If the twin evils of Trump and Boris Johnson's Bluekip where swept off the board of politics, my world would be a brighter, better place. Both are a blight.
Much gnashing of teeth in the posher factions of Scottish Labour:
’The opportunities of failure’
... the abject failure of Scottish Labour presents an opportunity to knock down and rebuild a party which can once again be relevant and speak for the people it seeks to represent.
... here in Scotland we seem doomed to remain a third wheel in a politics in which the Tories pose as champions of the union and the SNP pose as champions of the left. Oh for some robust scrutiny that would expose both those poses for the tissue-thin propaganda that they are. Scottish Labour could and should be filling both of those roles, instead of vacillating on one and burying the other in ideology rather than action.
... every failure presents an opportunity, and that surely must mean Scottish Labour presents the greatest opportunity in Scotland right now, because it has become the byword for political failure.
... We need to become a Starmer backing, EU positive, anti nat party. Vacillators over independence should be shown the door. Lexiteers should be ushered to the exit.
... We’re going to lose the next Scottish election. Badly.
Ah. Mr Hothersall is the author, now why did I guess from the excerpt you cited?
A bit like SeanT and Antifrank, Duncan Hothersall is one of those writers you can recognise without reading the name. He’s usually calling everyone else a bunch of babies while simultaneously throwing all his toys out the pram, kicking a puppy, and badly soiling his nappy.
Much gnashing of teeth in the posher factions of Scottish Labour:
’The opportunities of failure’
... the abject failure of Scottish Labour presents an opportunity to knock down and rebuild a party which can once again be relevant and speak for the people it seeks to represent.
... here in Scotland we seem doomed to remain a third wheel in a politics in which the Tories pose as champions of the union and the SNP pose as champions of the left. Oh for some robust scrutiny that would expose both those poses for the tissue-thin propaganda that they are. Scottish Labour could and should be filling both of those roles, instead of vacillating on one and burying the other in ideology rather than action.
... every failure presents an opportunity, and that surely must mean Scottish Labour presents the greatest opportunity in Scotland right now, because it has become the byword for political failure.
... We need to become a Starmer backing, EU positive, anti nat party. Vacillators over independence should be shown the door. Lexiteers should be ushered to the exit.
... We’re going to lose the next Scottish election. Badly.
Good, old Duncan, I'd forgotten Labourhame existed. Presumably vacillators over independence being shown the door includes the 40% plus of current SLab voters who'd vote Yes.
Hard to draw any other conclusion: Duncan wants to expel the 40% who support independence, the 10% who support Brexit, and the 30% who supported Corbyn. That’ll leave the Edinburgh South branch happy as Larry, sipping tea and munching on scrumptious scones with lashings of cream and jam. All the other SLab constituencies will consist of a man and his dog.
One wonders what Keir Hardie and Cunninghame Graham would say if they found their Party reduced to a tearoom-full of the Morningside genteel.
Much gnashing of teeth in the posher factions of Scottish Labour:
’The opportunities of failure’
... the abject failure of Scottish Labour presents an opportunity to knock down and rebuild a party which can once again be relevant and speak for the people it seeks to represent.
... here in Scotland we seem doomed to remain a third wheel in a politics in which the Tories pose as champions of the union and the SNP pose as champions of the left. Oh for some robust scrutiny that would expose both those poses for the tissue-thin propaganda that they are. Scottish Labour could and should be filling both of those roles, instead of vacillating on one and burying the other in ideology rather than action.
... every failure presents an opportunity, and that surely must mean Scottish Labour presents the greatest opportunity in Scotland right now, because it has become the byword for political failure.
... We need to become a Starmer backing, EU positive, anti nat party. Vacillators over independence should be shown the door. Lexiteers should be ushered to the exit.
... We’re going to lose the next Scottish election. Badly.
Ah. Mr Hothersall is the author, now why did I guess from the excerpt you cited?
A bit like SeanT and Antifrank, Duncan Hothersall is one of those writers you can recognise without reading the name. He’s usually calling everyone else a bunch of babies while simultaneously throwing all his toys out the pram, kicking a puppy, and badly soiling his nappy.
And Peter Conrad's book reviews (not primarily political, I know, but he has that same trait).
And here is what that lagged dataset now looks like up to the 13th of July
I used to wonder if he was just stupid but I now realise he is deliberately malicious. Hoping from lagged data set to lagged data set to pretend it's always trending strongly downwards.
I'm curious why that data would be lagged.
Hospitalisation by date of hospitalisation should be something that its possible to automate getting pretty swiftly I would have thought? I would have thought hospitalisations would get locked on the day they get hospitalised so if the hospitals are sending data across daily I don't understand why it would need to take much more than 24 hours or so to get the accurate data.
That's different to other data sets that naturally lag much more, but that seems like an odd one to be lagging so badly. Means that not only are you looking at the rear view mirror if you look at hospitalisations (Since it takes about a fortnight to go from infection to hospital but then its taking) another fortnight for the hospitalisations that have actually happened already to even show in the data. So this data is essentially a month out of date already by the first day you even get it.
Part of what makes Trump such a compelling character is the unknowable nature of his motivation. There is zero political benefit to him in any way to comment on GM's legal travails. Yet he does and at some length. Why? Is he just mentally ill? Is it is as simple as that?
Biden is going to be so boring if he wins.
Which is actually a risk, given how fond most Americans are of an entertaining story, there will surely be some wanting to see a few more chapters.
scientists did not warn, a group of scientists did. Should their advice have been taken over that of other scientists giving advice? We may well think so, some will have said as much at the time, but its not as implied a situation where they simply ignored scientists. Heck, there was a brief period of attacks for listening too much to scientists and not applying any judgement themselves.
That was almost exactly the date when SAGE DID pivot to a lockdown strategy, which the gov't implemented over the next 9 or so days.
As a "Briton" who got German citizenship this year, the reason why many of us have rushed to do this is that Germany does not normally allow dual citizenship. An exception is made for citizens of other EU countries. Applying for German citizenship in the next years would involve giving up British citizenship if successful, whereas those of us who have already done it can keep both. Numbers will definitely go down again. Also the process of getting citizenship is not much harder than getting leave to stay. 2 months after handing in a form and supporting documents and paying about 200 euros I got my citizenship.
I also know people who spend part of their lives in Germany who have formalised their status here, where previously they had just been here as EU citizens (with an EHIC card)
I'm not sure those figures are evidence of much. But I do know health professionals who had been considering moving TO the UK who ruled it out after the Brexit vote and May's later moronic comments about only wanting British doctors in the NHS.
I was lucky enough to be born with dual citizenship, but given the anti-Europe messages that come out of the UK Little England these days, I no longer identify as British and use my Irish passport when a passport is requested.
Its weird you say that when it appears our citizenship laws appear more open than many others.
