of this faculty
I don't question any of that. I question the ludicrous assertion that you can't train someone to do well at IQ tests. As if they are some magic oracle completely void of learnable material.
There are a lot of interests in preserving the idea that IQ is an completely objective test, but my suspicion is that you are right.
I would guess that it is essentially a matter of practice. You would eventually speed up in being able to answer the questions, meaning that you answer more and get a higher score. However, I doubt that you could go from a really low to a really high score.
I think there is a real danger in assuming that IQ is an absolute measure of intelligence. People can be intelligent in ways that are not picked up in an IQ test. Similarly, people with supposedly high IQs are as susceptible as everyone else to doing stupid things. Some people with high IQs do nothing of significance with their lives. Trying to stratify people by IQ level is a very bad idea.
Having worked for a few decades around highly-intelligent and qualified people, we have developed a rule of thumb: the more educated someone is, the less able they are to function in the real world.
I know plumbers with more common sense than almost all the people with doctorates I know, yet alone the couple of professors I've known. Geniuses in their field, but rather lacking in simple skills, like the ability to pick their kids up from school ...
Have any R4 Today listeners heard Amol Rajan on there since the Royals TV documentary he did? I'm pretty sure I haven't, and I'd not be surprised to find out that his documentary and his absence were related somehow.
I was just wondering where he was this morning as it happens. Been a while.
I failed the Aldi assessment centre tests but passed the PwC ones.
Make of that what you will.
a) they're looking for different skills, and b) the Aldi grad programme (I assume this is what you were applying for) is known to be hypercompetitive, because they offer massive salaries in exchange for people taking on lots of responsibility very early on in their careers.
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
That's completely and demonstrably false. IQ tests are a learnable skill like any other academic skill.
Nope, over half of IQ is determined by genetics and cannot be learnt
I'm not sure that's true. There's lots of evidence that one can get better and better at IQ tests by learning the patterns inherent in them.
That doesn't mean you're more intelligent - it means you're better at getting good scores on IQ tests.
Mrs J attended a top school in her home country. That country ranks all students at their equivalent of A-levels, so you end up with a number from 1 to ~700,000. She ended up ~200 out of that ~700,000.
I'm not saying this to brag (*), but for this reason: her best friend took the same classes. And ended up one position ahead of her.
They didn't cheat: but they studied and revised closely together. Two students at the same school ended up with adjacent places, out of hundreds of thousands.
What you are taught matters massively. Training for tests matters. The same goes for IQ tests, which Mrs J is very sniffy about.
She likes to rub her results in, because I really mucked up my A-levels. Not that that's really something that's sent me into the gutter...
(*) though she is hyper-intelligent with a high IQ, and she is also a bit of a muppet.
... and hopefully not an avid reader of PB.com!
Oh, she is.
I've got myself into trouble in the past. There are things I can say, and things I cannot. But I do call her 'muppet-wife' to her knowledge. In fact, it was part of the best man's speech ...
And we're still married. Perhaps because you don't know what she says about me in public ...
IQ tests clearly measure SOMETHING and whatever it is, it is closely related to what we generally think of as intelligence. If you speak to someone with an IQ of 60 and then speak to someone with an IQ of 140 the latter will obviously be much more “intelligent” than the former
Quicker, smarter, better with words and ideas. Faster on the uptake. Able to do difficult tasks at speed.
“Speed of successful information processing” is, in fact, a pretty good definition of “intelligence”
And it is commonly reckoned genetics accounts for about half of this faculty
I don't question any of that. I question the ludicrous assertion that you can't train someone to do well at IQ tests. As if they are some magic oracle completely void of learnable material.
There are a lot of interests in preserving the idea that IQ is an completely objective test, but my suspicion is that you are right.
I would guess that it is essentially a matter of practice. You would eventually speed up in being able to answer the questions, meaning that you answer more and get a higher score. However, I doubt that you could go from a really low to a really high score.
I think there is a real danger in assuming that IQ is an absolute measure of intelligence. People can be intelligent in ways that are not picked up in an IQ test. Similarly, people with supposedly high IQs are as susceptible as everyone else to doing stupid things. Some people with high IQs do nothing of significance with their lives. Trying to stratify people by IQ level is a very bad idea.
Having worked for a few decades around highly-intelligent and qualified people, we have developed a rule of thumb: the more educated someone is, the less able they are to function in the real world.
I know plumbers with more common sense than almost all the people with doctorates I know, yet alone the couple of professors I've known. Geniuses in their field, but rather lacking in simple skills, like the ability to pick their kids up from school ...
A bit like the experimentalist/theorist distinction in physics. Though some, like Fermi, were outstanding at both things.
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
That's completely and demonstrably false. IQ tests are a learnable skill like any other academic skill.
Nope, over half of IQ is determined by genetics and cannot be learnt
I'm not sure that's true. There's lots of evidence that one can get better and better at IQ tests by learning the patterns inherent in them.
That doesn't mean you're more intelligent - it means you're better at getting good scores on IQ tests.
Mrs J attended a top school in her home country. That country ranks all students at their equivalent of A-levels, so you end up with a number from 1 to ~700,000. She ended up ~200 out of that ~700,000.
I'm not saying this to brag (*), but for this reason: her best friend took the same classes. And ended up one position ahead of her.
They didn't cheat: but they studied and revised closely together. Two students at the same school ended up with adjacent places, out of hundreds of thousands.
What you are taught matters massively. Training for tests matters. The same goes for IQ tests, which Mrs J is very sniffy about.
She likes to rub her results in, because I really mucked up my A-levels. Not that that's really something that's sent me into the gutter...
(*) though she is hyper-intelligent with a high IQ, and she is also a bit of a muppet.
Sounds like Turkey - where it's worth saying you do end up with a few 100s on the exact same level although they are then ranked in some random order.
And your position on the list determines whether you get into the uni course you want or not.
Got it in one. But from my understanding, when you get near to the top, there are generally fewer people in each position - and many, many people with the same score in the middle of the bell curve.
It is the fate of a government in power for a long time, Labour polled 15% in the 2009 Euros.
Just look at how unpopular the Conservatives became in 1992.
April 1992 the Conservatives received the most votes ever at a general election for a single party. From 1993 onwards they didn't lead in the polls for over seven years, nearly eight.
I failed the Aldi assessment centre tests but passed the PwC ones.
Make of that what you will.
a) they're looking for different skills, and b) the Aldi grad programme (I assume this is what you were applying for) is known to be hypercompetitive, because they offer massive salaries in exchange for people taking on lots of responsibility very early on in their careers.
I think it also has the highest drop out rate of any grad scheme.
So Omicron is doubling every 2.17 days. 60,508 cases today out of 90k total. So by Wednesday Omicron is something like 115k out of 130k - assuming today's figure has caught every test and Wednesday is the same.
At which point does Peppa make the decision about what happens after Christmas Day? And do we want that decision now, or on Wednesday when we're at c. 130k or on Friday when we're on c. 240k? Do we even have the testing capacity to process that many tests?
Look at the share. 30% for the Tories is absolutely dire.
I suspect in a few months the Tories will be looking at the polls and dreaming of the days past when they were on 30%.
It's all downhill from here - a perfect storm of worldwide inflationary pressures.
Would that were the case but I fear not.
There are people who will support the Conservatives however bad they are. I don't know why but they exist. "I've always been a Tory" they will say on the doorstep, give you a whole lot of left-wing opinions and then swear blind they are Tories.
Go figure...
Yes, my grandfather always voted Tory but on almost every topic he was to the left of the Labour Party. Indeed he once gave me a copy of the works of chairman Mao with the comment "There's a lot of truth in what this man says..."
So Omicron is doubling every 2.17 days. 60,508 cases today out of 90k total. So by Wednesday Omicron is something like 115k out of 130k - assuming today's figure has caught every test and Wednesday is the same.
At which point does Peppa make the decision about what happens after Christmas Day? And do we want that decision now, or on Wednesday when we're at c. 130k or on Friday when we're on c. 240k? Do we even have the testing capacity to process that many tests?
They'd surely be looking at hospitalisation data, and not cases.
Madame Macron about to learn of the Streisand effect?
@PoliticsForAlI Police cars revolving light | NEW: Brigitte Macron is planning to take legal action over rumours circulated on Twitter that she was born as a man
I know the source is a bit dodgy, but this rumour is genuinely trending on French twatter with the hashtag #JeanMichelTrogneux (presumably the name they've given the 'man' who became Brigitte)
IQ tests clearly measure SOMETHING and whatever it is, it is closely related to what we generally think of as intelligence. If you speak to someone with an IQ of 60 and then speak to someone with an IQ of 140 the latter will obviously be much more “intelligent” than the former
Quicker, smarter, better with words and ideas. Faster on the uptake. Able to do difficult tasks at speed.
“Speed of successful information processing” is, in fact, a pretty good definition of “intelligence”
And it is commonly reckoned genetics accounts for about half of this faculty
Yes they do, but we are not talking about the absolute IQ level but the difference between an 11 year old who has never seen a test before and an 11 year old who has been tutored in them. Nothing more than those two very limited subsets.
As a retired teacher I have to agree here. It's the same at age 15 onwards. My teaching time from yr11 March to summer exams at both GCSE and A level was totally taken up in past paper revision and exam technique. I could say that any teacher worth his salt could increase a student's grade by at least 2 points from a D to a B at GCSE. (obviously this is old style gradings). A level was tougher, the highest grade you could get from straight recall and equations at Physics was C. Higher grades need much more higher level answers, more thought, or application in an unknown situation.
IQ tests clearly measure SOMETHING and whatever it is, it is closely related to what we generally think of as intelligence. If you speak to someone with an IQ of 60 and then speak to someone with an IQ of 140 the latter will obviously be much more “intelligent” than the former
Quicker, smarter, better with words and ideas. Faster on the uptake. Able to do difficult tasks at speed.
“Speed of successful information processing” is, in fact, a pretty good definition of “intelligence”
And it is commonly reckoned genetics accounts for about half of this faculty
Yes they do, but we are not talking about the absolute IQ level but the difference between an 11 year old who has never seen a test before and an 11 year old who has been tutored in them. Nothing more than those two very limited subsets.
As a retired teacher I have to agree here. It's the same at age 15 onwards. My teaching time from yr11 March to summer exams at both GCSE and A level was totally taken up in past paper revision and exam technique. I could say that any teacher worth his salt could increase a student's grade by at least 2 points from a D to a B at GCSE. (obviously this is old style gradings). A level was tougher, the highest grade you could get from straight recall and equations at Physics was C. Higher grades need much more higher level answers, more thought, or application in an unknown situation.
My time as a grammar school boy in the 70s was glorious. I did very little work and was quite naughty. It was only when I got to yr10 that I realised what I was there for. My revision consisted of a couple of nights work before each exam. No past papers, they weren't as available as now. I stumbled through and got good enough grades to get to University.
Isn't getting 500 fans at most Scottish football matches an aspiration rather than a limit.......
Oh how we laughed
Glad you can laugh at the state of Scottish football.
What you blethering about , are you a resident of St Kilda.
The standard of Scottish football is utterly terrible. Even the big teams like Rangers and Celtic aren't competitive in Europe. Look at nobodies they get beat by in European competitions, nor are any really top class players interested in going there.
Long gone are the days when they were a formidable force against other European teams.
A bit over the top methinks. Sounds like a typical southerner viewpoint who think the EPL is great , wheras in reality it is pish apart from the small amount of teams owned by shiek's or Russian's. Rangers have qualified in Europe and have lost only about 2 games out of last 20 or so. Much better to see local players etc rather than expensive highly paid pirates who don't give a crap other than their 200K a year. At least in Scotland it is still a Scottish league unlike EPL which is full of imports. Methinks you dost protest too much.
More to the point ... it wasn't like this in the 1960s.
Celtic & Rangers were comparable (maybe better than) the best of the English league. The Scotland football team regular beat the England one.
The Scottish FA have seriously under-performed for 4 decades.
Four decades ago, the Scottish FA were interested in all of Scottish football, including the international team. Since they only became interested in Rangers and Celtic, Scottish football has deteriorated significantly.
Also worth noting that when Celtic won the European cup in 1967(?) the whole team came from within 30 miles of Glasgow.
When football was about how good a team you could make from the players you had, rather than what mercenaries from around the world you could buy, Scottish football (all football, in fact) was in a much better place.
Not often I agree with a Cookie post, but spot on.
Absolutely rammed, car park one in one out. And without question the worst mask observance I have seen there in 2021.
The chances of new household restrictions being widely observed are nil. New restrictions now will do nothing but cause economic damage, without impacting R to any noticeable degree.
Everything pretty good in Leeds; dismal in Manchester.
So Omicron is doubling every 2.17 days. 60,508 cases today out of 90k total. So by Wednesday Omicron is something like 115k out of 130k - assuming today's figure has caught every test and Wednesday is the same.
At which point does Peppa make the decision about what happens after Christmas Day? And do we want that decision now, or on Wednesday when we're at c. 130k or on Friday when we're on c. 240k? Do we even have the testing capacity to process that many tests?
It's clear the doubling of cases has stopped, and it may even be in reverse.
As things stand, I expect we're heading towards a 2010 like result at the next GE - but with Labour having around 305 - 310 seats rather than the Tories. SLAB being useless will deny Labour a majority, but they'll still be the largest party by about 50 seats. But the Tories - unlike Labour in 05-10 parliament - can possibly turn things round if they dump Boris.
SLab up to 21% in that Redfield and Wilton. Only a daft sub-sample, but it’ll cheer the wee souls up.
Plenty of morons go to private school and have a lot more success than they deserve, see Boris Johnson
In fairness that is also true of comprehensive school children as well. Look at Liz Truss.
Liz Truss would be our first ever PM solely educated at a comprehensive school for her secondary education, however she would then have to beat the grammar and private school educated Starmer. Historically, the odds would favour Starmer
So would sanity...
Edit - incidentally does anyone know if Corbyn was a day boy or a boarder at Adam's Grammar?
What's your issue with Truss?
Bluntly, she always comes across as a tad unbalanced. Able, but not shrewd. Determined, but also rather reckless. Passionate, but not always nuanced.
A tad unbalanced .... well, Liz was President of the Oxford University LibDems 🤣
Funny the people you didn’t meet sometimes. I was in the same year as Liz Truss and Christina Pagel at Oxford.
So Omicron is doubling every 2.17 days. 60,508 cases today out of 90k total. So by Wednesday Omicron is something like 115k out of 130k - assuming today's figure has caught every test and Wednesday is the same.
At which point does Peppa make the decision about what happens after Christmas Day? And do we want that decision now, or on Wednesday when we're at c. 130k or on Friday when we're on c. 240k? Do we even have the testing capacity to process that many tests?
In London the R has stopped rising and may actually be falling so the doubling time is getting longer. Whether that's due to behaviour change, less testing or Omicron saturating easy to find hosts very fast is up for discussion, it could be a combination of all three.
Some excellent post on the last thread guys. I mean really good.
Re poor Comprehensives in deprived areas I agree, but this is probably a lot more to do with the issues of the area than anything else. The answer certainly isn't going back to Secondary Moderns.
I see @HYUFD is continuing to compare stats on Grammar schools to Comprehensives and ignoring the samples are completely different because the Grammar has selected.
If you lived in a deprived area 50 years ago you could go to a grammar school if intelligent.
Now your only choice would be a comprehensive likely to be a secondary modern in all but name if you do not have wealthy parents who can send you to private school
That doesn't answer the point.
It does. Unless you live in a wealthy suburb or rural area (or go to a comprehensive or academy where admission is based on church attendance) comprehensives are often just renamed secondary moderns effectively.
@MikeSmithson is correct. It doesn't answer the point. As usual you just raise another point and don't address the point raised. It is a moving target.
Re your point on living in a poor area and being able to go to a grammar, this is very naïve. What actually happens is the middle class and well off in surrounding areas get tutored for the test and fill the spaces. The bright kids in the poor areas don't and they still don't get in by and large.
I lived in a relatively poor large village with 2 primary schools. Only one boy got into the boys grammar school and no girls to the girls grammar school. And that boy dropped out. I have no memory of even taking a test let alone getting tutored. After O levels a whole bunch of replaced those that had dropped out. The system is crap at selection and selecting at 11 is far too soon.
There are limits on how much you can tutor for 11+ and 13+ tests which are designed to test raw iq not subject knowledge as such. Indeed very often even a few bright kids from council estates got into grammar schools even without tutors and then onto Oxbridge or other top universities and professional careers. That path is not open to them to the same extent now if they live in a deprived area and just get sent to the local very average, if that, comp.
If you were well off and had a kid who was not so bright and would not pass the 11 or 13+ you could still send them private however and still do. Most wealthy parents did not send their children to secondary moderns and do not send their children to comprehensives and certainly not comprehensives or academies which are any less than Outstanding. So the rich generally don't use comprehensives anyway while the bright but poor no longer have the opportunities grammars provided. Most grammars of course also have entries at sixth form level too
a) You can tutor for IQ tests very easily. Not sure where you got it that it was difficult. There are lots of techniques.
b) In between our posts I have been chopping wood and did a rough mental calculation of how many should have got into the grammar school from my village all other things being equal (I know how many classes there were, the size of them, the fact that our village was a 3 member ward and how many councillors there were in the borough). The answer is about 25. There was 1 and he dropped out. If that doesn't give you an idea of the disparity between poor and middle class areas nothing will.
c) If you think the well off don't send their children to Comprehensives you live in a different world. I live in a well off area now. I am wealthy by most peoples measure as are most of the people I know. Nearly all use the local comprehensive, which I grant you is good, but that is not what you were saying.
d) Moving to a Grammar at sixth form is too late. The damage has been done. Many won't go who should. Many who were at the Grammar who shouldn't have been have dropped out.
Select by subject on an ongoing basis throughout the child's education.
a) You can't. IQ test results are in part based on genetics, they are difficult to tutor for unlike subject knowledge based exams.
b) And all of them would likely have gone to a sink comprehensive otherwise, at least 1 still got to a grammar.
c) If the wealthy send their kids to a comp it will only be an Outstanding comp they have bought their kids admission to by buying a house in its catchment area, meaning there are well above average house prices for that catchment area. You buy a place at an Outstanding comp or academy much like you buy a place at private school effectively or else you go to church more regularly to get a vicar's reference for a top church school. I notice you did not send your kids to a sink school the bright but poor have little choice but to go to!
d) Sixth form entry for A levels and top university is fine for late developers
I am absolutely minted and our kids go to the local comp (it is an academy but most secondaries in London are). Rated good not outstanding. Plenty of other parents similar to us, judging from how posh some of our kids' friends talk. House prices are high it's true but that's more because they're nice houses. But half the housing in the catchment, I'm guessing, is social housing so it's far from true that most of the kids at the school have bought their way in somehow. Proportion of minorities and with English as an additional language much higher than average; those on pupil premium broadly average. If actual GCSE grades match the predictions after my eldest's mocks I'll be very happy, but let's see in June.
So still a good school not a crap school even then. If however you live on a council estate and your local comp is inadequate or requires improvement you would have no choice but to attend it even if you were bright enough to get into a grammar school.
Middle class parents however would move to the catchment area of a Good or Outstanding school even if more expensive. Or else start going to church more regularly to gets their children into an Outstanding church school
Most comps are rated good or outstanding. Those that aren't need to be improved. Most gifted working class kids didn't pass the 11 plus when we had grammars, plenty of average middle class kids did. Secondary moderns, where most working class kids went, were often dreadful schools. Very few parents want to see them brought back. Let's focus on improving standards and find a way of breaking the culture of low expectations that affects too many kids, not try to resurrect the failed, divisive policies of the past. I think I'm done on this subject, my substandard comprehensive-schooled brain is growing weary!
No, most gifted working class kids with high IQs easily passed the 11 plus, a few average middle class pupils may also have scraped a pass but that did not hold back high iq working class pupils.
Now if you are poor but high IQ avoiding a requires improvement or inadequate school is a lottery dependent on where your parents live. You would almost certainly have got into a grammar though whereever you lived.
If you are middle class though your parents will buy your education either via private schools or the catchment area of good or outstanding schools. Or they will go to church more regularly for a vicar's reference for a top church school
Why are you continuing to post bullshit without any evidence to back it up when multiple posters have provided examples that show your ideas to be completely and utterly incorrect?
They haven't, they have just used ideological anecdote which I ideologically disagree with.
Plenty on here like Richard Tyndall and Pagan agree with me on grammars
Nope Richard Tyndall posted something that Cookie then showed to be completely regional as I had already argued.
And what does that have to do with it? If that is the case (and I think you are wrong by the way due to your pre conceived bias) then the regions that do not run things the same way as I said should change to it rather than scrap the whole Grammar system. Indeed if I had the choice (which of course I never will) then the selective system would be back for all parts of England. Instead of condemning most children to the third rate education system that exists in most of the country.
As a small point of clarification, Trafford doesn't have the power to set selection criteria for its selective schools. All grammar schools (and most non-grammar secondary schools) in Trafford are academies with the power to set their own selection criteria.
I failed the Aldi assessment centre tests but passed the PwC ones.
Make of that what you will.
a) they're looking for different skills, and b) the Aldi grad programme (I assume this is what you were applying for) is known to be hypercompetitive, because they offer massive salaries in exchange for people taking on lots of responsibility very early on in their careers.
And you’re likely to live a far healthier and happier life working for Aldi than those idgits at PwC.
So Omicron is doubling every 2.17 days. 60,508 cases today out of 90k total. So by Wednesday Omicron is something like 115k out of 130k - assuming today's figure has caught every test and Wednesday is the same.
At which point does Peppa make the decision about what happens after Christmas Day? And do we want that decision now, or on Wednesday when we're at c. 130k or on Friday when we're on c. 240k? Do we even have the testing capacity to process that many tests?
It's clear the doubling of cases has stopped, and it may even be in reverse.
Not really. If you look at omicron only, the new daily numbers are following a close 2.5 day doubling.
I'm giving the little 'un at least half an hour's homework every day, even during holidays - if he's good I'll give him Christmas Day off... He enjoys it, as it is good father/son time. Mrs J does stuff with him as well.
I have no idea if he is 'brighter' than other kids his age - but IMV the work ethic we are hopefully instilling in him, as well as the knowledge, will stand him in good stead. But it will be knowledge, experience and skills he is gaining, not raw intelligence. (*)
IME most parents do not do this. Then again, we're lucky in that he seems to enjoy it, he is an only child (**), and I have the time to spend with him - i.e. I'm not working all hours Godsend to pay for food.
(*) Although as he currently loves penguins, and calls himself one, perhaps I've taken a mis-step ... (**) I also wonder whether this is a small factor in the Chinese economic miracle: if you only have one child, you can coach them much more individually than if you had five.
I failed the Aldi assessment centre tests but passed the PwC ones.
Make of that what you will.
a) they're looking for different skills, and b) the Aldi grad programme (I assume this is what you were applying for) is known to be hypercompetitive, because they offer massive salaries in exchange for people taking on lots of responsibility very early on in their careers.
I think it also has the highest drop out rate of any grad scheme.
Indeed. They're pretty transparent about what they're looking for, and why they pay so much, but it's still a lot of stress for a recent graduate to take on, and miserable working conditions.
IQ tests clearly measure SOMETHING and whatever it is, it is closely related to what we generally think of as intelligence. If you speak to someone with an IQ of 60 and then speak to someone with an IQ of 140 the latter will obviously be much more “intelligent” than the former
Quicker, smarter, better with words and ideas. Faster on the uptake. Able to do difficult tasks at speed.
“Speed of successful information processing” is, in fact, a pretty good definition of “intelligence”
And it is commonly reckoned genetics accounts for about half of this faculty
I don't question any of that. I question the ludicrous assertion that you can't train someone to do well at IQ tests. As if they are some magic oracle completely void of learnable material.
There are a lot of interests in preserving the idea that IQ is an completely objective test, but my suspicion is that you are right.
I would guess that it is essentially a matter of practice. You would eventually speed up in being able to answer the questions, meaning that you answer more and get a higher score. However, I doubt that you could go from a really low to a really high score.
I think there is a real danger in assuming that IQ is an absolute measure of intelligence. People can be intelligent in ways that are not picked up in an IQ test. Similarly, people with supposedly high IQs are as susceptible as everyone else to doing stupid things. Some people with high IQs do nothing of significance with their lives. Trying to stratify people by IQ level is a very bad idea.
Re your last para - agree completely.
Re the rest I also agree. See my much earlier post on techniques on how to improve on the test. The reality is that someone stupid can't improve. Someone very, very clever can only improve a little. However a reasonably bright person can be taught techniques to make reasonably big increases. I don't know how much but I am guessing 10 - 20 points, but not from one extreme to the other.
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
That's completely and demonstrably false. IQ tests are a learnable skill like any other academic skill.
Nope, over half of IQ is determined by genetics and cannot be learnt
I'm not sure that's true. There's lots of evidence that one can get better and better at IQ tests by learning the patterns inherent in them.
That doesn't mean you're more intelligent - it means you're better at getting good scores on IQ tests.
Mrs J attended a top school in her home country. That country ranks all students at their equivalent of A-levels, so you end up with a number from 1 to ~700,000. She ended up ~200 out of that ~700,000.
I'm not saying this to brag (*), but for this reason: her best friend took the same classes. And ended up one position ahead of her.
They didn't cheat: but they studied and revised closely together. Two students at the same school ended up with adjacent places, out of hundreds of thousands.
What you are taught matters massively. Training for tests matters. The same goes for IQ tests, which Mrs J is very sniffy about.
She likes to rub her results in, because I really mucked up my A-levels. Not that that's really something that's sent me into the gutter...
(*) though she is hyper-intelligent with a high IQ, and she is also a bit of a muppet.
Sounds like Turkey - where it's worth saying you do end up with a few 100s on the exact same level although they are then ranked in some random order.
And your position on the list determines whether you get into the uni course you want or not.
Got it in one. But from my understanding, when you get near to the top, there are generally fewer people in each position - and many, many people with the same score in the middle of the bell curve.
Also worth saying that there are a lot of private tutors in Istanbul and elsewhere all charging significant amounts to get your child a couple of more points. The upper floors of the main streets in Kadikoy are full of tutor and english schools.
IMV pre-16yrs schooling doesn't matter much for the brightest kids - they'll learn and prosper anyway, especially nowadays with the Internet as a vast source of information.
Kids who are less bright, or who have parents who are struggling, gain the most from a good school.
Interesting thread (I’ve corrected his typo of CFR for CHR which later in the thread he mentions
NSW is the ideal setting to measure the severity of Omicron, and it is showing a CHR for Omicron that is <1/2 of Delta Five reasons it's ideal: *Prior infection is irrelevant (~2-3% of NSW is prior infected) *Delta cases were steady through Nov, making a stable baseline CHR
IQ tests clearly measure SOMETHING and whatever it is, it is closely related to what we generally think of as intelligence. If you speak to someone with an IQ of 60 and then speak to someone with an IQ of 140 the latter will obviously be much more “intelligent” than the former
Quicker, smarter, better with words and ideas. Faster on the uptake. Able to do difficult tasks at speed.
“Speed of successful information processing” is, in fact, a pretty good definition of “intelligence”
And it is commonly reckoned genetics accounts for about half of this faculty
I don't question any of that. I question the ludicrous assertion that you can't train someone to do well at IQ tests. As if they are some magic oracle completely void of learnable material.
There are a lot of interests in preserving the idea that IQ is an completely objective test, but my suspicion is that you are right.
I would guess that it is essentially a matter of practice. You would eventually speed up in being able to answer the questions, meaning that you answer more and get a higher score. However, I doubt that you could go from a really low to a really high score.
I think there is a real danger in assuming that IQ is an absolute measure of intelligence. People can be intelligent in ways that are not picked up in an IQ test. Similarly, people with supposedly high IQs are as susceptible as everyone else to doing stupid things. Some people with high IQs do nothing of significance with their lives. Trying to stratify people by IQ level is a very bad idea.
Re your last para - agree completely.
Re the rest I also agree. See my much earlier post on techniques on how to improve on the test. The reality is that someone stupid can't improve. Someone very, very clever can only improve a little. However a reasonably bright person can be taught techniques to make reasonably big increases. I don't know how much but I am guessing 10 - 20 points, but not from one extreme to the other.
Anyone in say the 40th percentile with practice should be able to do better than a person in the 20th percentile who hasn't done any training.
And that's the issue with IQ tests - the very brightest do well regardless but the bottom half of it can be gamed.
Plenty of morons go to private school and have a lot more success than they deserve, see Boris Johnson
In fairness that is also true of comprehensive school children as well. Look at Liz Truss.
Liz Truss would be our first ever PM solely educated at a comprehensive school for her secondary education, however she would then have to beat the grammar and private school educated Starmer. Historically, the odds would favour Starmer
So would sanity...
Edit - incidentally does anyone know if Corbyn was a day boy or a boarder at Adam's Grammar?
What's your issue with Truss?
Bluntly, she always comes across as a tad unbalanced. Able, but not shrewd. Determined, but also rather reckless. Passionate, but not always nuanced.
A tad unbalanced .... well, Liz was President of the Oxford University LibDems 🤣
Funny the people you didn’t meet sometimes. I was in the same year as Liz Truss and Christina Pagel at Oxford.
Worst threesome ever.
No offence.
That’s okay. I’m sorry I disappointed in our tryst with Malc but no hard feelings (excuse the pun)
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
That's completely and demonstrably false. IQ tests are a learnable skill like any other academic skill.
Nope, over half of IQ is determined by genetics and cannot be learnt
I'm not sure that's true. There's lots of evidence that one can get better and better at IQ tests by learning the patterns inherent in them.
That doesn't mean you're more intelligent - it means you're better at getting good scores on IQ tests.
Mrs J attended a top school in her home country. That country ranks all students at their equivalent of A-levels, so you end up with a number from 1 to ~700,000. She ended up ~200 out of that ~700,000.
I'm not saying this to brag (*), but for this reason: her best friend took the same classes. And ended up one position ahead of her.
They didn't cheat: but they studied and revised closely together. Two students at the same school ended up with adjacent places, out of hundreds of thousands.
What you are taught matters massively. Training for tests matters. The same goes for IQ tests, which Mrs J is very sniffy about.
She likes to rub her results in, because I really mucked up my A-levels. Not that that's really something that's sent me into the gutter...
(*) though she is hyper-intelligent with a high IQ, and she is also a bit of a muppet.
Sounds like Turkey - where it's worth saying you do end up with a few 100s on the exact same level although they are then ranked in some random order.
And your position on the list determines whether you get into the uni course you want or not.
Got it in one. But from my understanding, when you get near to the top, there are generally fewer people in each position - and many, many people with the same score in the middle of the bell curve.
Also worth saying that there are a lot of private tutors in Istanbul and elsewhere all charging significant amounts to get your child a couple of more points. The upper floors of the main streets in Kadikoy are full of tutor and english schools.
Mrs J didn't need an English school: at the age of seven she was dropped into London for a couple of years, knowing no English. She had to learn it very quickly. She went back to Turkey after a few years (via Tehran in the middle of the Iran-Iraq war...), and the standard of her English is better than mine.
Kids are incredibly flexible. But they need support and nurturing.
It is the fate of a government in power for a long time, Labour polled 15% in the 2009 Euros.
Just look at how unpopular the Conservatives became in 1992.
April 1992 the Conservatives received the most votes ever at a general election for a single party. From 1993 onwards they didn't lead in the polls for over seven years, nearly eight.
Very true, but in 1994 onwards the Murdoch press backed Blair, and that sealed the tories fate, if by some miracle Starmer could get the backing of the Murdoch press, the tories would be toast, I think they are waiting for the Liar to depart number10, and then they will swing right behind the new tory leader. The next election is very much up in the air.
I failed the Aldi assessment centre tests but passed the PwC ones.
Make of that what you will.
a) they're looking for different skills, and b) the Aldi grad programme (I assume this is what you were applying for) is known to be hypercompetitive, because they offer massive salaries in exchange for people taking on lots of responsibility very early on in their careers.
And you’re likely to live a far healthier and happier life working for Aldi than those idgits at PwC.
Yeah, no. The Aldi scheme is notorious for not allowing much of a social life, because you're spending most of the time on the road and living in hotels, whilst dealing with hugely stressful situations because you effectively go straight in as a regional store manager. The PwC grad programme is one of the best in the country.
So Omicron is doubling every 2.17 days. 60,508 cases today out of 90k total. So by Wednesday Omicron is something like 115k out of 130k - assuming today's figure has caught every test and Wednesday is the same.
At which point does Peppa make the decision about what happens after Christmas Day? And do we want that decision now, or on Wednesday when we're at c. 130k or on Friday when we're on c. 240k? Do we even have the testing capacity to process that many tests?
It's clear the doubling of cases has stopped, and it may even be in reverse.