ONS figures - just 217 deaths for the week ending 24th July where Covid was mentioned on the death cert, an average of 31 per day. So Covid was mentioned on the death cert on just 2.5% of all deaths in that week. That just shows how silly PHE death figures are
Much gnashing of teeth in the posher factions of Scottish Labour:
’The opportunities of failure’
... the abject failure of Scottish Labour presents an opportunity to knock down and rebuild a party which can once again be relevant and speak for the people it seeks to represent.
... here in Scotland we seem doomed to remain a third wheel in a politics in which the Tories pose as champions of the union and the SNP pose as champions of the left. Oh for some robust scrutiny that would expose both those poses for the tissue-thin propaganda that they are. Scottish Labour could and should be filling both of those roles, instead of vacillating on one and burying the other in ideology rather than action.
... every failure presents an opportunity, and that surely must mean Scottish Labour presents the greatest opportunity in Scotland right now, because it has become the byword for political failure.
... We need to become a Starmer backing, EU positive, anti nat party. Vacillators over independence should be shown the door. Lexiteers should be ushered to the exit.
... We’re going to lose the next Scottish election. Badly.
Good, old Duncan, I'd forgotten Labourhame existed. Presumably vacillators over independence being shown the door includes the 40% plus of current SLab voters who'd vote Yes.
Hard to draw any other conclusion: Duncan wants to expel the 40% who support independence, the 10% who support Brexit, and the 30% who supported Corbyn. That’ll leave the Edinburgh South branch happy as Larry, sipping tea and munching on scrumptious scones with lashings of cream and jam. All the other SLab constituencies will consist of a man and his dog.
Mind I you suspect there's a great deal of intersection between those who support indy and Corbyn in SLAB, though. For one, whenever one comes across a particular anti-nat SLAB member on twitter, you'll usually find they despised Corbyn as well. If you believe the UK is (or at least was) a force for good you're not likely to favour either Scottish independence or the *Absolute Boy*.
You can only claim reality is not reality for so long. At some point it hits. We are reaching that point.
Which is presumably why effective autocrats make sure that they control the media completely. In the end, putting out stuff on Facebook only gets you so far.
And here is what that lagged dataset now looks like up to the 13th of July
I used to wonder if he was just stupid but I now realise he is deliberately malicious. Hoping from lagged data set to lagged data set to pretend it's always trending strongly downwards.
I'm curious why that data would be lagged.
Hospitalisation by date of hospitalisation should be something that its possible to automate getting pretty swiftly I would have thought? I would have thought hospitalisations would get locked on the day they get hospitalised so if the hospitals are sending data across daily I don't understand why it would need to take much more than 24 hours or so to get the accurate data.
That's different to other data sets that naturally lag much more, but that seems like an odd one to be lagging so badly. Means that not only are you looking at the rear view mirror if you look at hospitalisations (Since it takes about a fortnight to go from infection to hospital but then its taking) another fortnight for the hospitalisations that have actually happened already to even show in the data. So this data is essentially a month out of date already by the first day you even get it.
Imagine all the fun you've heard about NHS IT projects.
Multiply that by multiple companies (multiple levels), local laws, local government (multiple levels) etc for the US.
To be honest, I am surprised that the reporting lag is so low.
Part of what makes Trump such a compelling character is the unknowable nature of his motivation. There is zero political benefit to him in any way to comment on GM's legal travails. Yet he does and at some length. Why? Is he just mentally ill? Is it is as simple as that?
Biden is going to be so boring if he wins.
Which is actually a risk, given how fond most Americans are of an entertaining story, there will surely be some wanting to see a few more chapters.
I'd rather watch four years of Trump going full Sapumurat Niyazov than four years of Biden having a very worthy decline in total senescence. The West is over now anyway so we might as well have a laugh before we all have to buy shoeshine boxes and learn how to say 'please' and 'thank you' in Mandarin.
Everything tells me that this screws up the bright children in the school that didn't previously get good results.
Everything about the process will be brutally unfair.
Yep - I've spent ages trying to work out what the consequences are as it impacts the twins. And for both of them it's perfectly possibly they could end up with A's or C's - we just don't know.
As a "Briton" who got German citizenship this year, the reason why many of us have rushed to do this is that Germany does not normally allow dual citizenship. An exception is made for citizens of other EU countries. Applying for German citizenship in the next years would involve giving up British citizenship if successful, whereas those of us who have already done it can keep both. Numbers will definitely go down again. Also the process of getting citizenship is not much harder than getting leave to stay. 2 months after handing in a form and supporting documents and paying about 200 euros I got my citizenship.
I also know people who spend part of their lives in Germany who have formalised their status here, where previously they had just been here as EU citizens (with an EHIC card)
I'm not sure those figures are evidence of much. But I do know health professionals who had been considering moving TO the UK who ruled it out after the Brexit vote and May's later moronic comments about only wanting British doctors in the NHS.
I was lucky enough to be born with dual citizenship, but given the anti-Europe messages that come out of the UK Little England these days, I no longer identify as British and use my Irish passport when a passport is requested.
Its weird you say that when it appears our citizenship laws appear more open than many others.
???
I do not have to apply for British citizenship, but I know a few Americans who have done so and they describe it as an expensive, time consuming and difficult process.
Does anyone know how we are doing these days granting residency to EU people who have lived here for 20 or 30 years?
Everything tells me that this screws up the bright children in the school that didn't previously get good results.
Everything about the process will be brutally unfair.
Yep - I've spent ages trying to work out what the consequences are as it impacts the twins. And for both of them it's perfectly possibly they could end up with A's or C's - we just don't know.
If 96% are marked down, surely the Unis are going to have apply admission downgrades for Scots across the board? I mean, its not like the competition from Chinese students is going to be immense this year....
And here is what that lagged dataset now looks like up to the 13th of July
I used to wonder if he was just stupid but I now realise he is deliberately malicious. Hoping from lagged data set to lagged data set to pretend it's always trending strongly downwards.
I'm curious why that data would be lagged.
Hospitalisation by date of hospitalisation should be something that its possible to automate getting pretty swiftly I would have thought? I would have thought hospitalisations would get locked on the day they get hospitalised so if the hospitals are sending data across daily I don't understand why it would need to take much more than 24 hours or so to get the accurate data.
That's different to other data sets that naturally lag much more, but that seems like an odd one to be lagging so badly. Means that not only are you looking at the rear view mirror if you look at hospitalisations (Since it takes about a fortnight to go from infection to hospital but then its taking) another fortnight for the hospitalisations that have actually happened already to even show in the data. So this data is essentially a month out of date already by the first day you even get it.
Imagine all the fun you've heard about NHS IT projects.
Multiply that by multiple companies (multiple levels), local laws, local government (multiple levels) etc for the US.
To be honest, I am surprised that the reporting lag is so low.
I've chatted with a bunch of US software devs who work in healthcare.
It seems insane.
Fax plus manual dat entry is still a dominant mode of data transmission between providers.
Was @DavidL ’s son getting exam “results” today? - the SQA process on R4 is coming in for some criticism - and no transparency on “the attainment gap”.
He is but he's in Liverpool with his girlfriend and we haven't heard from him yet.
He's not got the email he signed up to. Waiting to hear from the school now.
It's nothing like the excitement when his sister got her actual results. I feel really sorry for him and his cohort that they have lost their chance to shine.
Everything tells me that this screws up the bright children in the school that didn't previously get good results.
Everything about the process will be brutally unfair.
Yep - I've spent ages trying to work out what the consequences are as it impacts the twins. And for both of them it's perfectly possibly they could end up with A's or C's - we just don't know.
As I said months ago it is easy for the SNP while lockdown is happening, it is all the after effects and opening up that is going to cause deep problems for the Scottish government.
If they haven't been wargaming this shitshow for the last 3 months then I have no idea what they have been doing.
Everything tells me that this screws up the bright children in the school that didn't previously get good results.
Everything about the process will be brutally unfair.
Yep - I've spent ages trying to work out what the consequences are as it impacts the twins. And for both of them it's perfectly possibly they could end up with A's or C's - we just don't know.
As I said months ago it is easy for the SNP while lockdown is happening, it is all the after effects and opening up that is going to cause deep problems for the Scottish government.
If they haven't been wargaming this shitshow for the last 3 months then I have no idea what they have been doing.
This isn't just an SNP problem - the England version of it arrives next Wednesday / Thursday.
Part of what makes Trump such a compelling character is the unknowable nature of his motivation. There is zero political benefit to him in any way to comment on GM's legal travails. Yet he does and at some length. Why? Is he just mentally ill? Is it is as simple as that?
Biden is going to be so boring if he wins.
Which is actually a risk, given how fond most Americans are of an entertaining story, there will surely be some wanting to see a few more chapters.
I'd rather watch four years of Trump going full Sapumurat Niyazov than four years of Biden having a very worthy decline in total senescence. The West is over now anyway so we might as well have a laugh before we all have to buy shoeshine boxes and learn how to say 'please' and 'thank you' in Mandarin.
Washington DC would be such a brighter experience though for four giant golden Trump statues, tracking the sun around the sky....
Everything tells me that this screws up the bright children in the school that didn't previously get good results.
Everything about the process will be brutally unfair.
Yep - I've spent ages trying to work out what the consequences are as it impacts the twins. And for both of them it's perfectly possibly they could end up with A's or C's - we just don't know.
As I said months ago it is easy for the SNP while lockdown is happening, it is all the after effects and opening up that is going to cause deep problems for the Scottish government.
If they haven't been wargaming this shitshow for the last 3 months then I have no idea what they have been doing.
This isn't just an SNP problem - the England version of it arrives next Wednesday / Thursday.
It's worse for the SNP as there is only one exam board for the whole country.
Everything tells me that this screws up the bright children in the school that didn't previously get good results.
Everything about the process will be brutally unfair.
Yep - I've spent ages trying to work out what the consequences are as it impacts the twins. And for both of them it's perfectly possibly they could end up with A's or C's - we just don't know.
If 96% are marked down, surely the Unis are going to have apply admission downgrades for Scots across the board? I mean, its not like the competition from Chinese students is going to be immense this year....
It's a quarter marked down but that might just indicate that the schools projected results were "optimistic". My son's school is sending out an email at 12 saying what their projected result was for each student so that they can decide if they want to appeal. It really put teachers and schools in an invidious position because they are also the gatekeepers of the appeals. If you got what the school projected there is no appeal.
Was @DavidL ’s son getting exam “results” today? - the SQA process on R4 is coming in for some criticism - and no transparency on “the attainment gap”.
He is but he's in Liverpool with his girlfriend and we haven't heard from him yet.
He's not got the email he signed up to. Waiting to hear from the school now.
It's nothing like the excitement when his sister got her actual results. I feel really sorry for him and his cohort that they have lost their chance to shine.
The SQA process has come in for a lot of criticism- opaqueness for one, only now, after the awards are out did they reveal their methodology, whereas their E&W equivalents have discussed theirs before MPs.
Everything tells me that this screws up the bright children in the school that didn't previously get good results.
Everything about the process will be brutally unfair.
Yep - I've spent ages trying to work out what the consequences are as it impacts the twins. And for both of them it's perfectly possibly they could end up with A's or C's - we just don't know.
If 96% are marked down, surely the Unis are going to have apply admission downgrades for Scots across the board? I mean, its not like the competition from Chinese students is going to be immense this year....
No because it is 96% of those that are adjusted; overall grades have risen dramatically - so the ones whose grades have been marked down will really suffer when the rest of the country is doing better.
Everything tells me that this screws up the bright children in the school that didn't previously get good results.
Everything about the process will be brutally unfair.
Yep - I've spent ages trying to work out what the consequences are as it impacts the twins. And for both of them it's perfectly possibly they could end up with A's or C's - we just don't know.
As I said months ago it is easy for the SNP while lockdown is happening, it is all the after effects and opening up that is going to cause deep problems for the Scottish government.
If they haven't been wargaming this shitshow for the last 3 months then I have no idea what they have been doing.
This isn't just an SNP problem - the England version of it arrives next Wednesday / Thursday.
It's worse for the SNP as there is only one exam board for the whole country.
As OFQUAL are interfering at the micro level this year (or at least, claim they are) that distinction is less important than you would think.
However - and it is a big however - that should worry the likes of @eek even more, as OFQUAL is filled with career civil servants - mostly rather poor ones - who know nothing about assessment processes. Universities have already been on at them over the massive cock up that was a consultation on next year’s exams. If they get this wrong too...
And here is what that lagged dataset now looks like up to the 13th of July
I used to wonder if he was just stupid but I now realise he is deliberately malicious. Hoping from lagged data set to lagged data set to pretend it's always trending strongly downwards.
I'm curious why that data would be lagged.
Hospitalisation by date of hospitalisation should be something that its possible to automate getting pretty swiftly I would have thought? I would have thought hospitalisations would get locked on the day they get hospitalised so if the hospitals are sending data across daily I don't understand why it would need to take much more than 24 hours or so to get the accurate data.
That's different to other data sets that naturally lag much more, but that seems like an odd one to be lagging so badly. Means that not only are you looking at the rear view mirror if you look at hospitalisations (Since it takes about a fortnight to go from infection to hospital but then its taking) another fortnight for the hospitalisations that have actually happened already to even show in the data. So this data is essentially a month out of date already by the first day you even get it.