Not really. If you look at omicron only, the new daily numbers are following a close 2.5 day doubling.
If anything, delta is petering out.
Known SGTF failure in England, day by day since the 12th, multiply by ~ 3 or so to get the estimated known case count.
We'll know whether or not today's lower number is a blip as we had last tuesday or more of a true figure. Wednesday through Friday is when you find out what the pandemic is actually doing...
So Omicron is doubling every 2.17 days. 60,508 cases today out of 90k total. So by Wednesday Omicron is something like 115k out of 130k - assuming today's figure has caught every test and Wednesday is the same.
At which point does Peppa make the decision about what happens after Christmas Day? And do we want that decision now, or on Wednesday when we're at c. 130k or on Friday when we're on c. 240k? Do we even have the testing capacity to process that many tests?
It's clear the doubling of cases has stopped, and it may even be in reverse.
It isn't clear in the official data. There are peaks and troughs as you get in any daily read when it isn't an exact science whether you capture everything or not.
The government's own data gives 2 day multiples as follows: 2.13, 2.19, 1.49, 2.13, 2.49, 1.81, 1.63. Whilst the last 2 days are below 2 there is nothing to suggest they won't go back above 2 once all samples are in.
It isn't reproducing *quite* as fast as they said. But its only 4 hours behind the "every 2 days"
IQ tests clearly measure SOMETHING and whatever it is, it is closely related to what we generally think of as intelligence. If you speak to someone with an IQ of 60 and then speak to someone with an IQ of 140 the latter will obviously be much more “intelligent” than the former
Quicker, smarter, better with words and ideas. Faster on the uptake. Able to do difficult tasks at speed.
“Speed of successful information processing” is, in fact, a pretty good definition of “intelligence”
And it is commonly reckoned genetics accounts for about half of this faculty
Yes, of course.
No one is disputing that. If you take two people who have no experience of IQ tests, then you'll get a pretty good rule of thumb.
Equally, though, you can train people to take IQ tests and radically move their score upwards. One study showed a 23 point average increase in just three months with 11-12 year olds. Were those kids actually smarter after three months, or did they just get better at taking the tests?
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
That's completely and demonstrably false. IQ tests are a learnable skill like any other academic skill.
Nope, over half of IQ is determined by genetics and cannot be learnt
I'm not sure that's true. There's lots of evidence that one can get better and better at IQ tests by learning the patterns inherent in them.
That doesn't mean you're more intelligent - it means you're better at getting good scores on IQ tests.
Mrs J attended a top school in her home country. That country ranks all students at their equivalent of A-levels, so you end up with a number from 1 to ~700,000. She ended up ~200 out of that ~700,000.
I'm not saying this to brag (*), but for this reason: her best friend took the same classes. And ended up one position ahead of her.
They didn't cheat: but they studied and revised closely together. Two students at the same school ended up with adjacent places, out of hundreds of thousands.
What you are taught matters massively. Training for tests matters. The same goes for IQ tests, which Mrs J is very sniffy about.
She likes to rub her results in, because I really mucked up my A-levels. Not that that's really something that's sent me into the gutter...
(*) though she is hyper-intelligent with a high IQ, and she is also a bit of a muppet.
Sounds like Turkey - where it's worth saying you do end up with a few 100s on the exact same level although they are then ranked in some random order.
And your position on the list determines whether you get into the uni course you want or not.
Got it in one. But from my understanding, when you get near to the top, there are generally fewer people in each position - and many, many people with the same score in the middle of the bell curve.
Also worth saying that there are a lot of private tutors in Istanbul and elsewhere all charging significant amounts to get your child a couple of more points. The upper floors of the main streets in Kadikoy are full of tutor and english schools.
Mrs J didn't need an English school: at the age of seven she was dropped into London for a couple of years, knowing no English. She had to learn it very quickly. She went back to Turkey after a few years (via Tehran in the middle of the Iran-Iraq war...), and the standard of her English is better than mine.
Kids are incredibly flexible. But they need support and nurturing.
Oh, I suspected that she didn't need it - my point was that because it's a ranking based system parents are willing to spend what they can afford to get their child one place higher up the list - and so many parents are doing it that they've displaced offices from the areas near residential parts of Istanbul.
And what is true in Istanbul is equally true in the UK when it comes to the 11 /13 plus
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
That's completely and demonstrably false. IQ tests are a learnable skill like any other academic skill.
Nope, over half of IQ is determined by genetics and cannot be learnt
I'm not sure that's true. There's lots of evidence that one can get better and better at IQ tests by learning the patterns inherent in them.
That doesn't mean you're more intelligent - it means you're better at getting good scores on IQ tests.
Mrs J….
She likes to rub her results in, because I really mucked up my A-levels. Not that that's really something that's sent me into the gutter...
(*) though she is hyper-intelligent with a high IQ, and she is also a bit of a muppet.
Having read the discussion above; I must conclude that there is a deeply religious fervour about vaccination evident on this website. People believe that vaccination is the solution to the pandemic because they believe in science, and will willingly sacrifice all sorts of freedoms in support of it. Yet they overlook its obvious limitations; namely that the vaccination programme did not deliver what it promised as it did not end the pandemic; it did not prevent new variants from arising; and it does not stop people from catching and spreading the virus. The old political maxim that the masses are easy to herd is turned on its head; it turns out that actually the intellectuals are easy to herd, when it comes to certain policies. This reinforces a belief that I hold strongly, that self appointed experts and university educated people are not necessarily smarter in the end than people with no education who go through life living by their wits.
The vaccination program didn't promise any of those things.
Well, quite. The vaccination programme was about saving lives (with help from masks and lockdowns at the peak), and to an impressive degree it's done the job.
The debate now is more about the importance of reducing widespread illness vs the importance of being free to be out and about. It actually should be a less heated debate.
I disagree - it should be more heated
Extreme measures were taken 18 months ago (and in my view justified). There are people trying to use that precedent today when it is unwarranted- they must be resisted at every turn
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
That's completely and demonstrably false. IQ tests are a learnable skill like any other academic skill.
Nope, over half of IQ is determined by genetics and cannot be learnt
I'm not sure that's true. There's lots of evidence that one can get better and better at IQ tests by learning the patterns inherent in them.
That doesn't mean you're more intelligent - it means you're better at getting good scores on IQ tests.
Mrs J….
She likes to rub her results in, because I really mucked up my A-levels. Not that that's really something that's sent me into the gutter...
(*) though she is hyper-intelligent with a high IQ, and she is also a bit of a muppet.
Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance have briefed MPs and apparently said the information people are waiting for - hospitalisations, effects of booster on transmission etc- won’t be found out quickly. And that’s the big dilemma 1/
Scientists on Sage and Nervtag I speak to concede that it’s a difficult and balanced decision for ministers with big economic consequences too- but say by the time the severity data is clear it could be too late to act 2/
Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance have briefed MPs and apparently said the information people are waiting for - hospitalisations, effects of booster on transmission etc- won’t be found out quickly. And that’s the big dilemma 1/
Scientists on Sage and Nervtag I speak to concede that it’s a difficult and balanced decision for ministers with big economic consequences too- but say by the time the severity data is clear it could be too late to act 2/
Appalling Con splits in the new Redfield & Wilton poll:
NE Lab 61% Con 22% NW Lab 51% Con 28% W Midlands Lab 47% Con 37% E Midlands Lab 41% Con 35%
Not necessarily, the Tories can win without the North provided they win the South and Midlands.
Those Midlands numbers are not so far behind midterm they cannot be caught up
I would go and look at the Lib Dem figures in the breakdowns.
E Midlands have 14% compared to 8% in the W Midlands.
I would say both W Midlands and E Midlands are nearer 47% Lab, 36% Tory.
And if you look at the South East - those figures should be given Tory MPs a nightmare as I suspect the Labour / Lib Dem votes will be a lot more efficient than those figures make out.
I concur.
The geographical breakdown is looking like the makings of a perfect storm. These May locals are going to be delicious. Any markets up?
The recent local council by-elections in the SE (I know, I know) have been pointing very firmly that way for a few weeks now.
I must admit my degree of nerdness hasn’t got that far yet. Any easily digestible stats about?
IQ tests clearly measure SOMETHING and whatever it is, it is closely related to what we generally think of as intelligence. If you speak to someone with an IQ of 60 and then speak to someone with an IQ of 140 the latter will obviously be much more “intelligent” than the former
Quicker, smarter, better with words and ideas. Faster on the uptake. Able to do difficult tasks at speed.
“Speed of successful information processing” is, in fact, a pretty good definition of “intelligence”
And it is commonly reckoned genetics accounts for about half of this faculty
I don't question any of that. I question the ludicrous assertion that you can't train someone to do well at IQ tests. As if they are some magic oracle completely void of learnable material.
There are a lot of interests in preserving the idea that IQ is an completely objective test, but my suspicion is that you are right.
I would guess that it is essentially a matter of practice. You would eventually speed up in being able to answer the questions, meaning that you answer more and get a higher score. However, I doubt that you could go from a really low to a really high score.
I think there is a real danger in assuming that IQ is an absolute measure of intelligence. People can be intelligent in ways that are not picked up in an IQ test. Similarly, people with supposedly high IQs are as susceptible as everyone else to doing stupid things. Some people with high IQs do nothing of significance with their lives. Trying to stratify people by IQ level is a very bad idea.
Having worked for a few decades around highly-intelligent and qualified people, we have developed a rule of thumb: the more educated someone is, the less able they are to function in the real world.
I know plumbers with more common sense than almost all the people with doctorates I know, yet alone the couple of professors I've known. Geniuses in their field, but rather lacking in simple skills, like the ability to pick their kids up from school ...
I actually haven't noticed this. There are people better with brain than hand but I'm not sure about the correlation to a lack of commonsense.
Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance have briefed MPs and apparently said the information people are waiting for - hospitalisations, effects of booster on transmission etc- won’t be found out quickly. And that’s the big dilemma 1/
Scientists on Sage and Nervtag I speak to concede that it’s a difficult and balanced decision for ministers with big economic consequences too- but say by the time the severity data is clear it could be too late to act 2/
Indeed. The hospitalisation / death rates always lag behind new cases. And new Omicron cases continue to grow exponentially. We believe its less nasty to us than others were before vaccinations - but as they have pointed out for the last few weeks a smaller percentage of a very large number is still a problem.
We all want this gone. But despite "its going" and "can't believe the scientists" claims the data disagrees.
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
That's completely and demonstrably false. IQ tests are a learnable skill like any other academic skill.
Nope, over half of IQ is determined by genetics and cannot be learnt
I'm not sure that's true. There's lots of evidence that one can get better and better at IQ tests by learning the patterns inherent in them.
That doesn't mean you're more intelligent - it means you're better at getting good scores on IQ tests.
Mrs J attended a top school in her home country. That country ranks all students at their equivalent of A-levels, so you end up with a number from 1 to ~700,000. She ended up ~200 out of that ~700,000.
I'm not saying this to brag (*), but for this reason: her best friend took the same classes. And ended up one position ahead of her.
They didn't cheat: but they studied and revised closely together. Two students at the same school ended up with adjacent places, out of hundreds of thousands.
What you are taught matters massively. Training for tests matters. The same goes for IQ tests, which Mrs J is very sniffy about.
She likes to rub her results in, because I really mucked up my A-levels. Not that that's really something that's sent me into the gutter...
(*) though she is hyper-intelligent with a high IQ, and she is also a bit of a muppet.
Sounds like Turkey - where it's worth saying you do end up with a few 100s on the exact same level although they are then ranked in some random order.
And your position on the list determines whether you get into the uni course you want or not.
Got it in one. But from my understanding, when you get near to the top, there are generally fewer people in each position - and many, many people with the same score in the middle of the bell curve.
Also worth saying that there are a lot of private tutors in Istanbul and elsewhere all charging significant amounts to get your child a couple of more points. The upper floors of the main streets in Kadikoy are full of tutor and english schools.
Mrs J didn't need an English school: at the age of seven she was dropped into London for a couple of years, knowing no English. She had to learn it very quickly. She went back to Turkey after a few years (via Tehran in the middle of the Iran-Iraq war...), and the standard of her English is better than mine.
Kids are incredibly flexible. But they need support and nurturing.
Oh, I suspected that she didn't need it - my point was that because it's a ranking based system parents are willing to spend what they can afford to get their child one place higher up the list - and so many parents are doing it that they've displaced offices from the areas near residential parts of Istanbul.
And what is true in Istanbul is equally true in the UK when it comes to the 11 /13 plus
Yep, and that's what I've sorta been saying: parenting matters as much (more than?) schooling. But that's not just about money. It's about attention and caring. Sitting down with your kids to do the homework is a luxury.
Part of me wonders if this is part of the reason why so many public school children go off the rails, despite their advantages.
Having read the discussion above; I must conclude that there is a deeply religious fervour about vaccination evident on this website. People believe that vaccination is the solution to the pandemic because they believe in science, and will willingly sacrifice all sorts of freedoms in support of it. Yet they overlook its obvious limitations; namely that the vaccination programme did not deliver what it promised as it did not end the pandemic; it did not prevent new variants from arising; and it does not stop people from catching and spreading the virus. The old political maxim that the masses are easy to herd is turned on its head; it turns out that actually the intellectuals are easy to herd, when it comes to certain policies. This reinforces a belief that I hold strongly, that self appointed experts and university educated people are not necessarily smarter in the end than people with no education who go through life living by their wits.
The vaccination program didn't promise any of those things.
Well, quite. The vaccination programme was about saving lives (with help from masks and lockdowns at the peak), and to an impressive degree it's done the job.
The debate now is more about the importance of reducing widespread illness vs the importance of being free to be out and about. It actually should be a less heated debate.
I disagree - it should be more heated
Extreme measures were taken 18 months ago (and in my view justified). There are people trying to use that precedent today when it is unwarranted- they must be resisted at every turn
Yes, the onus is now on the individual to get triple jabbed ASAP. We're all eligible to get three doses and those few idiots who don't are condemning themselves to death by stupidity.
Appalling Con splits in the new Redfield & Wilton poll:
NE Lab 61% Con 22% NW Lab 51% Con 28% W Midlands Lab 47% Con 37% E Midlands Lab 41% Con 35%
Not necessarily, the Tories can win without the North provided they win the South and Midlands.
Those Midlands numbers are not so far behind midterm they cannot be caught up
I would go and look at the Lib Dem figures in the breakdowns.
E Midlands have 14% compared to 8% in the W Midlands.
I would say both W Midlands and E Midlands are nearer 47% Lab, 36% Tory.
And if you look at the South East - those figures should be given Tory MPs a nightmare as I suspect the Labour / Lib Dem votes will be a lot more efficient than those figures make out.
I concur.
The geographical breakdown is looking like the makings of a perfect storm. These May locals are going to be delicious. Any markets up?
The recent local council by-elections in the SE (I know, I know) have been pointing very firmly that way for a few weeks now.
I must admit my degree of nerdness hasn’t got that far yet. Any easily digestible stats about?
Some excellent post on the last thread guys. I mean really good.
Re poor Comprehensives in deprived areas I agree, but this is probably a lot more to do with the issues of the area than anything else. The answer certainly isn't going back to Secondary Moderns.
I see @HYUFD is continuing to compare stats on Grammar schools to Comprehensives and ignoring the samples are completely different because the Grammar has selected.
If you lived in a deprived area 50 years ago you could go to a grammar school if intelligent.
Now your only choice would be a comprehensive likely to be a secondary modern in all but name if you do not have wealthy parents who can send you to private school
That doesn't answer the point.
It does. Unless you live in a wealthy suburb or rural area (or go to a comprehensive or academy where admission is based on church attendance) comprehensives are often just renamed secondary moderns effectively.
@MikeSmithson is correct. It doesn't answer the point. As usual you just raise another point and don't address the point raised. It is a moving target.
Re your point on living in a poor area and being able to go to a grammar, this is very naïve. What actually happens is the middle class and well off in surrounding areas get tutored for the test and fill the spaces. The bright kids in the poor areas don't and they still don't get in by and large.
I lived in a relatively poor large village with 2 primary schools. Only one boy got into the boys grammar school and no girls to the girls grammar school. And that boy dropped out. I have no memory of even taking a test let alone getting tutored. After O levels a whole bunch of replaced those that had dropped out. The system is crap at selection and selecting at 11 is far too soon.