Imagine all the fun you've heard about NHS IT projects.
Multiply that by multiple companies (multiple levels), local laws, local government (multiple levels) etc for the US.
To be honest, I am surprised that the reporting lag is so low.
I've chatted with a bunch of US software devs who work in healthcare.
It seems insane.
Fax plus manual dat entry is still a dominant mode of data transmission between providers.
What the actual fuck? On what evidentiary basis would they be adjusting grades up under these circumstances?
It looks to me as though they’ve picked 6% of the changed results at random in order to bleat that they didn’t just moderate everyone down.
But if they did, I am afraid, @DavidL and others with family affected, that renders the entirety of the grades utterly meaningless.
This is going to be a train wreck. Take any odds on the Scottish Education minister being out of office by the end of August.
And if OFQUAL have done the same, Gavin Williamson is also a dead man walking.
The basis on which they are "adjusting" the grades is the performance of the school over the last 5 years. So if the school typically got 20% "A"s and this year is forecasting 40% then the results of that school will be adjusted downwards. They can do this because the schools had to rank each pupil in order, something that they must have absolutely hated doing.
There are so many problems. My son did a Higher in computing as did another couple of the "bright" kids. This was unusual and the results of the school in computing in previous years reflected a different quality of student. We are concerned he will be marked down as a result.
A rapidly improving school is going to be penalised by this.
An exceptional year group (like my son's) is also penalised. One of the boys in my son's year got a prize last year from the best standard grades in Scotland. Kids of good ability in that year group face the risk of being marked down.
I am not sure that there was an obviously better way to do this but there are going to be a lot of unhappy kids (and parents) in Scotland this morning.
What the actual fuck? On what evidentiary basis would they be adjusting grades up under these circumstances?
It looks to me as though they’ve picked 6% of the changed results at random in order to bleat that they didn’t just moderate everyone down.
But if they did, I am afraid, @DavidL and others with family affected, that renders the entirety of the grades utterly meaningless.
This is going to be a train wreck. Take any odds on the Scottish Education minister being out of office by the end of August.
And if OFQUAL have done the same, Gavin Williamson is also a dead man walking.
The basis on which they are "adjusting" the grades is the performance of the school over the last 5 years. So if the school typically got 20% "A"s and this year is forecasting 40% then the results of that school will be adjusted downwards. They can do this because the schools had to rank each pupil in order, something that they must have absolutely hated doing.
There are so many problems. My son did a Higher in computing as did another couple of the "bright" kids. This was unusual and the results of the school in computing in previous years reflected a different quality of student. We are concerned he will be marked down as a result.
A rapidly improving school is going to be penalised by this.
An exceptional year group (like my son's) is also penalised. One of the boys in my son's year got a prize last year from the best standard grades in Scotland. Kids of good ability in that year group face the risk of being marked down.
I am not sure that there was an obviously better way to do this but there are going to be a lot of unhappy kids (and parents) in Scotland this morning.
Not really sure that 3 kids will make a huge difference to a school average - depending somewhat on year size, of course.
What the actual fuck? On what evidentiary basis would they be adjusting grades up under these circumstances?
It looks to me as though they’ve picked 6% of the changed results at random in order to bleat that they didn’t just moderate everyone down.
But if they did, I am afraid, @DavidL and others with family affected, that renders the entirety of the grades utterly meaningless.
This is going to be a train wreck. Take any odds on the Scottish Education minister being out of office by the end of August.
And if OFQUAL have done the same, Gavin Williamson is also a dead man walking.
The basis on which they are "adjusting" the grades is the performance of the school over the last 5 years. So if the school typically got 20% "A"s and this year is forecasting 40% then the results of that school will be adjusted downwards. They can do this because the schools had to rank each pupil in order, something that they must have absolutely hated doing.
There are so many problems. My son did a Higher in computing as did another couple of the "bright" kids. This was unusual and the results of the school in computing in previous years reflected a different quality of student. We are concerned he will be marked down as a result.
A rapidly improving school is going to be penalised by this.
An exceptional year group (like my son's) is also penalised. One of the boys in my son's year got a prize last year from the best standard grades in Scotland. Kids of good ability in that year group face the risk of being marked down.
I am not sure that there was an obviously better way to do this but there are going to be a lot of unhappy kids (and parents) in Scotland this morning.
Yes David, I can see why they might adjust down. But why are they adjusting up? Do they think teachers will wantonly under predict in these circumstances?
I would not adjust a grade up were I in their shoes unless I had hard evidence - say, a mock paper - in my hands to back me up.
And I would think twice about adjusting grades down without calling in papers as well. Otherwise you’re just laying yourself wide open to trouble.
They’re going to have to spend far more on fighting appeals than they would have done just moderating the bloody thing properly to start with.
And meanwhile, thousands of teenagers are being wantonly damaged.
And here is what that lagged dataset now looks like up to the 13th of July
I used to wonder if he was just stupid but I now realise he is deliberately malicious. Hoping from lagged data set to lagged data set to pretend it's always trending strongly downwards.
I'm curious why that data would be lagged.
Hospitalisation by date of hospitalisation should be something that its possible to automate getting pretty swiftly I would have thought? I would have thought hospitalisations would get locked on the day they get hospitalised so if the hospitals are sending data across daily I don't understand why it would need to take much more than 24 hours or so to get the accurate data.
That's different to other data sets that naturally lag much more, but that seems like an odd one to be lagging so badly. Means that not only are you looking at the rear view mirror if you look at hospitalisations (Since it takes about a fortnight to go from infection to hospital but then its taking) another fortnight for the hospitalisations that have actually happened already to even show in the data. So this data is essentially a month out of date already by the first day you even get it.
Imagine all the fun you've heard about NHS IT projects.
Multiply that by multiple companies (multiple levels), local laws, local government (multiple levels) etc for the US.
To be honest, I am surprised that the reporting lag is so low.
I've chatted with a bunch of US software devs who work in healthcare.
It seems insane.
Fax plus manual dat entry is still a dominant mode of data transmission between providers.
I have been told that the obsession with faxes in American healthcare is a paper-records-to-be-legal thing. Which is often no longer true, but the inertia of a vast, high interconnected system is incredible.
What the actual fuck? On what evidentiary basis would they be adjusting grades up under these circumstances?
It looks to me as though they’ve picked 6% of the changed results at random in order to bleat that they didn’t just moderate everyone down.
But if they did, I am afraid, @DavidL and others with family affected, that renders the entirety of the grades utterly meaningless.
This is going to be a train wreck. Take any odds on the Scottish Education minister being out of office by the end of August.
And if OFQUAL have done the same, Gavin Williamson is also a dead man walking.