There are limits on how much you can tutor for 11+ and 13+ tests which are designed to test raw iq not subject knowledge as such. Indeed very often even a few bright kids from council estates got into grammar schools even without tutors and then onto Oxbridge or other top universities and professional careers. That path is not open to them to the same extent now if they live in a deprived area and just get sent to the local very average, if that, comp.
If you were well off and had a kid who was not so bright and would not pass the 11 or 13+ you could still send them private however and still do. Most wealthy parents did not send their children to secondary moderns and do not send their children to comprehensives and certainly not comprehensives or academies which are any less than Outstanding. So the rich generally don't use comprehensives anyway while the bright but poor no longer have the opportunities grammars provided. Most grammars of course also have entries at sixth form level too
a) You can tutor for IQ tests very easily. Not sure where you got it that it was difficult. There are lots of techniques.
b) In between our posts I have been chopping wood and did a rough mental calculation of how many should have got into the grammar school from my village all other things being equal (I know how many classes there were, the size of them, the fact that our village was a 3 member ward and how many councillors there were in the borough). The answer is about 25. There was 1 and he dropped out. If that doesn't give you an idea of the disparity between poor and middle class areas nothing will.
c) If you think the well off don't send their children to Comprehensives you live in a different world. I live in a well off area now. I am wealthy by most peoples measure as are most of the people I know. Nearly all use the local comprehensive, which I grant you is good, but that is not what you were saying.
d) Moving to a Grammar at sixth form is too late. The damage has been done. Many won't go who should. Many who were at the Grammar who shouldn't have been have dropped out.
Select by subject on an ongoing basis throughout the child's education.
a) You can't. IQ test results are in part based on genetics, they are difficult to tutor for unlike subject knowledge based exams.
b) And all of them would likely have gone to a sink comprehensive otherwise, at least 1 still got to a grammar.
c) If the wealthy send their kids to a comp it will only be an Outstanding comp they have bought their kids admission to by buying a house in its catchment area, meaning there are well above average house prices for that catchment area. You buy a place at an Outstanding comp or academy much like you buy a place at private school effectively or else you go to church more regularly to get a vicar's reference for a top church school. I notice you did not send your kids to a sink school the bright but poor have little choice but to go to!
d) Sixth form entry for A levels and top university is fine for late developers
I am absolutely minted and our kids go to the local comp (it is an academy but most secondaries in London are). Rated good not outstanding. Plenty of other parents similar to us, judging from how posh some of our kids' friends talk. House prices are high it's true but that's more because they're nice houses. But half the housing in the catchment, I'm guessing, is social housing so it's far from true that most of the kids at the school have bought their way in somehow. Proportion of minorities and with English as an additional language much higher than average; those on pupil premium broadly average. If actual GCSE grades match the predictions after my eldest's mocks I'll be very happy, but let's see in June.
So still a good school not a crap school even then. If however you live on a council estate and your local comp is inadequate or requires improvement you would have no choice but to attend it even if you were bright enough to get into a grammar school.
Middle class parents however would move to the catchment area of a Good or Outstanding school even if more expensive. Or else start going to church more regularly to gets their children into an Outstanding church school
Most comps are rated good or outstanding. Those that aren't need to be improved. Most gifted working class kids didn't pass the 11 plus when we had grammars, plenty of average middle class kids did. Secondary moderns, where most working class kids went, were often dreadful schools. Very few parents want to see them brought back. Let's focus on improving standards and find a way of breaking the culture of low expectations that affects too many kids, not try to resurrect the failed, divisive policies of the past. I think I'm done on this subject, my substandard comprehensive-schooled brain is growing weary!
No, most gifted working class kids with high IQs easily passed the 11 plus, a few average middle class pupils may also have scraped a pass but that did not hold back high iq working class pupils.
Now if you are poor but high IQ avoiding a requires improvement or inadequate school is a lottery dependent on where your parents live. You would almost certainly have got into a grammar though whereever you lived.
If you are middle class though your parents will buy your education either via private schools or the catchment area of good or outstanding schools. Or they will go to church more regularly for a vicar's reference for a top church school
Why are you continuing to post bullshit without any evidence to back it up when multiple posters have provided examples that show your ideas to be completely and utterly incorrect?
They haven't, they have just used ideological anecdote which I ideologically disagree with.
Plenty on here like Richard Tyndall and Pagan agree with me on grammars
Nope Richard Tyndall posted something that Cookie then showed to be completely regional as I had already argued.
And what does that have to do with it? If that is the case (and I think you are wrong by the way due to your pre conceived bias) then the regions that do not run things the same way as I said should change to it rather than scrap the whole Grammar system. Indeed if I had the choice (which of course I never will) then the selective system would be back for all parts of England. Instead of condemning most children to the third rate education system that exists in most of the country.
As a small point of clarification, Trafford doesn't have the power to set selection criteria for its selective schools. All grammar schools (and most non-grammar secondary schools) in Trafford are academies with the power to set their own selection criteria.
Yep and that is the issue in Bucks. It used to be that the selection criteria was set to ensure the vast majority of students were local but once they become academies they did everything they could to maximise their income (and one early way of doing so was importing students from out of the area because they got an extra allowance).
Beaconsfield High were even more ruthless and unilaterally announced that they would start taking 11 year olds - and in 1 attempt to make more money destroyed Bucks middle school system.
IQ tests clearly measure SOMETHING and whatever it is, it is closely related to what we generally think of as intelligence. If you speak to someone with an IQ of 60 and then speak to someone with an IQ of 140 the latter will obviously be much more “intelligent” than the former
Quicker, smarter, better with words and ideas. Faster on the uptake. Able to do difficult tasks at speed.
“Speed of successful information processing” is, in fact, a pretty good definition of “intelligence”
And it is commonly reckoned genetics accounts for about half of this faculty
I don't question any of that. I question the ludicrous assertion that you can't train someone to do well at IQ tests. As if they are some magic oracle completely void of learnable material.
There are a lot of interests in preserving the idea that IQ is an completely objective test, but my suspicion is that you are right.
I would guess that it is essentially a matter of practice. You would eventually speed up in being able to answer the questions, meaning that you answer more and get a higher score. However, I doubt that you could go from a really low to a really high score.
I think there is a real danger in assuming that IQ is an absolute measure of intelligence. People can be intelligent in ways that are not picked up in an IQ test. Similarly, people with supposedly high IQs are as susceptible as everyone else to doing stupid things. Some people with high IQs do nothing of significance with their lives. Trying to stratify people by IQ level is a very bad idea.
Having worked for a few decades around highly-intelligent and qualified people, we have developed a rule of thumb: the more educated someone is, the less able they are to function in the real world.
I know plumbers with more common sense than almost all the people with doctorates I know, yet alone the couple of professors I've known. Geniuses in their field, but rather lacking in simple skills, like the ability to pick their kids up from school ...
I actually haven't noticed this. There are people better with brain than hand but I'm not sure about the correlation to a lack of commonsense.
An example: two eggheads whose brains were so deep into code they ignored a fire alarm going off. When there was a real fire.
IQ tests clearly measure SOMETHING and whatever it is, it is closely related to what we generally think of as intelligence. If you speak to someone with an IQ of 60 and then speak to someone with an IQ of 140 the latter will obviously be much more “intelligent” than the former
Quicker, smarter, better with words and ideas. Faster on the uptake. Able to do difficult tasks at speed.
“Speed of successful information processing” is, in fact, a pretty good definition of “intelligence”
And it is commonly reckoned genetics accounts for about half of this faculty
Yes, of course.
No one is disputing that. If you take two people who have no experience of IQ tests, then you'll get a pretty good rule of thumb.
Equally, though, you can train people to take IQ tests and radically move their score upwards. One study showed a 23 point average increase in just three months with 11-12 year olds. Were those kids actually smarter after three months, or did they just get better at taking the tests?
You have done it again Robert. I have been arguing all bloody afternoon with HYUFD to make just that point and in you come at the tail end and pick up 4 likes with that pithy post. You can't go back and delete all my past posts this time, there are too many. What am I saying; of course you can
Interesting that you said 23 point increase. Based upon absolutely nothing whatsoever I reckoned for a moderately intelligent person they could be trained to up their score by 10 - 20 (see earlier posts). Not out by much. I didn't think you could anything for a stupid person and only a very small amount for a genius.
Plenty of morons go to private school and have a lot more success than they deserve, see Boris Johnson
In fairness that is also true of comprehensive school children as well. Look at Liz Truss.
Liz Truss would be our first ever PM solely educated at a comprehensive school for her secondary education, however she would then have to beat the grammar and private school educated Starmer. Historically, the odds would favour Starmer
So would sanity...
Edit - incidentally does anyone know if Corbyn was a day boy or a boarder at Adam's Grammar?
What's your issue with Truss?
Bluntly, she always comes across as a tad unbalanced. Able, but not shrewd. Determined, but also rather reckless. Passionate, but not always nuanced.
A tad unbalanced .... well, Liz was President of the Oxford University LibDems 🤣
Funny the people you didn’t meet sometimes. I was in the same year as Liz Truss and Christina Pagel at Oxford.
Worst threesome ever.
No offence.
That’s okay. I’m sorry I disappointed in our tryst with Malc but no hard feelings (excuse the pun)
I was a bit miffed that you only had eyes for Malc. That can be the downside of troilism I believe.
IQ tests clearly measure SOMETHING and whatever it is, it is closely related to what we generally think of as intelligence. If you speak to someone with an IQ of 60 and then speak to someone with an IQ of 140 the latter will obviously be much more “intelligent” than the former
Quicker, smarter, better with words and ideas. Faster on the uptake. Able to do difficult tasks at speed.
“Speed of successful information processing” is, in fact, a pretty good definition of “intelligence”
And it is commonly reckoned genetics accounts for about half of this faculty
I don't question any of that. I question the ludicrous assertion that you can't train someone to do well at IQ tests. As if they are some magic oracle completely void of learnable material.
There are a lot of interests in preserving the idea that IQ is an completely objective test, but my suspicion is that you are right.
I would guess that it is essentially a matter of practice. You would eventually speed up in being able to answer the questions, meaning that you answer more and get a higher score. However, I doubt that you could go from a really low to a really high score.
I think there is a real danger in assuming that IQ is an absolute measure of intelligence. People can be intelligent in ways that are not picked up in an IQ test. Similarly, people with supposedly high IQs are as susceptible as everyone else to doing stupid things. Some people with high IQs do nothing of significance with their lives. Trying to stratify people by IQ level is a very bad idea.
Having worked for a few decades around highly-intelligent and qualified people, we have developed a rule of thumb: the more educated someone is, the less able they are to function in the real world.
I know plumbers with more common sense than almost all the people with doctorates I know, yet alone the couple of professors I've known. Geniuses in their field, but rather lacking in simple skills, like the ability to pick their kids up from school ...
I actually haven't noticed this. There are people better with brain than hand but I'm not sure about the correlation to a lack of commonsense.
An example: two eggheads whose brains were so deep into code they ignored a fire alarm going off. When there was a real fire.
I got told off once for doing the opposite - we had had so many fire drills that year, I had got into the habit of wondering down to Starbucks for a coffee knowing we had 20 minutes until we were allowed back in.
Trouble is the other person who knew I did that, did the same and the fire warden wasn't our usual one so we were reported missing until someone had the commonsense to phone my mobile and ask where we were.
Some excellent post on the last thread guys. I mean really good.
Re poor Comprehensives in deprived areas I agree, but this is probably a lot more to do with the issues of the area than anything else. The answer certainly isn't going back to Secondary Moderns.
I see @HYUFD is continuing to compare stats on Grammar schools to Comprehensives and ignoring the samples are completely different because the Grammar has selected.
If you lived in a deprived area 50 years ago you could go to a grammar school if intelligent.
Now your only choice would be a comprehensive likely to be a secondary modern in all but name if you do not have wealthy parents who can send you to private school
That doesn't answer the point.
It does. Unless you live in a wealthy suburb or rural area (or go to a comprehensive or academy where admission is based on church attendance) comprehensives are often just renamed secondary moderns effectively.
@MikeSmithson is correct. It doesn't answer the point. As usual you just raise another point and don't address the point raised. It is a moving target.
Re your point on living in a poor area and being able to go to a grammar, this is very naïve. What actually happens is the middle class and well off in surrounding areas get tutored for the test and fill the spaces. The bright kids in the poor areas don't and they still don't get in by and large.
I lived in a relatively poor large village with 2 primary schools. Only one boy got into the boys grammar school and no girls to the girls grammar school. And that boy dropped out. I have no memory of even taking a test let alone getting tutored. After O levels a whole bunch of replaced those that had dropped out. The system is crap at selection and selecting at 11 is far too soon.
There are limits on how much you can tutor for 11+ and 13+ tests which are designed to test raw iq not subject knowledge as such. Indeed very often even a few bright kids from council estates got into grammar schools even without tutors and then onto Oxbridge or other top universities and professional careers. That path is not open to them to the same extent now if they live in a deprived area and just get sent to the local very average, if that, comp.
If you were well off and had a kid who was not so bright and would not pass the 11 or 13+ you could still send them private however and still do. Most wealthy parents did not send their children to secondary moderns and do not send their children to comprehensives and certainly not comprehensives or academies which are any less than Outstanding. So the rich generally don't use comprehensives anyway while the bright but poor no longer have the opportunities grammars provided. Most grammars of course also have entries at sixth form level too
a) You can tutor for IQ tests very easily. Not sure where you got it that it was difficult. There are lots of techniques.
b) In between our posts I have been chopping wood and did a rough mental calculation of how many should have got into the grammar school from my village all other things being equal (I know how many classes there were, the size of them, the fact that our village was a 3 member ward and how many councillors there were in the borough). The answer is about 25. There was 1 and he dropped out. If that doesn't give you an idea of the disparity between poor and middle class areas nothing will.
c) If you think the well off don't send their children to Comprehensives you live in a different world. I live in a well off area now. I am wealthy by most peoples measure as are most of the people I know. Nearly all use the local comprehensive, which I grant you is good, but that is not what you were saying.
d) Moving to a Grammar at sixth form is too late. The damage has been done. Many won't go who should. Many who were at the Grammar who shouldn't have been have dropped out.
Select by subject on an ongoing basis throughout the child's education.
a) You can't. IQ test results are in part based on genetics, they are difficult to tutor for unlike subject knowledge based exams.
b) And all of them would likely have gone to a sink comprehensive otherwise, at least 1 still got to a grammar.
c) If the wealthy send their kids to a comp it will only be an Outstanding comp they have bought their kids admission to by buying a house in its catchment area, meaning there are well above average house prices for that catchment area. You buy a place at an Outstanding comp or academy much like you buy a place at private school effectively or else you go to church more regularly to get a vicar's reference for a top church school.
d) Sixth form entry for A levels and top university is fine for late developers
a) you can - just allowing children to sit a few past papers so they understand how the questions work allows children to know how to answer the questions quicker allowing them more time to concentrate on more difficult questions.
You can understand the format of the questions but it is harder to prepare for the specific questions that will come up as they are logic and reasoning based, not subject knowledge based which are more tests of memory
As someone who has got 3 of 4 children into local grammars and sent the other private, I can confirm HYUFD doesn't know what he's talking about here, as well as constantly missing the point.
Tutoring makes a massive difference to ability to tackle the 11+. You see it all the time with kids that got tutored and then struggle to keep up once they're in.
It may make a marginal difference to borderline candidates but if you have an iq of 130+ you will get into a grammar school with no tutoring at all even if you live on a council estate
@HYUFD as usual you are pontificating with certainty about something on which I am guessing you have no knowledge whatsoever. It has been pointed by many on here how you can tutor for IQ tests / 11+ not least by just practicing papers, but there are many other techniques as well. I have some experience in this (as I am sure do many others on here) as it was a requirement of a development centre of one of the largest computer companies at the time at which I was a manager to take an IQ test and score at least 130. All undergraduates on the milk round had to do so before an interview. I would interview between 20 and 30 undergraduates on the milk round each year so I was very familiar with these test.
I couldn't do anything for someone who is stupid and could probably only add a point or two to a genius, but for a reasonably bright person I could probably get 10 to 20 IQ points added. Here are some ways how:
a) Just get familiar with the tests by practicing loads and getting your timing right (basic exam technique, but not something an 11 year old without tutoring has a clue about).
b) If you get a sequence of numbers and can't see the next number start subtracting each number from the next number. If the sequence doesn't become apparent then do again until it does. This takes just seconds to do and usually results in the answer. I've not seen one on an IQ test that doesn't.
c) Another common question is an arithmetic question which is too hard to do in the time but with an multiple choice answers so estimation is required. Someone with maths knowledge can do this easily, but someone who hasn't can be given about 5 easy tricks to solve these quickly.
d) Similarly a series of shapes at IQ test level is normally fairly straightforward, but again someone without the ability can be given half a dozen things to look out for in advance.
e) If you are given a True or False tests from a short paragraph and can't get it immediately you can convert it into a logical formulae (if you know how) and these tend to be so simple you can do it very quickly. I have to say that is something I find very useful to this day as I struggle to hold a lot of words in my head but can do logical formulae easily.