The basis on which they are "adjusting" the grades is the performance of the school over the last 5 years. So if the school typically got 20% "A"s and this year is forecasting 40% then the results of that school will be adjusted downwards. They can do this because the schools had to rank each pupil in order, something that they must have absolutely hated doing.
There are so many problems. My son did a Higher in computing as did another couple of the "bright" kids. This was unusual and the results of the school in computing in previous years reflected a different quality of student. We are concerned he will be marked down as a result.
A rapidly improving school is going to be penalised by this.
An exceptional year group (like my son's) is also penalised. One of the boys in my son's year got a prize last year from the best standard grades in Scotland. Kids of good ability in that year group face the risk of being marked down.
I am not sure that there was an obviously better way to do this but there are going to be a lot of unhappy kids (and parents) in Scotland this morning.
Not really sure that 3 kids will make a huge difference to a school average - depending somewhat on year size, of course.
It's quite a small class. I think that there was about 30 of them doing Higher Computing so it might. AIUI this regrading is not just per school but also per subject so we have all the joys of sub samples that this site is so familiar with!
As a "Briton" who got German citizenship this year, the reason why many of us have rushed to do this is that Germany does not normally allow dual citizenship. An exception is made for citizens of other EU countries. Applying for German citizenship in the next years would involve giving up British citizenship if successful, whereas those of us who have already done it can keep both. Numbers will definitely go down again. Also the process of getting citizenship is not much harder than getting leave to stay. 2 months after handing in a form and supporting documents and paying about 200 euros I got my citizenship.
I also know people who spend part of their lives in Germany who have formalised their status here, where previously they had just been here as EU citizens (with an EHIC card)
I'm not sure those figures are evidence of much. But I do know health professionals who had been considering moving TO the UK who ruled it out after the Brexit vote and May's later moronic comments about only wanting British doctors in the NHS.
I was lucky enough to be born with dual citizenship, but given the anti-Europe messages that come out of the UK Little England these days, I no longer identify as British and use my Irish passport when a passport is requested.
Its weird you say that when it appears our citizenship laws appear more open than many others.
???
I do not have to apply for British citizenship, but I know a few Americans who have done so and they describe it as an expensive, time consuming and difficult process.
Does anyone know how we are doing these days granting residency to EU people who have lived here for 20 or 30 years?
My comment was on response to your sneering contempt on little englanders when our dual citizenship acceptance seems more open than some others .
What the actual fuck? On what evidentiary basis would they be adjusting grades up under these circumstances?
It looks to me as though they’ve picked 6% of the changed results at random in order to bleat that they didn’t just moderate everyone down.
But if they did, I am afraid, @DavidL and others with family affected, that renders the entirety of the grades utterly meaningless.
This is going to be a train wreck. Take any odds on the Scottish Education minister being out of office by the end of August.
And if OFQUAL have done the same, Gavin Williamson is also a dead man walking.
The basis on which they are "adjusting" the grades is the performance of the school over the last 5 years. So if the school typically got 20% "A"s and this year is forecasting 40% then the results of that school will be adjusted downwards. They can do this because the schools had to rank each pupil in order, something that they must have absolutely hated doing.
There are so many problems. My son did a Higher in computing as did another couple of the "bright" kids. This was unusual and the results of the school in computing in previous years reflected a different quality of student. We are concerned he will be marked down as a result.
A rapidly improving school is going to be penalised by this.
An exceptional year group (like my son's) is also penalised. One of the boys in my son's year got a prize last year from the best standard grades in Scotland. Kids of good ability in that year group face the risk of being marked down.
I am not sure that there was an obviously better way to do this but there are going to be a lot of unhappy kids (and parents) in Scotland this morning.
Yes David, I can see why they might adjust down. But why are they adjusting up? Do they think teachers will wantonly under predict in these circumstances?
I would not adjust a grade up were I in their shoes unless I had hard evidence - say, a mock paper - in my hands to back me up.
And I would think twice about adjusting grades down without calling in papers as well. Otherwise you’re just laying yourself wide open to trouble.
They’re going to have to spend far more on fighting appeals than they would have done just moderating the bloody thing properly to start with.
And meanwhile, thousands of teenagers are being wantonly damaged.
I must confess I found it astonishing that any results were being upgraded. Is it really possible, in these days of league tables, that there is some integrity in education yet? Wow.
What the actual fuck? On what evidentiary basis would they be adjusting grades up under these circumstances?
It looks to me as though they’ve picked 6% of the changed results at random in order to bleat that they didn’t just moderate everyone down.
But if they did, I am afraid, @DavidL and others with family affected, that renders the entirety of the grades utterly meaningless.
This is going to be a train wreck. Take any odds on the Scottish Education minister being out of office by the end of August.
And if OFQUAL have done the same, Gavin Williamson is also a dead man walking.
Given the trainwreck of a normal results day, yes there are going to be massive problems. Though, without actual exams and with the deep-rooted temptation for schools to overpredict, there wasn't an easy solution; maybe some kind of inter-school moderation of real work?
But why should Gavin be a dead man walking? There is only one offence in Johnson's government, and Williamson hasn't committed it, because it isn't failure at your job.
What the actual fuck? On what evidentiary basis would they be adjusting grades up under these circumstances?
It looks to me as though they’ve picked 6% of the changed results at random in order to bleat that they didn’t just moderate everyone down.
But if they did, I am afraid, @DavidL and others with family affected, that renders the entirety of the grades utterly meaningless.
This is going to be a train wreck. Take any odds on the Scottish Education minister being out of office by the end of August.
And if OFQUAL have done the same, Gavin Williamson is also a dead man walking.
The basis on which they are "adjusting" the grades is the performance of the school over the last 5 years. So if the school typically got 20% "A"s and this year is forecasting 40% then the results of that school will be adjusted downwards. They can do this because the schools had to rank each pupil in order, something that they must have absolutely hated doing.
There are so many problems. My son did a Higher in computing as did another couple of the "bright" kids. This was unusual and the results of the school in computing in previous years reflected a different quality of student. We are concerned he will be marked down as a result.
A rapidly improving school is going to be penalised by this.
An exceptional year group (like my son's) is also penalised. One of the boys in my son's year got a prize last year from the best standard grades in Scotland. Kids of good ability in that year group face the risk of being marked down.
I am not sure that there was an obviously better way to do this but there are going to be a lot of unhappy kids (and parents) in Scotland this morning.
Yes David, I can see why they might adjust down. But why are they adjusting up? Do they think teachers will wantonly under predict in these circumstances?
I would not adjust a grade up were I in their shoes unless I had hard evidence - say, a mock paper - in my hands to back me up.
And I would think twice about adjusting grades down without calling in papers as well. Otherwise you’re just laying yourself wide open to trouble.
They’re going to have to spend far more on fighting appeals than they would have done just moderating the bloody thing properly to start with.
And meanwhile, thousands of teenagers are being wantonly damaged.
I must confess I found it astonishing that any results were being upgraded. Is it really possible, in these days of league tables, that there is some integrity in education yet? Wow.
Pains me to say it, but it’s much more likely the statistics are being cynically manipulated by the SQA in a bid to stave off criticism.
If so it has been the most epic fail in education since a Munich science teacher told Albert Einstein he didn’t have a scientific mind.
Of course, the elephant in the room is how poor the exam system as a whole is, which is why it does have a habit of throwing up daft results. I cherish particularly the time I appealed a complete fail for a grade A student, to receive a truly grovelling apology from the chief executive - they had marked somebody else’s paper. Similarly, I would still like to know how one, not overbright student got two As and a B despite never opening a book for two years.
But the big mistake here is that there’s not even a pretence of a proper process. SQA have misgivings? Fine. Wouldn’t be human if not. But call in papers and see what’s there before making actual changes. Don’t jut make them on the basis of mathematical models put together by drug addled failures with IQs in double figures.
What the actual fuck? On what evidentiary basis would they be adjusting grades up under these circumstances?
It looks to me as though they’ve picked 6% of the changed results at random in order to bleat that they didn’t just moderate everyone down.
But if they did, I am afraid, @DavidL and others with family affected, that renders the entirety of the grades utterly meaningless.
This is going to be a train wreck. Take any odds on the Scottish Education minister being out of office by the end of August.
And if OFQUAL have done the same, Gavin Williamson is also a dead man walking.
The basis on which they are "adjusting" the grades is the performance of the school over the last 5 years. So if the school typically got 20% "A"s and this year is forecasting 40% then the results of that school will be adjusted downwards. They can do this because the schools had to rank each pupil in order, something that they must have absolutely hated doing.
There are so many problems. My son did a Higher in computing as did another couple of the "bright" kids. This was unusual and the results of the school in computing in previous years reflected a different quality of student. We are concerned he will be marked down as a result.
A rapidly improving school is going to be penalised by this.
An exceptional year group (like my son's) is also penalised. One of the boys in my son's year got a prize last year from the best standard grades in Scotland. Kids of good ability in that year group face the risk of being marked down.
I am not sure that there was an obviously better way to do this but there are going to be a lot of unhappy kids (and parents) in Scotland this morning.
Yes David, I can see why they might adjust down. But why are they adjusting up? Do they think teachers will wantonly under predict in these circumstances?
I would not adjust a grade up were I in their shoes unless I had hard evidence - say, a mock paper - in my hands to back me up.
And I would think twice about adjusting grades down without calling in papers as well. Otherwise you’re just laying yourself wide open to trouble.
They’re going to have to spend far more on fighting appeals than they would have done just moderating the bloody thing properly to start with.
And meanwhile, thousands of teenagers are being wantonly damaged.
I must confess I found it astonishing that any results were being upgraded. Is it really possible, in these days of league tables, that there is some integrity in education yet? Wow.
The cretinous, ignorant, incurious IDS not only didn’t want to be given any time to review the Johnson/EU deal before voting to approve it, he didn’t want anyone else to be given the time either.
What the actual fuck? On what evidentiary basis would they be adjusting grades up under these circumstances?
It looks to me as though they’ve picked 6% of the changed results at random in order to bleat that they didn’t just moderate everyone down.
But if they did, I am afraid, @DavidL and others with family affected, that renders the entirety of the grades utterly meaningless.
This is going to be a train wreck. Take any odds on the Scottish Education minister being out of office by the end of August.
And if OFQUAL have done the same, Gavin Williamson is also a dead man walking.
Given the trainwreck of a normal results day, yes there are going to be massive problems. Though, without actual exams and with the deep-rooted temptation for schools to overpredict, there wasn't an easy solution; maybe some kind of inter-school moderation of real work?
But why should Gavin be a dead man walking? There is only one offence in Johnson's government, and Williamson hasn't committed it, because it isn't failure at your job.
How much criticism is going to be directed at Cummings for reform of the education system meaning nobody is really certain what the grade boundaries are (including exam boards)?
What the actual fuck? On what evidentiary basis would they be adjusting grades up under these circumstances?
It looks to me as though they’ve picked 6% of the changed results at random in order to bleat that they didn’t just moderate everyone down.
But if they did, I am afraid, @DavidL and others with family affected, that renders the entirety of the grades utterly meaningless.
This is going to be a train wreck. Take any odds on the Scottish Education minister being out of office by the end of August.
And if OFQUAL have done the same, Gavin Williamson is also a dead man walking.
The basis on which they are "adjusting" the grades is the performance of the school over the last 5 years. So if the school typically got 20% "A"s and this year is forecasting 40% then the results of that school will be adjusted downwards. They can do this because the schools had to rank each pupil in order, something that they must have absolutely hated doing.
There are so many problems. My son did a Higher in computing as did another couple of the "bright" kids. This was unusual and the results of the school in computing in previous years reflected a different quality of student. We are concerned he will be marked down as a result.
A rapidly improving school is going to be penalised by this.
An exceptional year group (like my son's) is also penalised. One of the boys in my son's year got a prize last year from the best standard grades in Scotland. Kids of good ability in that year group face the risk of being marked down.
I am not sure that there was an obviously better way to do this but there are going to be a lot of unhappy kids (and parents) in Scotland this morning.
Yes David, I can see why they might adjust down. But why are they adjusting up? Do they think teachers will wantonly under predict in these circumstances?
I would not adjust a grade up were I in their shoes unless I had hard evidence - say, a mock paper - in my hands to back me up.
And I would think twice about adjusting grades down without calling in papers as well. Otherwise you’re just laying yourself wide open to trouble.
They’re going to have to spend far more on fighting appeals than they would have done just moderating the bloody thing properly to start with.
And meanwhile, thousands of teenagers are being wantonly damaged.
I must confess I found it astonishing that any results were being upgraded. Is it really possible, in these days of league tables, that there is some integrity in education yet? Wow.
Pains me to say it, but it’s much more likely the statistics are being cynically manipulated by the SQA in a bid to stave off criticism.
If so it has been the most epic fail in education since a Munich science teacher told Albert Einstein he didn’t have a scientific mind.
Of course, the elephant in the room is how poor the exam system as a whole is, which is why it does have a habit of throwing up daft results. I cherish particularly the time I appealed a complete fail for a grade A student, to receive a truly grovelling apology from the chief executive - they had marked somebody else’s paper. Similarly, I would still like to know how one, not overbright student got two As and a B despite never opening a book for two years.
But the big mistake here is that there’s not even a pretence of a proper process. SQA have misgivings? Fine. Wouldn’t be human if not. But call in papers and see what’s there before making actual changes. Don’t jut make them on the basis of mathematical models put together by drug addled failures with IQs in double figures.