I could go on.
In response to the other items on your reply to me. You said 'at least one got to the grammar school'. You obviously missed the point that 'he crashed and burned'.
You also say 6th form is ok for late developers. Where did you get that from? It certainly wasn't for me. I missed out on so much. It was worse for others who were good enough but didn't get the chance. Also what about all those who pass the 11+ and then crash and burn because it isn't appropriate?
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
Where on earth did you get the idea that I hated the 6th form grammar school? I didn't I loved it. I also had a very good secondary school prior to that. You seem to read stuff into posts that aren't there. The problem is that by selecting at 11 I missed stuff that was only available at the grammar school and the grammar school boys missed stuff that was only available at the secondary school. Pointless separation and also doesn't allow for streaming by subject properly across all the pupils.
If you don't think you can tutor for the 11+ how do you explain my example from a poor area with only 1 getting into the Grammar school whereas all things being equal it should have been 20 - 25. It is not a few, it is a lot. The idea that you think Grammar schools are not in anyway heavily biased towards well off parents is just bizarre. They are very heavily weighted against poor areas.
Why should it have been 20-25? Unless they all had high IQs. How many of those 20-25 would be high earning professionals if they did not even have a chance of a grammar school but their only choice was a sink school? Likely 0.
Why should it have been 20 - 25? See earlier post. I'm not repeating it. I did the maths.
Only one went to the Grammar school and he crashed and burned (I have said that so many times). We did not have sink schools. My Secondary school was excellent. My Grammar schools was good. I enjoyed it, but I didn't think the teachers were as good bizarrely, but I did well.
But here is the point you keep on missing: Pupils from both schools were failed by the system. I was lucky, but even I missed out on stuff, but the culture was so ingrained that many very bright pupils from the Secondary school just went on to do apprenticeships. Nothing wrong with that but many were capable of so much more. And many at the Grammar school dropped out after O Levels with just one or two who could have benefited from the Secondary school education. All because we decide the fate of a child at 11. Ridiculous.
If you live in a poor area your local school will be more likely to be a sink school.
There is also nothing wrong with apprenticeships, in fact the highest level apprentices earn more on average than most graduates except those from the Russell Group.
Germany for example has selective gymnasiums like our grammars but also high status apprenticeships too
I never said there was anything wrong with apprenticeships. In fact I specifically went out of my way to say so in plain English, quote 'Nothing wrong with that...'. Sometimes a conversation with you is a challenge! Try reading the 2nd half of that sentence '...but many were capable of so much more.' Eg me. I was lucky, many weren't.
Re poor areas having sink schools. Yes, but not always, particularly if the poor areas are pockets. I was brought up in Surrey, which is not renowned for being poor, but there are poor areas. So it is very easy to see how the 11+ failed pupils. All the Grammar school kids came from the middle class areas and none from the poor areas. I wonder why? I think most of us know.
Can I answer that for HYUFD - the children from poor areas weren't bright enough - after all you don't gain any advantage from a few practice papers.
Now I know you are talking on behalf of HYUFD and not yourself so in answer to HYUFD - It is funny how at 16 lots of them suddenly got brighter and transferred to the Grammar school and a lot of the Grammar school kids got dimmer and dropped out.
Not really. The ones at the top of the sec mod felt encouraged so started doing better. The ones at the bottom of the grammar school got demoralised and did worse and then more or less gave up. That is what happened in the good old days.
Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance have briefed MPs and apparently said the information people are waiting for - hospitalisations, effects of booster on transmission etc- won’t be found out quickly. And that’s the big dilemma 1/
Scientists on Sage and Nervtag I speak to concede that it’s a difficult and balanced decision for ministers with big economic consequences too- but say by the time the severity data is clear it could be too late to act 2/
Indeed. The hospitalisation / death rates always lag behind new cases. And new Omicron cases continue to grow exponentially. We believe its less nasty to us than others were before vaccinations - but as they have pointed out for the last few weeks a smaller percentage of a very large number is still a problem.
We all want this gone. But despite "its going" and "can't believe the scientists" claims the data disagrees.
The graph I'm currently thinking about is this one
Around the 13th, some of the younger groups accelerated away..... Some older groups changed their rate of increase to lesser extent.... And the oldest groups continued on...
Christmas weekend without restrictions is good. 🙂. Here’s a stray Yey!
It just leaves the problem no one can be sure about plans for next week and week after, from parties to weddings for example deciding it this way on daily news rather than forecasts. Also the political danger of if it’s clear you need some action it’s likely too late to take it. Boring old Starmer will love that.
I would trust statisticians and scientists I think. I know PB knows better than me, but When Javid said 200K, and it took a bit of a pounding on here, as Eagles would say, if you look at the 90K we been getting and double it for mild or asymtopmtic couldn’t be bothered for a test, it’s not that far away from 200K? Also of course scientists would know it would first hit where the population is youngest as they are most social but also poor example to learn from their stats as they least likely to get hospitalised. Also we don’t know what sort of test weariness there is do we?
It is a nasty virus but nobody I know has even seen a doctor with it, and so far there is little evidence it is causing substantial increases in hospital admissions and as far as I know there has been one death
The cabinet taking the decisions has greatly improved my confidence that they are proceeding correctly and interestingly Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust and ex Sage endorsed HMG approach this morning
No worries Big G, I’ll leave it there then. What do I know about Covid science, everyone can see Moon Rabbits Omicron from mouse theory on previous thread and how Junior Smithson demolished it 🐁 Just saying the politics of this isn’t sure to be great for Boris and cabinet, the Sun and telegraph moaning today he isn’t giving clarity to people planning for next week, Scotland and Wales are giving that clarity, if Boris does end up copying them it looks like following late not leading. That is a point isn’t it?
Look at the share. 30% for the Tories is absolutely dire.
I cannot believe the failure to understand the direness of the tories' position. I expected them to hold NS by a couple of thousand and that would be a disaster in reality, but a hold is a hold. They have lost 90% of the former tories on this site. They have also lost the shire bumpkin vote, specifically over the hunting issue, because what is the point of an 80 seat majority if you can't overturn the Hunting Act? Nobody who isn't a shire bumpkin understands this point because they think the foxhunting community was a tiny minority, whereas in shire bumpkin terms it's bloody everybody. Lab maj 5/1 is the deal of the century.
Point of order - every poll on the subject shows fox-hunting unpopular in rural areas too (which may be why a significant proportion of Tory MPs are now opposed to overturning the ban). Even in 2015 a plurality of rural dwellers were against repeal:
Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance have briefed MPs and apparently said the information people are waiting for - hospitalisations, effects of booster on transmission etc- won’t be found out quickly. And that’s the big dilemma 1/
Scientists on Sage and Nervtag I speak to concede that it’s a difficult and balanced decision for ministers with big economic consequences too- but say by the time the severity data is clear it could be too late to act 2/
Indeed. The hospitalisation / death rates always lag behind new cases. And new Omicron cases continue to grow exponentially. We believe its less nasty to us than others were before vaccinations - but as they have pointed out for the last few weeks a smaller percentage of a very large number is still a problem.
We all want this gone. But despite "its going" and "can't believe the scientists" claims the data disagrees.
That's not true, the data, so far, is saying nothing in particular other than cases are up. On Thursday we get the weekly breakdown of incidental COVID admissions which will inform us on whether London has got a problem or not.
Look at the share. 30% for the Tories is absolutely dire.
I cannot believe the failure to understand the direness of the tories' position. I expected them to hold NS by a couple of thousand and that would be a disaster in reality, but a hold is a hold. They have lost 90% of the former tories on this site. They have also lost the shire bumpkin vote, specifically over the hunting issue, because what is the point of an 80 seat majority if you can't overturn the Hunting Act? Nobody who isn't a shire bumpkin understands this point because they think the foxhunting community was a tiny minority, whereas in shire bumpkin terms it's bloody everybody. Lab maj 5/1 is the deal of the century.
Point of order - every poll on the subject shows fox-hunting unpopular in rural areas too (which may be why a significant proportion of Tory MPs are now opposed to overturning the ban). Even in 2015 a plurality of rural dwellers were against repeal:
I'm also wondering when someone on this thread will actually go and claim that grammar and "public" school children are genetically superior because they are so much more intelligent.
Privately educated people are the best, intelligence and academically, and in so many other ways. WeThey are off the charts as well on the modest self effacing ways.
Oddly enough, at uni I noticed that they tended to be more unpredictable: a result of the removal of the close school coaching, and the need to think and behave for themselves. One privately educated close colleague was an Old Etonian (he got a better degree, just, than I, and I did well) and he made his name in another field. Other privately educated friends ranged from top surgeons to complete flops ...
Some excellent post on the last thread guys. I mean really good.
Re poor Comprehensives in deprived areas I agree, but this is probably a lot more to do with the issues of the area than anything else. The answer certainly isn't going back to Secondary Moderns.
I see @HYUFD is continuing to compare stats on Grammar schools to Comprehensives and ignoring the samples are completely different because the Grammar has selected.
If you lived in a deprived area 50 years ago you could go to a grammar school if intelligent.
Now your only choice would be a comprehensive likely to be a secondary modern in all but name if you do not have wealthy parents who can send you to private school
That doesn't answer the point.
It does. Unless you live in a wealthy suburb or rural area (or go to a comprehensive or academy where admission is based on church attendance) comprehensives are often just renamed secondary moderns effectively.
@MikeSmithson is correct. It doesn't answer the point. As usual you just raise another point and don't address the point raised. It is a moving target.
Re your point on living in a poor area and being able to go to a grammar, this is very naïve. What actually happens is the middle class and well off in surrounding areas get tutored for the test and fill the spaces. The bright kids in the poor areas don't and they still don't get in by and large.
I lived in a relatively poor large village with 2 primary schools. Only one boy got into the boys grammar school and no girls to the girls grammar school. And that boy dropped out. I have no memory of even taking a test let alone getting tutored. After O levels a whole bunch of replaced those that had dropped out. The system is crap at selection and selecting at 11 is far too soon.
There are limits on how much you can tutor for 11+ and 13+ tests which are designed to test raw iq not subject knowledge as such. Indeed very often even a few bright kids from council estates got into grammar schools even without tutors and then onto Oxbridge or other top universities and professional careers. That path is not open to them to the same extent now if they live in a deprived area and just get sent to the local very average, if that, comp.
If you were well off and had a kid who was not so bright and would not pass the 11 or 13+ you could still send them private however and still do. Most wealthy parents did not send their children to secondary moderns and do not send their children to comprehensives and certainly not comprehensives or academies which are any less than Outstanding. So the rich generally don't use comprehensives anyway while the bright but poor no longer have the opportunities grammars provided. Most grammars of course also have entries at sixth form level too
a) You can tutor for IQ tests very easily. Not sure where you got it that it was difficult. There are lots of techniques.
b) In between our posts I have been chopping wood and did a rough mental calculation of how many should have got into the grammar school from my village all other things being equal (I know how many classes there were, the size of them, the fact that our village was a 3 member ward and how many councillors there were in the borough). The answer is about 25. There was 1 and he dropped out. If that doesn't give you an idea of the disparity between poor and middle class areas nothing will.
c) If you think the well off don't send their children to Comprehensives you live in a different world. I live in a well off area now. I am wealthy by most peoples measure as are most of the people I know. Nearly all use the local comprehensive, which I grant you is good, but that is not what you were saying.
d) Moving to a Grammar at sixth form is too late. The damage has been done. Many won't go who should. Many who were at the Grammar who shouldn't have been have dropped out.
Select by subject on an ongoing basis throughout the child's education.
a) You can't. IQ test results are in part based on genetics, they are difficult to tutor for unlike subject knowledge based exams.
b) And all of them would likely have gone to a sink comprehensive otherwise, at least 1 still got to a grammar.
c) If the wealthy send their kids to a comp it will only be an Outstanding comp they have bought their kids admission to by buying a house in its catchment area, meaning there are well above average house prices for that catchment area. You buy a place at an Outstanding comp or academy much like you buy a place at private school effectively or else you go to church more regularly to get a vicar's reference for a top church school.
d) Sixth form entry for A levels and top university is fine for late developers
a) you can - just allowing children to sit a few past papers so they understand how the questions work allows children to know how to answer the questions quicker allowing them more time to concentrate on more difficult questions.
You can understand the format of the questions but it is harder to prepare for the specific questions that will come up as they are logic and reasoning based, not subject knowledge based which are more tests of memory
As someone who has got 3 of 4 children into local grammars and sent the other private, I can confirm HYUFD doesn't know what he's talking about here, as well as constantly missing the point.
Tutoring makes a massive difference to ability to tackle the 11+. You see it all the time with kids that got tutored and then struggle to keep up once they're in.
It may make a marginal difference to borderline candidates but if you have an iq of 130+ you will get into a grammar school with no tutoring at all even if you live on a council estate
@HYUFD as usual you are pontificating with certainty about something on which I am guessing you have no knowledge whatsoever. It has been pointed by many on here how you can tutor for IQ tests / 11+ not least by just practicing papers, but there are many other techniques as well. I have some experience in this (as I am sure do many others on here) as it was a requirement of a development centre of one of the largest computer companies at the time at which I was a manager to take an IQ test and score at least 130. All undergraduates on the milk round had to do so before an interview. I would interview between 20 and 30 undergraduates on the milk round each year so I was very familiar with these test.
I couldn't do anything for someone who is stupid and could probably only add a point or two to a genius, but for a reasonably bright person I could probably get 10 to 20 IQ points added. Here are some ways how:
a) Just get familiar with the tests by practicing loads and getting your timing right (basic exam technique, but not something an 11 year old without tutoring has a clue about).
b) If you get a sequence of numbers and can't see the next number start subtracting each number from the next number. If the sequence doesn't become apparent then do again until it does. This takes just seconds to do and usually results in the answer. I've not seen one on an IQ test that doesn't.
c) Another common question is an arithmetic question which is too hard to do in the time but with an multiple choice answers so estimation is required. Someone with maths knowledge can do this easily, but someone who hasn't can be given about 5 easy tricks to solve these quickly.
d) Similarly a series of shapes at IQ test level is normally fairly straightforward, but again someone without the ability can be given half a dozen things to look out for in advance.
e) If you are given a True or False tests from a short paragraph and can't get it immediately you can convert it into a logical formulae (if you know how) and these tend to be so simple you can do it very quickly. I have to say that is something I find very useful to this day as I struggle to hold a lot of words in my head but can do logical formulae easily.
I could go on.
In response to the other items on your reply to me. You said 'at least one got to the grammar school'. You obviously missed the point that 'he crashed and burned'.
You also say 6th form is ok for late developers. Where did you get that from? It certainly wasn't for me. I missed out on so much. It was worse for others who were good enough but didn't get the chance. Also what about all those who pass the 11+ and then crash and burn because it isn't appropriate?
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
Where on earth did you get the idea that I hated the 6th form grammar school? I didn't I loved it. I also had a very good secondary school prior to that. You seem to read stuff into posts that aren't there. The problem is that by selecting at 11 I missed stuff that was only available at the grammar school and the grammar school boys missed stuff that was only available at the secondary school. Pointless separation and also doesn't allow for streaming by subject properly across all the pupils.
If you don't think you can tutor for the 11+ how do you explain my example from a poor area with only 1 getting into the Grammar school whereas all things being equal it should have been 20 - 25. It is not a few, it is a lot. The idea that you think Grammar schools are not in anyway heavily biased towards well off parents is just bizarre. They are very heavily weighted against poor areas.
Why should it have been 20-25? Unless they all had high IQs. How many of those 20-25 would be high earning professionals if they did not even have a chance of a grammar school but their only choice was a sink school? Likely 0.
Why should it have been 20 - 25? See earlier post. I'm not repeating it. I did the maths.
Only one went to the Grammar school and he crashed and burned (I have said that so many times). We did not have sink schools. My Secondary school was excellent. My Grammar schools was good. I enjoyed it, but I didn't think the teachers were as good bizarrely, but I did well.