EDITED because I didn’t mean ‘you’ as in DavidL.
They have done this without access to any evidence at all. The schools were not allowed to submit any evidence in support of their assessments, no mocks or prelims as we call them, no class work, nothing.
One of my son's friends, whose dad just happens to be on the school board, has got an A in economics despite getting a C in his prelim. Bright kid but lazy. The school clearly listed him much higher in the class than the prelim results would have justified.
What the actual fuck? On what evidentiary basis would they be adjusting grades up under these circumstances?
It looks to me as though they’ve picked 6% of the changed results at random in order to bleat that they didn’t just moderate everyone down.
But if they did, I am afraid, @DavidL and others with family affected, that renders the entirety of the grades utterly meaningless.
This is going to be a train wreck. Take any odds on the Scottish Education minister being out of office by the end of August.
And if OFQUAL have done the same, Gavin Williamson is also a dead man walking.
The basis on which they are "adjusting" the grades is the performance of the school over the last 5 years. So if the school typically got 20% "A"s and this year is forecasting 40% then the results of that school will be adjusted downwards. They can do this because the schools had to rank each pupil in order, something that they must have absolutely hated doing.
There are so many problems. My son did a Higher in computing as did another couple of the "bright" kids. This was unusual and the results of the school in computing in previous years reflected a different quality of student. We are concerned he will be marked down as a result.
A rapidly improving school is going to be penalised by this.
An exceptional year group (like my son's) is also penalised. One of the boys in my son's year got a prize last year from the best standard grades in Scotland. Kids of good ability in that year group face the risk of being marked down.
I am not sure that there was an obviously better way to do this but there are going to be a lot of unhappy kids (and parents) in Scotland this morning.
Yes David, I can see why they might adjust down. But why are they adjusting up? Do they think teachers will wantonly under predict in these circumstances?
I would not adjust a grade up were I in their shoes unless I had hard evidence - say, a mock paper - in my hands to back me up.
And I would think twice about adjusting grades down without calling in papers as well. Otherwise you’re just laying yourself wide open to trouble.
They’re going to have to spend far more on fighting appeals than they would have done just moderating the bloody thing properly to start with.
And meanwhile, thousands of teenagers are being wantonly damaged.
I must confess I found it astonishing that any results were being upgraded. Is it really possible, in these days of league tables, that there is some integrity in education yet? Wow.
Pains me to say it, but it’s much more likely the statistics are being cynically manipulated by the SQA in a bid to stave off criticism.
If so it has been the most epic fail in education since a Munich science teacher told Albert Einstein he didn’t have a scientific mind.
Of course, the elephant in the room is how poor the exam system as a whole is, which is why it does have a habit of throwing up daft results. I cherish particularly the time I appealed a complete fail for a grade A student, to receive a truly grovelling apology from the chief executive - they had marked somebody else’s paper. Similarly, I would still like to know how one, not overbright student got two As and a B despite never opening a book for two years.
But the big mistake here is that there’s not even a pretence of a proper process. SQA have misgivings? Fine. Wouldn’t be human if not. But call in papers and see what’s there before making actual changes. Don’t jut make them on the basis of mathematical models put together by drug addled failures with IQs in double figures.
EDITED because I didn’t mean ‘you’ as in DavidL.
They have done this without access to any evidence at all. The schools were not allowed to submit any evidence in support of their assessments, no mocks or prelims as we call them, no class work, nothing.
One of my son's friends, whose dad just happens to be on the school board, has got an A in economics despite getting a C in his prelim. Bright kid but lazy. The school clearly listed him much higher in the class than the prelim results would have justified.
Like the Einstein story, I'm going to pinch that.
That’s what’s so damn stupid. We could - and should - have been asked for evidence. Mocks. Coursework (although Cummings got rid of that in England). Heck, even exam questions done in lessons.
But even A-level Art work wasn’t allowed to be submitted. That’s how daft this process is.
It was always going to be a train wreck, but it looks as though in a stroke of sheer genius the governments have made it worse.
(In England of course we can’t use five years of data because most courses have been running for only two to three years).
... every failure presents an opportunity, and that surely must mean Scottish Labour presents the greatest opportunity in Scotland right now, because it has become the byword for political failure.
I like that.
... said Napoleon after Waterloo. ... said Medina-Sidonia after Gravelines. ... said Charles II after the Medway. ... said Alex Salmond in 2021.
The cretinous, ignorant, incurious IDS not only didn’t want to be given any time to review the Johnson/EU deal before voting to approve it, he didn’t want anyone else to be given the time either.
You would have got fairly good odds on IDS being the last of the Brexiteers to work out it's all a bit shit, but if even he is beginning to get it, how much longer for the others?
On topic, can you imagine if all the people who show up are GOP and all the people who vote by post are Dem? The counting will be all over the place depending on obscure state rules, the betting as the results come in is going to be totally bananas
On topic, can you imagine if all the people who show up are GOP and all the people who vote by post are Dem? The counting will be all over the place depending on obscure state rules, the betting as the results come in is going to be totally bananas
What the actual fuck? On what evidentiary basis would they be adjusting grades up under these circumstances?
It looks to me as though they’ve picked 6% of the changed results at random in order to bleat that they didn’t just moderate everyone down.
But if they did, I am afraid, @DavidL and others with family affected, that renders the entirety of the grades utterly meaningless.
This is going to be a train wreck. Take any odds on the Scottish Education minister being out of office by the end of August.
And if OFQUAL have done the same, Gavin Williamson is also a dead man walking.
The basis on which they are "adjusting" the grades is the performance of the school over the last 5 years. So if the school typically got 20% "A"s and this year is forecasting 40% then the results of that school will be adjusted downwards. They can do this because the schools had to rank each pupil in order, something that they must have absolutely hated doing.
There are so many problems. My son did a Higher in computing as did another couple of the "bright" kids. This was unusual and the results of the school in computing in previous years reflected a different quality of student. We are concerned he will be marked down as a result.
A rapidly improving school is going to be penalised by this.
An exceptional year group (like my son's) is also penalised. One of the boys in my son's year got a prize last year from the best standard grades in Scotland. Kids of good ability in that year group face the risk of being marked down.
I am not sure that there was an obviously better way to do this but there are going to be a lot of unhappy kids (and parents) in Scotland this morning.
Yes David, I can see why they might adjust down. But why are they adjusting up? Do they think teachers will wantonly under predict in these circumstances?
I would not adjust a grade up were I in their shoes unless I had hard evidence - say, a mock paper - in my hands to back me up.
And I would think twice about adjusting grades down without calling in papers as well. Otherwise you’re just laying yourself wide open to trouble.
They’re going to have to spend far more on fighting appeals than they would have done just moderating the bloody thing properly to start with.