But here is the point you keep on missing: Pupils from both schools were failed by the system. I was lucky, but even I missed out on stuff, but the culture was so ingrained that many very bright pupils from the Secondary school just went on to do apprenticeships. Nothing wrong with that but many were capable of so much more. And many at the Grammar school dropped out after O Levels with just one or two who could have benefited from the Secondary school education. All because we decide the fate of a child at 11. Ridiculous.
If you live in a poor area your local school will be more likely to be a sink school.
There is also nothing wrong with apprenticeships, in fact the highest level apprentices earn more on average than most graduates except those from the Russell Group.
Germany for example has selective gymnasiums like our grammars but also high status apprenticeships too
I never said there was anything wrong with apprenticeships. In fact I specifically went out of my way to say so in plain English, quote 'Nothing wrong with that...'. Sometimes a conversation with you is a challenge! Try reading the 2nd half of that sentence '...but many were capable of so much more.' Eg me. I was lucky, many weren't.
Re poor areas having sink schools. Yes, but not always, particularly if the poor areas are pockets. I was brought up in Surrey, which is not renowned for being poor, but there are poor areas. So it is very easy to see how the 11+ failed pupils. All the Grammar school kids came from the middle class areas and none from the poor areas. I wonder why? I think most of us know.
Can I answer that for HYUFD - the children from poor areas weren't bright enough - after all you don't gain any advantage from a few practice papers.
Now I know you are talking on behalf of HYUFD and not yourself so in answer to HYUFD - It is funny how at 16 lots of them suddenly got brighter and transferred to the Grammar school and a lot of the Grammar school kids got dimmer and dropped out.
Not really. The ones at the top of the sec mod felt encouraged so started doing better. The ones at the bottom of the grammar school got demoralised and did worse and then more or less gave up. That is what happened in the good old days.
For years before the Internet was common I used to help the exam secretary of a Buckinghamshire secondary modern (my mum) get the exam results early so things could be prepared.
It also meant I was there the following morning to give guidance (as a twentyish year old) to those who had done better than expected as to what they now could do.
Things like those grades will get you into York, Newcastle or Leeds rather than the poly you expected. Fancy giving it a go? Or how about the Chesham High / Challoner's rather than Amersham College.
Some excellent post on the last thread guys. I mean really good.
Re poor Comprehensives in deprived areas I agree, but this is probably a lot more to do with the issues of the area than anything else. The answer certainly isn't going back to Secondary Moderns.
I see @HYUFD is continuing to compare stats on Grammar schools to Comprehensives and ignoring the samples are completely different because the Grammar has selected.
If you lived in a deprived area 50 years ago you could go to a grammar school if intelligent.
Now your only choice would be a comprehensive likely to be a secondary modern in all but name if you do not have wealthy parents who can send you to private school
That doesn't answer the point.
It does. Unless you live in a wealthy suburb or rural area (or go to a comprehensive or academy where admission is based on church attendance) comprehensives are often just renamed secondary moderns effectively.
@MikeSmithson is correct. It doesn't answer the point. As usual you just raise another point and don't address the point raised. It is a moving target.
Re your point on living in a poor area and being able to go to a grammar, this is very naïve. What actually happens is the middle class and well off in surrounding areas get tutored for the test and fill the spaces. The bright kids in the poor areas don't and they still don't get in by and large.
I lived in a relatively poor large village with 2 primary schools. Only one boy got into the boys grammar school and no girls to the girls grammar school. And that boy dropped out. I have no memory of even taking a test let alone getting tutored. After O levels a whole bunch of replaced those that had dropped out. The system is crap at selection and selecting at 11 is far too soon.
There are limits on how much you can tutor for 11+ and 13+ tests which are designed to test raw iq not subject knowledge as such. Indeed very often even a few bright kids from council estates got into grammar schools even without tutors and then onto Oxbridge or other top universities and professional careers. That path is not open to them to the same extent now if they live in a deprived area and just get sent to the local very average, if that, comp.
If you were well off and had a kid who was not so bright and would not pass the 11 or 13+ you could still send them private however and still do. Most wealthy parents did not send their children to secondary moderns and do not send their children to comprehensives and certainly not comprehensives or academies which are any less than Outstanding. So the rich generally don't use comprehensives anyway while the bright but poor no longer have the opportunities grammars provided. Most grammars of course also have entries at sixth form level too
a) You can tutor for IQ tests very easily. Not sure where you got it that it was difficult. There are lots of techniques.
b) In between our posts I have been chopping wood and did a rough mental calculation of how many should have got into the grammar school from my village all other things being equal (I know how many classes there were, the size of them, the fact that our village was a 3 member ward and how many councillors there were in the borough). The answer is about 25. There was 1 and he dropped out. If that doesn't give you an idea of the disparity between poor and middle class areas nothing will.
c) If you think the well off don't send their children to Comprehensives you live in a different world. I live in a well off area now. I am wealthy by most peoples measure as are most of the people I know. Nearly all use the local comprehensive, which I grant you is good, but that is not what you were saying.
d) Moving to a Grammar at sixth form is too late. The damage has been done. Many won't go who should. Many who were at the Grammar who shouldn't have been have dropped out.
Select by subject on an ongoing basis throughout the child's education.
a) You can't. IQ test results are in part based on genetics, they are difficult to tutor for unlike subject knowledge based exams.
b) And all of them would likely have gone to a sink comprehensive otherwise, at least 1 still got to a grammar.
c) If the wealthy send their kids to a comp it will only be an Outstanding comp they have bought their kids admission to by buying a house in its catchment area, meaning there are well above average house prices for that catchment area. You buy a place at an Outstanding comp or academy much like you buy a place at private school effectively or else you go to church more regularly to get a vicar's reference for a top church school.
d) Sixth form entry for A levels and top university is fine for late developers
a) you can - just allowing children to sit a few past papers so they understand how the questions work allows children to know how to answer the questions quicker allowing them more time to concentrate on more difficult questions.
You can understand the format of the questions but it is harder to prepare for the specific questions that will come up as they are logic and reasoning based, not subject knowledge based which are more tests of memory
As someone who has got 3 of 4 children into local grammars and sent the other private, I can confirm HYUFD doesn't know what he's talking about here, as well as constantly missing the point.
Tutoring makes a massive difference to ability to tackle the 11+. You see it all the time with kids that got tutored and then struggle to keep up once they're in.
It may make a marginal difference to borderline candidates but if you have an iq of 130+ you will get into a grammar school with no tutoring at all even if you live on a council estate
@HYUFD as usual you are pontificating with certainty about something on which I am guessing you have no knowledge whatsoever. It has been pointed by many on here how you can tutor for IQ tests / 11+ not least by just practicing papers, but there are many other techniques as well. I have some experience in this (as I am sure do many others on here) as it was a requirement of a development centre of one of the largest computer companies at the time at which I was a manager to take an IQ test and score at least 130. All undergraduates on the milk round had to do so before an interview. I would interview between 20 and 30 undergraduates on the milk round each year so I was very familiar with these test.
I couldn't do anything for someone who is stupid and could probably only add a point or two to a genius, but for a reasonably bright person I could probably get 10 to 20 IQ points added. Here are some ways how:
a) Just get familiar with the tests by practicing loads and getting your timing right (basic exam technique, but not something an 11 year old without tutoring has a clue about).
b) If you get a sequence of numbers and can't see the next number start subtracting each number from the next number. If the sequence doesn't become apparent then do again until it does. This takes just seconds to do and usually results in the answer. I've not seen one on an IQ test that doesn't.
c) Another common question is an arithmetic question which is too hard to do in the time but with an multiple choice answers so estimation is required. Someone with maths knowledge can do this easily, but someone who hasn't can be given about 5 easy tricks to solve these quickly.
d) Similarly a series of shapes at IQ test level is normally fairly straightforward, but again someone without the ability can be given half a dozen things to look out for in advance.
e) If you are given a True or False tests from a short paragraph and can't get it immediately you can convert it into a logical formulae (if you know how) and these tend to be so simple you can do it very quickly. I have to say that is something I find very useful to this day as I struggle to hold a lot of words in my head but can do logical formulae easily.
I could go on.
In response to the other items on your reply to me. You said 'at least one got to the grammar school'. You obviously missed the point that 'he crashed and burned'.
You also say 6th form is ok for late developers. Where did you get that from? It certainly wasn't for me. I missed out on so much. It was worse for others who were good enough but didn't get the chance. Also what about all those who pass the 11+ and then crash and burn because it isn't appropriate?
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
Where on earth did you get the idea that I hated the 6th form grammar school? I didn't I loved it. I also had a very good secondary school prior to that. You seem to read stuff into posts that aren't there. The problem is that by selecting at 11 I missed stuff that was only available at the grammar school and the grammar school boys missed stuff that was only available at the secondary school. Pointless separation and also doesn't allow for streaming by subject properly across all the pupils.
If you don't think you can tutor for the 11+ how do you explain my example from a poor area with only 1 getting into the Grammar school whereas all things being equal it should have been 20 - 25. It is not a few, it is a lot. The idea that you think Grammar schools are not in anyway heavily biased towards well off parents is just bizarre. They are very heavily weighted against poor areas.
Why should it have been 20-25? Unless they all had high IQs. How many of those 20-25 would be high earning professionals if they did not even have a chance of a grammar school but their only choice was a sink school? Likely 0.
Why should it have been 20 - 25? See earlier post. I'm not repeating it. I did the maths.
Only one went to the Grammar school and he crashed and burned (I have said that so many times). We did not have sink schools. My Secondary school was excellent. My Grammar schools was good. I enjoyed it, but I didn't think the teachers were as good bizarrely, but I did well.
But here is the point you keep on missing: Pupils from both schools were failed by the system. I was lucky, but even I missed out on stuff, but the culture was so ingrained that many very bright pupils from the Secondary school just went on to do apprenticeships. Nothing wrong with that but many were capable of so much more. And many at the Grammar school dropped out after O Levels with just one or two who could have benefited from the Secondary school education. All because we decide the fate of a child at 11. Ridiculous.
If you live in a poor area your local school will be more likely to be a sink school.
There is also nothing wrong with apprenticeships, in fact the highest level apprentices earn more on average than most graduates except those from the Russell Group.
Germany for example has selective gymnasiums like our grammars but also high status apprenticeships too
I never said there was anything wrong with apprenticeships. In fact I specifically went out of my way to say so in plain English, quote 'Nothing wrong with that...'. Sometimes a conversation with you is a challenge! Try reading the 2nd half of that sentence '...but many were capable of so much more.' Eg me. I was lucky, many weren't.
Re poor areas having sink schools. Yes, but not always, particularly if the poor areas are pockets. I was brought up in Surrey, which is not renowned for being poor, but there are poor areas. So it is very easy to see how the 11+ failed pupils. All the Grammar school kids came from the middle class areas and none from the poor areas. I wonder why? I think most of us know.
Can I answer that for HYUFD - the children from poor areas weren't bright enough - after all you don't gain any advantage from a few practice papers.
Now I know you are talking on behalf of HYUFD and not yourself so in answer to HYUFD - It is funny how at 16 lots of them suddenly got brighter and transferred to the Grammar school and a lot of the Grammar school kids got dimmer and dropped out.
Not really. The ones at the top of the sec mod felt encouraged so started doing better. The ones at the bottom of the grammar school got demoralised and did worse and then more or less gave up. That is what happened in the good old days.
For years before the Internet was common I used to help the exam secretary of a local secondary modern (my mum) get the exam results early so things could be prepared.
It also meant I was there the following morning to give guidance (as a twentyish year old) to those who had done better than expected as to what they now could do.
Things like those grades will get you into York, Newcastle or Leeds rather than the poly you expected. Fancy giving it a go?
Good for you. I hope that gives you a permanent lift to the karma. You deserve it.
IQ tests clearly measure SOMETHING and whatever it is, it is closely related to what we generally think of as intelligence. If you speak to someone with an IQ of 60 and then speak to someone with an IQ of 140 the latter will obviously be much more “intelligent” than the former
Quicker, smarter, better with words and ideas. Faster on the uptake. Able to do difficult tasks at speed.
“Speed of successful information processing” is, in fact, a pretty good definition of “intelligence”
And it is commonly reckoned genetics accounts for about half of this faculty
I don't question any of that. I question the ludicrous assertion that you can't train someone to do well at IQ tests. As if they are some magic oracle completely void of learnable material.
There are a lot of interests in preserving the idea that IQ is an completely objective test, but my suspicion is that you are right.
I would guess that it is essentially a matter of practice. You would eventually speed up in being able to answer the questions, meaning that you answer more and get a higher score. However, I doubt that you could go from a really low to a really high score.
I think there is a real danger in assuming that IQ is an absolute measure of intelligence. People can be intelligent in ways that are not picked up in an IQ test. Similarly, people with supposedly high IQs are as susceptible as everyone else to doing stupid things. Some people with high IQs do nothing of significance with their lives. Trying to stratify people by IQ level is a very bad idea.
Having worked for a few decades around highly-intelligent and qualified people, we have developed a rule of thumb: the more educated someone is, the less able they are to function in the real world.
I know plumbers with more common sense than almost all the people with doctorates I know, yet alone the couple of professors I've known. Geniuses in their field, but rather lacking in simple skills, like the ability to pick their kids up from school ...
I actually haven't noticed this. There are people better with brain than hand but I'm not sure about the correlation to a lack of commonsense.
An example: two eggheads whose brains were so deep into code they ignored a fire alarm going off. When there was a real fire.
I got told off once for doing the opposite - we had had so many fire drills that year, I had got into the habit of wondering down to Starbucks for a coffee knowing we had 20 minutes until we were allowed back in.
Trouble is the other person who knew I did that, did the same and the fire warden wasn't our usual one so we were reported missing until someone had the commonsense to phone my mobile and ask where we were.
When I started at company X, they'd just moved from an office in another part of Cambridge. A bunch of us youngsters had been hired at the same time, and our induction handbook had not been altered. So when the first fire alarm happened, we got in our cars and drove to the muster point mentioned in the handbook, where you *must* go in the event of an alarm, ten minutes away...
(Yes, we knew it was wrong. But we thought we were making a point that they hadn't been arsed to alter the handbook.)
As an aside, we also had a programmable coffee machine with a serial port. Which led to its replacement with a simpler one when someone repeatedly mucked up its software trying to reprogram it.
In the new one you entered numbers from 10 to 100 in tens, for things like tea, coffee, orange juice etc. So 10 might be tea, 20 might be coffee, 30 orange squash, 50 water. And the numbers from 0-9 might be the additions; so 0 was plain; 1 was with milk; 2 was with sugar, 3 was with sugar and milk, 4 was with sprinkles, etc.
We soon learnt you could enter numbers like 54, and get water with sprinkles. Or 33 for orange squash with milk and sugar ...
Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance have briefed MPs and apparently said the information people are waiting for - hospitalisations, effects of booster on transmission etc- won’t be found out quickly. And that’s the big dilemma 1/
Scientists on Sage and Nervtag I speak to concede that it’s a difficult and balanced decision for ministers with big economic consequences too- but say by the time the severity data is clear it could be too late to act 2/
Indeed. The hospitalisation / death rates always lag behind new cases. And new Omicron cases continue to grow exponentially. We believe its less nasty to us than others were before vaccinations - but as they have pointed out for the last few weeks a smaller percentage of a very large number is still a problem.
We all want this gone. But despite "its going" and "can't believe the scientists" claims the data disagrees.
The graph I'm currently thinking about is this one
Around the 13th, some of the younger groups accelerated away..... Some older groups changed their rate of increase to lesser extent.... And the oldest groups continued on...
Hmmmmmm.....
There's going to be a lot of spillover during the next week, hopefully the booster programme will keep the oldies out of hospital.
Look at the share. 30% for the Tories is absolutely dire.
I cannot believe the failure to understand the direness of the tories' position. I expected them to hold NS by a couple of thousand and that would be a disaster in reality, but a hold is a hold. They have lost 90% of the former tories on this site. They have also lost the shire bumpkin vote, specifically over the hunting issue, because what is the point of an 80 seat majority if you can't overturn the Hunting Act? Nobody who isn't a shire bumpkin understands this point because they think the foxhunting community was a tiny minority, whereas in shire bumpkin terms it's bloody everybody. Lab maj 5/1 is the deal of the century.
Point of order - every poll on the subject shows fox-hunting unpopular in rural areas too (which may be why a significant proportion of Tory MPs are now opposed to overturning the ban). Even in 2015 a plurality of rural dwellers were against repeal:
I am talking about rural Tories, not about rural people in general
Don't assume a rural Tory supports fox hunting. People that enjoy hunting like it, a lot of other rural Tories hated it for the damage it did and were glad it
IQ tests clearly measure SOMETHING and whatever it is, it is closely related to what we generally think of as intelligence. If you speak to someone with an IQ of 60 and then speak to someone with an IQ of 140 the latter will obviously be much more “intelligent” than the former
Quicker, smarter, better with words and ideas. Faster on the uptake. Able to do difficult tasks at speed.
“Speed of successful information processing” is, in fact, a pretty good definition of “intelligence”
And it is commonly reckoned genetics accounts for about half of this faculty
I don't question any of that. I question the ludicrous assertion that you can't train someone to do well at IQ tests. As if they are some magic oracle completely void of learnable material.
There are a lot of interests in preserving the idea that IQ is an completely objective test, but my suspicion is that you are right.
I would guess that it is essentially a matter of practice. You would eventually speed up in being able to answer the questions, meaning that you answer more and get a higher score. However, I doubt that you could go from a really low to a really high score.
I think there is a real danger in assuming that IQ is an absolute measure of intelligence. People can be intelligent in ways that are not picked up in an IQ test. Similarly, people with supposedly high IQs are as susceptible as everyone else to doing stupid things. Some people with high IQs do nothing of significance with their lives. Trying to stratify people by IQ level is a very bad idea.
Having worked for a few decades around highly-intelligent and qualified people, we have developed a rule of thumb: the more educated someone is, the less able they are to function in the real world.
I know plumbers with more common sense than almost all the people with doctorates I know, yet alone the couple of professors I've known. Geniuses in their field, but rather lacking in simple skills, like the ability to pick their kids up from school ...
I actually haven't noticed this. There are people better with brain than hand but I'm not sure about the correlation to a lack of commonsense.
An example: two eggheads whose brains were so deep into code they ignored a fire alarm going off. When there was a real fire.
I got told off once for doing the opposite - we had had so many fire drills that year, I had got into the habit of wondering down to Starbucks for a coffee knowing we had 20 minutes until we were allowed back in.
Trouble is the other person who knew I did that, did the same and the fire warden wasn't our usual one so we were reported missing until someone had the commonsense to phone my mobile and ask where we were.
My father in law is a professor. I think he is probably the cleverest man I know, in the way his brain works, and in the depth of his knowledge on one particular subject. But I've never met anyone less able to function in the real world. His sense of direction is the worst I've ever come across. Changing a duvet for the first time (at the age of seventy something) he declared that it was 'physically impossible'. He has no idea what the cordian to water ratio in his granddaughters drinks should be (he guessed at 50:50). He once called a taxi from the supermarket because he couldn't remember the route home (he had a car, but wanted someone to follow). For six years, he had the same meal (fish and chips) 49 nights out of 50 because he was living in a different city to his wife and cooking his own tea was beyond him (this didn't have the catastrophic effect on his health that you might imagine). He is a fascinating and charming and entertaining man. But fits the stereotype of high intelligence/low common sense.
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
That's completely and demonstrably false. IQ tests are a learnable skill like any other academic skill.
Nope, over half of IQ is determined by genetics and cannot be learnt
I'm not sure that's true. There's lots of evidence that one can get better and better at IQ tests by learning the patterns inherent in them.
That doesn't mean you're more intelligent - it means you're better at getting good scores on IQ tests.
Mrs J attended a top school in her home country. That country ranks all students at their equivalent of A-levels, so you end up with a number from 1 to ~700,000. She ended up ~200 out of that ~700,000.
I'm not saying this to brag (*), but for this reason: her best friend took the same classes. And ended up one position ahead of her.
They didn't cheat: but they studied and revised closely together. Two students at the same school ended up with adjacent places, out of hundreds of thousands.
What you are taught matters massively. Training for tests matters. The same goes for IQ tests, which Mrs J is very sniffy about.
She likes to rub her results in, because I really mucked up my A-levels. Not that that's really something that's sent me into the gutter...
(*) though she is hyper-intelligent with a high IQ, and she is also a bit of a muppet.
Sounds like Turkey - where it's worth saying you do end up with a few 100s on the exact same level although they are then ranked in some random order.
And your position on the list determines whether you get into the uni course you want or not.
Got it in one. But from my understanding, when you get near to the top, there are generally fewer people in each position - and many, many people with the same score in the middle of the bell curve.
Also worth saying that there are a lot of private tutors in Istanbul and elsewhere all charging significant amounts to get your child a couple of more points. The upper floors of the main streets in Kadikoy are full of tutor and english schools.
Mrs J didn't need an English school: at the age of seven she was dropped into London for a couple of years, knowing no English. She had to learn it very quickly. She went back to Turkey after a few years (via Tehran in the middle of the Iran-Iraq war...), and the standard of her English is better than mine.
Kids are incredibly flexible. But they need support and nurturing.
Oh, I suspected that she didn't need it - my point was that because it's a ranking based system parents are willing to spend what they can afford to get their child one place higher up the list - and so many parents are doing it that they've displaced offices from the areas near residential parts of Istanbul.
And what is true in Istanbul is equally true in the UK when it comes to the 11 /13 plus
Yep, and that's what I've sorta been saying: parenting matters as much (more than?) schooling. But that's not just about money. It's about attention and caring. Sitting down with your kids to do the homework is a luxury.
Part of me wonders if this is part of the reason why so many public school children go off the rails, despite their advantages.
I'm a big believer the meta-learning as the core skill - learning how to learn. And the belief that one *can* learn new things.
IQ tests clearly measure SOMETHING and whatever it is, it is closely related to what we generally think of as intelligence. If you speak to someone with an IQ of 60 and then speak to someone with an IQ of 140 the latter will obviously be much more “intelligent” than the former
Quicker, smarter, better with words and ideas. Faster on the uptake. Able to do difficult tasks at speed.
“Speed of successful information processing” is, in fact, a pretty good definition of “intelligence”
And it is commonly reckoned genetics accounts for about half of this faculty
I don't question any of that. I question the ludicrous assertion that you can't train someone to do well at IQ tests. As if they are some magic oracle completely void of learnable material.
There are a lot of interests in preserving the idea that IQ is an completely objective test, but my suspicion is that you are right.
I would guess that it is essentially a matter of practice. You would eventually speed up in being able to answer the questions, meaning that you answer more and get a higher score. However, I doubt that you could go from a really low to a really high score.
I think there is a real danger in assuming that IQ is an absolute measure of intelligence. People can be intelligent in ways that are not picked up in an IQ test. Similarly, people with supposedly high IQs are as susceptible as everyone else to doing stupid things. Some people with high IQs do nothing of significance with their lives. Trying to stratify people by IQ level is a very bad idea.
Having worked for a few decades around highly-intelligent and qualified people, we have developed a rule of thumb: the more educated someone is, the less able they are to function in the real world.
I know plumbers with more common sense than almost all the people with doctorates I know, yet alone the couple of professors I've known. Geniuses in their field, but rather lacking in simple skills, like the ability to pick their kids up from school ...
I actually haven't noticed this. There are people better with brain than hand but I'm not sure about the correlation to a lack of commonsense.
An example: two eggheads whose brains were so deep into code they ignored a fire alarm going off. When there was a real fire.
Look at the share. 30% for the Tories is absolutely dire.
I cannot believe the failure to understand the direness of the tories' position. I expected them to hold NS by a couple of thousand and that would be a disaster in reality, but a hold is a hold. They have lost 90% of the former tories on this site. They have also lost the shire bumpkin vote, specifically over the hunting issue, because what is the point of an 80 seat majority if you can't overturn the Hunting Act? Nobody who isn't a shire bumpkin understands this point because they think the foxhunting community was a tiny minority, whereas in shire bumpkin terms it's bloody everybody. Lab maj 5/1 is the deal of the century.
Point of order - every poll on the subject shows fox-hunting unpopular in rural areas too (which may be why a significant proportion of Tory MPs are now opposed to overturning the ban). Even in 2015 a plurality of rural dwellers were against repeal:
I am talking about rural Tories, not about rural people in general
Don't assume a rural Tory supports fox hunting. People that enjoy hunting like it, a lot of other rural Tories hated it for the damage it did and were glad it
This is an argument I would rather amputate my own testicles with a hacksaw than get into. I am just trying to explain NS and to suggest a similar factor in rural seats at the next GE.
Having read the discussion above; I must conclude that there is a deeply religious fervour about vaccination evident on this website. People believe that vaccination is the solution to the pandemic because they believe in science, and will willingly sacrifice all sorts of freedoms in support of it. Yet they overlook its obvious limitations; namely that the vaccination programme did not deliver what it promised as it did not end the pandemic; it did not prevent new variants from arising; and it does not stop people from catching and spreading the virus. The old political maxim that the masses are easy to herd is turned on its head; it turns out that actually the intellectuals are easy to herd, when it comes to certain policies. This reinforces a belief that I hold strongly, that self appointed experts and university educated people are not necessarily smarter in the end than people with no education who go through life living by their wits.
The vaccination program didn't promise any of those things.
Well, quite. The vaccination programme was about saving lives (with help from masks and lockdowns at the peak), and to an impressive degree it's done the job.
The debate now is more about the importance of reducing widespread illness vs the importance of being free to be out and about. It actually should be a less heated debate.
I disagree - it should be more heated
Extreme measures were taken 18 months ago (and in my view justified). There are people trying to use that precedent today when it is unwarranted- they must be resisted at every turn
Exactly. The Overton window had been shifted to such an extent that previously unthinkable measures (such as forced closure of businesses, limiting the number of people you can have in your own home) are deemed part of the usual policy toolkit to be considered for use on a precautionary basis.
It was acceptable prior to vaccines, it shouldn't be now.
If the government needs to act, if should be through encouraging (but not through law) vaccine uptake and the reduction of social contacts (the latter until we know more about the new variant).
IQ tests clearly measure SOMETHING and whatever it is, it is closely related to what we generally think of as intelligence. If you speak to someone with an IQ of 60 and then speak to someone with an IQ of 140 the latter will obviously be much more “intelligent” than the former
Quicker, smarter, better with words and ideas. Faster on the uptake. Able to do difficult tasks at speed.
“Speed of successful information processing” is, in fact, a pretty good definition of “intelligence”
And it is commonly reckoned genetics accounts for about half of this faculty
I don't question any of that. I question the ludicrous assertion that you can't train someone to do well at IQ tests. As if they are some magic oracle completely void of learnable material.
There are a lot of interests in preserving the idea that IQ is an completely objective test, but my suspicion is that you are right.
I would guess that it is essentially a matter of practice. You would eventually speed up in being able to answer the questions, meaning that you answer more and get a higher score. However, I doubt that you could go from a really low to a really high score.
I think there is a real danger in assuming that IQ is an absolute measure of intelligence. People can be intelligent in ways that are not picked up in an IQ test. Similarly, people with supposedly high IQs are as susceptible as everyone else to doing stupid things. Some people with high IQs do nothing of significance with their lives. Trying to stratify people by IQ level is a very bad idea.
Having worked for a few decades around highly-intelligent and qualified people, we have developed a rule of thumb: the more educated someone is, the less able they are to function in the real world.
I know plumbers with more common sense than almost all the people with doctorates I know, yet alone the couple of professors I've known. Geniuses in their field, but rather lacking in simple skills, like the ability to pick their kids up from school ...
I actually haven't noticed this. There are people better with brain than hand but I'm not sure about the correlation to a lack of commonsense.
An example: two eggheads whose brains were so deep into code they ignored a fire alarm going off. When there was a real fire.
Fried eggheads?
There’s only two types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don’t.
IQ tests clearly measure SOMETHING and whatever it is, it is closely related to what we generally think of as intelligence. If you speak to someone with an IQ of 60 and then speak to someone with an IQ of 140 the latter will obviously be much more “intelligent” than the former
Quicker, smarter, better with words and ideas. Faster on the uptake. Able to do difficult tasks at speed.
“Speed of successful information processing” is, in fact, a pretty good definition of “intelligence”
And it is commonly reckoned genetics accounts for about half of this faculty
I don't question any of that. I question the ludicrous assertion that you can't train someone to do well at IQ tests. As if they are some magic oracle completely void of learnable material.
There are a lot of interests in preserving the idea that IQ is an completely objective test, but my suspicion is that you are right.
I would guess that it is essentially a matter of practice. You would eventually speed up in being able to answer the questions, meaning that you answer more and get a higher score. However, I doubt that you could go from a really low to a really high score.
I think there is a real danger in assuming that IQ is an absolute measure of intelligence. People can be intelligent in ways that are not picked up in an IQ test. Similarly, people with supposedly high IQs are as susceptible as everyone else to doing stupid things. Some people with high IQs do nothing of significance with their lives. Trying to stratify people by IQ level is a very bad idea.
Having worked for a few decades around highly-intelligent and qualified people, we have developed a rule of thumb: the more educated someone is, the less able they are to function in the real world.
I know plumbers with more common sense than almost all the people with doctorates I know, yet alone the couple of professors I've known. Geniuses in their field, but rather lacking in simple skills, like the ability to pick their kids up from school ...
I actually haven't noticed this. There are people better with brain than hand but I'm not sure about the correlation to a lack of commonsense.
An example: two eggheads whose brains were so deep into code they ignored a fire alarm going off. When there was a real fire.
I got told off once for doing the opposite - we had had so many fire drills that year, I had got into the habit of wondering down to Starbucks for a coffee knowing we had 20 minutes until we were allowed back in.
Trouble is the other person who knew I did that, did the same and the fire warden wasn't our usual one so we were reported missing until someone had the commonsense to phone my mobile and ask where we were.
My father in law is a professor. I think he is probably the cleverest man I know, in the way his brain works, and in the depth of his knowledge on one particular subject. But I've never met anyone less able to function in the real world. His sense of direction is the worst I've ever come across. Changing a duvet for the first time (at the age of seventy something) he declared that it was 'physically impossible'. He has no idea what the cordian to water ratio in his granddaughters drinks should be (he guessed at 50:50). He once called a taxi from the supermarket because he couldn't remember the route home (he had a car, but wanted someone to follow). For six years, he had the same meal (fish and chips) 49 nights out of 50 because he was living in a different city to his wife and cooking his own tea was beyond him (this didn't have the catastrophic effect on his health that you might imagine). He is a fascinating and charming and entertaining man. But fits the stereotype of high intelligence/low common sense.
Personally I think IQ tests should be consigned to the waste bin of history. [And I excel at them].
They belong to a mindset that the purpose of an education system is winnowing - to remove the chaff from the kernel in order to select who should proceed to higher levels of education.
Particularly now that we are in a knowledge economy where information is a commodity, I think education systems need to concentrate more on helping everyone learn* to their fullest potential, rather than stratifying pupils in arbitrary ways using proxy tests that don't align with real world requirements in order to give them a one score fits all number.
* by learn I mean knowing how to identify the right questions to ask and how to go about getting the answers.
IQ tests clearly measure SOMETHING and whatever it is, it is closely related to what we generally think of as intelligence. If you speak to someone with an IQ of 60 and then speak to someone with an IQ of 140 the latter will obviously be much more “intelligent” than the former
Quicker, smarter, better with words and ideas. Faster on the uptake. Able to do difficult tasks at speed.
“Speed of successful information processing” is, in fact, a pretty good definition of “intelligence”
And it is commonly reckoned genetics accounts for about half of this faculty
I don't question any of that. I question the ludicrous assertion that you can't train someone to do well at IQ tests. As if they are some magic oracle completely void of learnable material.
There are a lot of interests in preserving the idea that IQ is an completely objective test, but my suspicion is that you are right.
I would guess that it is essentially a matter of practice. You would eventually speed up in being able to answer the questions, meaning that you answer more and get a higher score. However, I doubt that you could go from a really low to a really high score.
I think there is a real danger in assuming that IQ is an absolute measure of intelligence. People can be intelligent in ways that are not picked up in an IQ test. Similarly, people with supposedly high IQs are as susceptible as everyone else to doing stupid things. Some people with high IQs do nothing of significance with their lives. Trying to stratify people by IQ level is a very bad idea.
Re your last para - agree completely.
Re the rest I also agree. See my much earlier post on techniques on how to improve on the test. The reality is that someone stupid can't improve. Someone very, very clever can only improve a little. However a reasonably bright person can be taught techniques to make reasonably big increases. I don't know how much but I am guessing 10 - 20 points, but not from one extreme to the other.
You cannot tutor for raw IQ tests of logic and reasoning to the same level as you can tutor for subject knowledge tests. In any case a pupil with a high IQ from a council estate would easily pass an IQ test tutored or not, the fact a few average IQ middle class pupils might scrape a pass at 11 pass after being heavily tutored does not make much difference to the former.
As opposed to all pupils crashing and burning at a sink comprehensive, at least grammar schools offered those with high IQs from deprived areas a chance to get on.
Sixth form entry offers a chance for those who are late developers and do well at GCSEs the fact you hated sixth form would probably have applied whichever school you went to
That's completely and demonstrably false. IQ tests are a learnable skill like any other academic skill.
Nope, over half of IQ is determined by genetics and cannot be learnt
I'm not sure that's true. There's lots of evidence that one can get better and better at IQ tests by learning the patterns inherent in them.
That doesn't mean you're more intelligent - it means you're better at getting good scores on IQ tests.
Mrs J attended a top school in her home country. That country ranks all students at their equivalent of A-levels, so you end up with a number from 1 to ~700,000. She ended up ~200 out of that ~700,000.
I'm not saying this to brag (*), but for this reason: her best friend took the same classes. And ended up one position ahead of her.
They didn't cheat: but they studied and revised closely together. Two students at the same school ended up with adjacent places, out of hundreds of thousands.
What you are taught matters massively. Training for tests matters. The same goes for IQ tests, which Mrs J is very sniffy about.
She likes to rub her results in, because I really mucked up my A-levels. Not that that's really something that's sent me into the gutter...
(*) though she is hyper-intelligent with a high IQ, and she is also a bit of a muppet.
Sounds like Turkey - where it's worth saying you do end up with a few 100s on the exact same level although they are then ranked in some random order.
And your position on the list determines whether you get into the uni course you want or not.
Got it in one. But from my understanding, when you get near to the top, there are generally fewer people in each position - and many, many people with the same score in the middle of the bell curve.
Also worth saying that there are a lot of private tutors in Istanbul and elsewhere all charging significant amounts to get your child a couple of more points. The upper floors of the main streets in Kadikoy are full of tutor and english schools.
Mrs J didn't need an English school: at the age of seven she was dropped into London for a couple of years, knowing no English. She had to learn it very quickly. She went back to Turkey after a few years (via Tehran in the middle of the Iran-Iraq war...), and the standard of her English is better than mine.
Kids are incredibly flexible. But they need support and nurturing.
Oh, I suspected that she didn't need it - my point was that because it's a ranking based system parents are willing to spend what they can afford to get their child one place higher up the list - and so many parents are doing it that they've displaced offices from the areas near residential parts of Istanbul.
And what is true in Istanbul is equally true in the UK when it comes to the 11 /13 plus
Yep, and that's what I've sorta been saying: parenting matters as much (more than?) schooling. But that's not just about money. It's about attention and caring. Sitting down with your kids to do the homework is a luxury.
Part of me wonders if this is part of the reason why so many public school children go off the rails, despite their advantages.
I'm a big believer the meta-learning as the core skill - learning how to learn. And the belief that one *can* learn new things.
Especially the latter. Am amazed whenever I contact old Uni friends. They have gained more knowledge in the field they specialised in. Seldom have they developed an entirely brand new field of learning or interest.
Personally I think IQ tests should be consigned to the waste bin of history. [And I excel at them].
They belong to a mindset that the purpose of an education system is winnowing - to remove the chaff from the kernel in order to select who should proceed to higher levels of education.
Particularly now that we are in a knowledge economy where information is a commodity, I think education systems need to concentrate more on helping everyone learn* to their fullest potential, rather than stratifying pupils in arbitrary ways using proxy tests that don't align with real world requirements in order to give them a one score fits all number.
* by learn I mean knowing how to identify the right questions to ask and how to go about getting the answers.
IQ tests clearly measure SOMETHING and whatever it is, it is closely related to what we generally think of as intelligence. If you speak to someone with an IQ of 60 and then speak to someone with an IQ of 140 the latter will obviously be much more “intelligent” than the former
Quicker, smarter, better with words and ideas. Faster on the uptake. Able to do difficult tasks at speed.
“Speed of successful information processing” is, in fact, a pretty good definition of “intelligence”
And it is commonly reckoned genetics accounts for about half of this faculty
I don't question any of that. I question the ludicrous assertion that you can't train someone to do well at IQ tests. As if they are some magic oracle completely void of learnable material.
There are a lot of interests in preserving the idea that IQ is an completely objective test, but my suspicion is that you are right.
I would guess that it is essentially a matter of practice. You would eventually speed up in being able to answer the questions, meaning that you answer more and get a higher score. However, I doubt that you could go from a really low to a really high score.
I think there is a real danger in assuming that IQ is an absolute measure of intelligence. People can be intelligent in ways that are not picked up in an IQ test. Similarly, people with supposedly high IQs are as susceptible as everyone else to doing stupid things. Some people with high IQs do nothing of significance with their lives. Trying to stratify people by IQ level is a very bad idea.
Re your last para - agree completely.
Re the rest I also agree. See my much earlier post on techniques on how to improve on the test. The reality is that someone stupid can't improve. Someone very, very clever can only improve a little. However a reasonably bright person can be taught techniques to make reasonably big increases. I don't know how much but I am guessing 10 - 20 points, but not from one extreme to the other.
I put IQ tests in the same category as lie detector tests.
Both wildly inaccurate and yet people believe they are infallible.
IQ tests clearly measure SOMETHING and whatever it is, it is closely related to what we generally think of as intelligence. If you speak to someone with an IQ of 60 and then speak to someone with an IQ of 140 the latter will obviously be much more “intelligent” than the former
Quicker, smarter, better with words and ideas. Faster on the uptake. Able to do difficult tasks at speed.
“Speed of successful information processing” is, in fact, a pretty good definition of “intelligence”
And it is commonly reckoned genetics accounts for about half of this faculty
I don't question any of that. I question the ludicrous assertion that you can't train someone to do well at IQ tests. As if they are some magic oracle completely void of learnable material.
There are a lot of interests in preserving the idea that IQ is an completely objective test, but my suspicion is that you are right.
I would guess that it is essentially a matter of practice. You would eventually speed up in being able to answer the questions, meaning that you answer more and get a higher score. However, I doubt that you could go from a really low to a really high score.
I think there is a real danger in assuming that IQ is an absolute measure of intelligence. People can be intelligent in ways that are not picked up in an IQ test. Similarly, people with supposedly high IQs are as susceptible as everyone else to doing stupid things. Some people with high IQs do nothing of significance with their lives. Trying to stratify people by IQ level is a very bad idea.
Having worked for a few decades around highly-intelligent and qualified people, we have developed a rule of thumb: the more educated someone is, the less able they are to function in the real world.
I know plumbers with more common sense than almost all the people with doctorates I know, yet alone the couple of professors I've known. Geniuses in their field, but rather lacking in simple skills, like the ability to pick their kids up from school ...
I actually haven't noticed this. There are people better with brain than hand but I'm not sure about the correlation to a lack of commonsense.
An example: two eggheads whose brains were so deep into code they ignored a fire alarm going off. When there was a real fire.
Fried eggheads?
There’s only two types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don’t.
There’s only 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don’t, works better.
Look at the share. 30% for the Tories is absolutely dire.
I cannot believe the failure to understand the direness of the tories' position. I expected them to hold NS by a couple of thousand and that would be a disaster in reality, but a hold is a hold. They have lost 90% of the former tories on this site. They have also lost the shire bumpkin vote, specifically over the hunting issue, because what is the point of an 80 seat majority if you can't overturn the Hunting Act? Nobody who isn't a shire bumpkin understands this point because they think the foxhunting community was a tiny minority, whereas in shire bumpkin terms it's bloody everybody. Lab maj 5/1 is the deal of the century.
Point of order - every poll on the subject shows fox-hunting unpopular in rural areas too (which may be why a significant proportion of Tory MPs are now opposed to overturning the ban). Even in 2015 a plurality of rural dwellers were against repeal:
Not least because many people living in the countryside know that hunts are often the most arrogant, entitled people, who think nothing of trespassing on land they haven’t permission to enter, and have been known to trash gardens and kill domestic pets. Look at the way that woman recently videoed kicking and slapping her horse after it stepped into the road behaved.
Comments
But the Tories - unlike Labour in 05-10 parliament - can possibly turn things round if they dump Boris.
And your position on the list determines whether you get into the uni course you want or not.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b09z08w3
I know plumbers with more common sense than almost all the people with doctorates I know, yet alone the couple of professors I've known. Geniuses in their field, but rather lacking in simple skills, like the ability to pick their kids up from school ...
I've got myself into trouble in the past. There are things I can say, and things I cannot. But I do call her 'muppet-wife' to her knowledge. In fact, it was part of the best man's speech ...
And we're still married. Perhaps because you don't know what she says about me in public ...
Though some, like Fermi, were outstanding at both things.
Yes and no.
It is the fate of a government in power for a long time, Labour polled 15% in the 2009 Euros.
Just look at how unpopular the Conservatives became in 1992.
April 1992 the Conservatives received the most votes ever at a general election for a single party. From 1993 onwards they didn't lead in the polls for over seven years, nearly eight.
At which point does Peppa make the decision about what happens after Christmas Day? And do we want that decision now, or on Wednesday when we're at c. 130k or on Friday when we're on c. 240k? Do we even have the testing capacity to process that many tests?
@PoliticsForAlI
Police cars revolving light | NEW: Brigitte Macron is planning to take legal action over rumours circulated on Twitter that she was born as a man
I know the source is a bit dodgy, but this rumour is genuinely trending on French twatter with the hashtag #JeanMichelTrogneux (presumably the name they've given the 'man' who became Brigitte)
I think grammar schools now are very different.
Probably just tactical unwind mind.
No offence.
If anything, delta is petering out.
I'm giving the little 'un at least half an hour's homework every day, even during holidays - if he's good I'll give him Christmas Day off...
I have no idea if he is 'brighter' than other kids his age - but IMV the work ethic we are hopefully instilling in him, as well as the knowledge, will stand him in good stead. But it will be knowledge, experience and skills he is gaining, not raw intelligence. (*)
IME most parents do not do this. Then again, we're lucky in that he seems to enjoy it, he is an only child (**), and I have the time to spend with him - i.e. I'm not working all hours Godsend to pay for food.
(*) Although as he currently loves penguins, and calls himself one, perhaps I've taken a mis-step ...
(**) I also wonder whether this is a small factor in the Chinese economic miracle: if you only have one child, you can coach them much more individually than if you had five.
Re the rest I also agree. See my much earlier post on techniques on how to improve on the test. The reality is that someone stupid can't improve. Someone very, very clever can only improve a little. However a reasonably bright person can be taught techniques to make reasonably big increases. I don't know how much but I am guessing 10 - 20 points, but not from one extreme to the other.
IMV pre-16yrs schooling doesn't matter much for the brightest kids - they'll learn and prosper anyway, especially nowadays with the Internet as a vast source of information.
Kids who are less bright, or who have parents who are struggling, gain the most from a good school.
NSW is the ideal setting to measure the severity of Omicron, and it is showing a CHR for Omicron that is <1/2 of Delta
Five reasons it's ideal:
*Prior infection is irrelevant (~2-3% of NSW is prior infected)
*Delta cases were steady through Nov, making a stable baseline CHR
1/15 </i>
https://twitter.com/andrewlilley_au/status/1473098204036091912?s=21
And that's the issue with IQ tests - the very brightest do well regardless but the bottom half of it can be gamed.
Kids are incredibly flexible. But they need support and nurturing.
2694
4318
3607 <- 14th
4359
9932
14039
19521
16612
24211
14614 <- 21st
We'll know whether or not today's lower number is a blip as we had last tuesday or more of a true figure.
Wednesday through Friday is when you find out what the pandemic is actually doing...
The government's own data gives 2 day multiples as follows: 2.13, 2.19, 1.49, 2.13, 2.49, 1.81, 1.63. Whilst the last 2 days are below 2 there is nothing to suggest they won't go back above 2 once all samples are in.
It isn't reproducing *quite* as fast as they said. But its only 4 hours behind the "every 2 days"
No one is disputing that. If you take two people who have no experience of IQ tests, then you'll get a pretty good rule of thumb.
Equally, though, you can train people to take IQ tests and radically move their score upwards. One study showed a 23 point average increase in just three months with 11-12 year olds. Were those kids actually smarter after three months, or did they just get better at taking the tests?
A mistake many people make when they look at things like Mastermind.
I quite like Only Connect, though.
And what is true in Istanbul is equally true in the UK when it comes to the 11 /13 plus
Extreme measures were taken 18 months ago (and in my view justified). There are people trying to use that precedent today when it is unwarranted- they must be resisted at every turn
https://muppet.fandom.com/wiki/Dr._Bunsen_Honeydew
Scientists on Sage and Nervtag I speak to concede that it’s a difficult and balanced decision for ministers with big economic consequences too- but say by the time the severity data is clear it could be too late to act 2/
https://twitter.com/AnushkaAsthana/status/1473374088538300418?s=20
We all want this gone. But despite "its going" and "can't believe the scientists" claims the data disagrees.
Part of me wonders if this is part of the reason why so many public school children go off the rails, despite their advantages.
I’m a patient chap. I can wait til May.
Beaconsfield High were even more ruthless and unilaterally announced that they would start taking 11 year olds - and in 1 attempt to make more money destroyed Bucks middle school system.
Interesting that you said 23 point increase. Based upon absolutely nothing whatsoever I reckoned for a moderately intelligent person they could be trained to up their score by 10 - 20 (see earlier posts). Not out by much. I didn't think you could anything for a stupid person and only a very small amount for a genius.
Trouble is the other person who knew I did that, did the same and the fire warden wasn't our usual one so we were reported missing until someone had the commonsense to phone my mobile and ask where we were.
Around the 13th, some of the younger groups accelerated away..... Some older groups changed their rate of increase to lesser extent.... And the oldest groups continued on...
Hmmmmmm.....
Just saying the politics of this isn’t sure to be great for Boris and cabinet, the Sun and telegraph moaning today he isn’t giving clarity to people planning for next week, Scotland and Wales are giving that clarity, if Boris does end up copying them it looks like following late not leading. That is a point isn’t it?
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2015/01/09/british-people-still-support-fox-hunting-ban
It also meant I was there the following morning to give guidance (as a twentyish year old) to those who had done better than expected as to what they now could do.
Things like those grades will get you into York, Newcastle or Leeds rather than the poly you expected. Fancy giving it a go? Or how about the Chesham High / Challoner's rather than Amersham College.
(Yes, we knew it was wrong. But we thought we were making a point that they hadn't been arsed to alter the handbook.)
As an aside, we also had a programmable coffee machine with a serial port. Which led to its replacement with a simpler one when someone repeatedly mucked up its software trying to reprogram it.
In the new one you entered numbers from 10 to 100 in tens, for things like tea, coffee, orange juice etc. So 10 might be tea, 20 might be coffee, 30 orange squash, 50 water.
And the numbers from 0-9 might be the additions; so 0 was plain; 1 was with milk; 2 was with sugar, 3 was with sugar and milk, 4 was with sprinkles, etc.
We soon learnt you could enter numbers like 54, and get water with sprinkles. Or 33 for orange squash with milk and sugar ...
Engineers. Who'd work with 'em?
@DionneGrant
Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon passed GCSE maths aged 10, speaks six languages and started an Oxford degree at 15.
At 31, the mathematician and founder of Stemettes, a social initiative promoting women in STEM, has become the first Black woman on longstanding quiz show, "Countdown".
https://twitter.com/DionneGrant/status/1473030364910301188
I am glad I am vindicated.
He is a fascinating and charming and entertaining man. But fits the stereotype of high intelligence/low common sense.
It was acceptable prior to vaccines, it shouldn't be now.
If the government needs to act, if should be through encouraging (but not through law) vaccine uptake and the reduction of social contacts (the latter until we know more about the new variant).
They belong to a mindset that the purpose of an education system is winnowing - to remove the chaff from the kernel in order to select who should proceed to higher levels of education.
Particularly now that we are in a knowledge economy where information is a commodity, I think education systems need to concentrate more on helping everyone learn* to their fullest potential, rather than stratifying pupils in arbitrary ways using proxy tests that don't align with real world requirements in order to give them a one score fits all number.
* by learn I mean knowing how to identify the right questions to ask and how to go about getting the answers.
Am amazed whenever I contact old Uni friends. They have gained more knowledge in the field they specialised in.
Seldom have they developed an entirely brand new field of learning or interest.
Both wildly inaccurate and yet people believe they are infallible.