And meanwhile, thousands of teenagers are being wantonly damaged.
I must confess I found it astonishing that any results were being upgraded. Is it really possible, in these days of league tables, that there is some integrity in education yet? Wow.
Pains me to say it, but it’s much more likely the statistics are being cynically manipulated by the SQA in a bid to stave off criticism.
If so it has been the most epic fail in education since a Munich science teacher told Albert Einstein he didn’t have a scientific mind.
Of course, the elephant in the room is how poor the exam system as a whole is, which is why it does have a habit of throwing up daft results. I cherish particularly the time I appealed a complete fail for a grade A student, to receive a truly grovelling apology from the chief executive - they had marked somebody else’s paper. Similarly, I would still like to know how one, not overbright student got two As and a B despite never opening a book for two years.
But the big mistake here is that there’s not even a pretence of a proper process. SQA have misgivings? Fine. Wouldn’t be human if not. But call in papers and see what’s there before making actual changes. Don’t jut make them on the basis of mathematical models put together by drug addled failures with IQs in double figures.
EDITED because I didn’t mean ‘you’ as in DavidL.
They have done this without access to any evidence at all. The schools were not allowed to submit any evidence in support of their assessments, no mocks or prelims as we call them, no class work, nothing.
One of my son's friends, whose dad just happens to be on the school board, has got an A in economics despite getting a C in his prelim. Bright kid but lazy. The school clearly listed him much higher in the class than the prelim results would have justified.
Like the Einstein story, I'm going to pinch that.
That’s what’s so damn stupid. We could - and should - have been asked for evidence. Mocks. Coursework (although Cummings got rid of that in England). Heck, even exam questions done in lessons.
But even A-level Art work wasn’t allowed to be submitted. That’s how daft this process is.
It was always going to be a train wreck, but it looks as though in a stroke of sheer genius the governments have made it worse.
(In England of course we can’t use five years of data because most courses have been running for only two to three years).
They simply did not have the capacity to consider anything as pettifogging as "evidence". One of my daughter's friends worked for the SQA for a period of time. The quality of thinking (I use the word very loosely) that she experienced was almost beyond belief, at least it would have been unless you had prior contact.
On topic, can you imagine if all the people who show up are GOP and all the people who vote by post are Dem? The counting will be all over the place depending on obscure state rules, the betting as the results come in is going to be totally bananas
How can an article seeking to make the point that ‘only’ 20% of the infections were from BAME, back it up by quoting a BAME population of 14.5%? Incredible
“ Eleanor Roaf, the director of public health in Trafford, said 80% of its infections in the last week were in the white community, and she urged the region’s 2.8 million residents to concentrate “much harder on what we can do to stop the wider spread”.
...in Trafford, one of the wealthiest and whitest of Greater Manchester’s 10 boroughs, the vast majority of infections in the last week were in the white community. Just 14.5% of Trafford residents are black or ethnic minority, according to the last census.“
What the actual fuck? On what evidentiary basis would they be adjusting grades up under these circumstances?
It looks to me as though they’ve picked 6% of the changed results at random in order to bleat that they didn’t just moderate everyone down.
But if they did, I am afraid, @DavidL and others with family affected, that renders the entirety of the grades utterly meaningless.
This is going to be a train wreck. Take any odds on the Scottish Education minister being out of office by the end of August.
And if OFQUAL have done the same, Gavin Williamson is also a dead man walking.
The basis on which they are "adjusting" the grades is the performance of the school over the last 5 years. So if the school typically got 20% "A"s and this year is forecasting 40% then the results of that school will be adjusted downwards. They can do this because the schools had to rank each pupil in order, something that they must have absolutely hated doing.
There are so many problems. My son did a Higher in computing as did another couple of the "bright" kids. This was unusual and the results of the school in computing in previous years reflected a different quality of student. We are concerned he will be marked down as a result.
A rapidly improving school is going to be penalised by this.
An exceptional year group (like my son's) is also penalised. One of the boys in my son's year got a prize last year from the best standard grades in Scotland. Kids of good ability in that year group face the risk of being marked down.
I am not sure that there was an obviously better way to do this but there are going to be a lot of unhappy kids (and parents) in Scotland this morning.
Yes David, I can see why they might adjust down. But why are they adjusting up? Do they think teachers will wantonly under predict in these circumstances?
I would not adjust a grade up were I in their shoes unless I had hard evidence - say, a mock paper - in my hands to back me up.
And I would think twice about adjusting grades down without calling in papers as well. Otherwise you’re just laying yourself wide open to trouble.
They’re going to have to spend far more on fighting appeals than they would have done just moderating the bloody thing properly to start with.
And meanwhile, thousands of teenagers are being wantonly damaged.
I must confess I found it astonishing that any results were being upgraded. Is it really possible, in these days of league tables, that there is some integrity in education yet? Wow.
Pains me to say it, but it’s much more likely the statistics are being cynically manipulated by the SQA in a bid to stave off criticism.
If so it has been the most epic fail in education since a Munich science teacher told Albert Einstein he didn’t have a scientific mind.
Of course, the elephant in the room is how poor the exam system as a whole is, which is why it does have a habit of throwing up daft results. I cherish particularly the time I appealed a complete fail for a grade A student, to receive a truly grovelling apology from the chief executive - they had marked somebody else’s paper. Similarly, I would still like to know how one, not overbright student got two As and a B despite never opening a book for two years.
But the big mistake here is that there’s not even a pretence of a proper process. SQA have misgivings? Fine. Wouldn’t be human if not. But call in papers and see what’s there before making actual changes. Don’t jut make them on the basis of mathematical models put together by drug addled failures with IQs in double figures.
EDITED because I didn’t mean ‘you’ as in DavidL.
They have done this without access to any evidence at all. The schools were not allowed to submit any evidence in support of their assessments, no mocks or prelims as we call them, no class work, nothing.
One of my son's friends, whose dad just happens to be on the school board, has got an A in economics despite getting a C in his prelim. Bright kid but lazy. The school clearly listed him much higher in the class than the prelim results would have justified.
Like the Einstein story, I'm going to pinch that.
That’s what’s so damn stupid. We could - and should - have been asked for evidence. Mocks. Coursework (although Cummings got rid of that in England). Heck, even exam questions done in lessons.
But even A-level Art work wasn’t allowed to be submitted. That’s how daft this process is.
It was always going to be a train wreck, but it looks as though in a stroke of sheer genius the governments have made it worse.
(In England of course we can’t use five years of data because most courses have been running for only two to three years).
They simply did not have the capacity to consider anything as pettifogging as "evidence". One of my daughter's friends worked for the SQA for a period of time. The quality of thinking (I use the word very loosely) that she experienced was almost beyond belief, at least it would have been unless you had prior contact.
This is stressful.
The exam boards had that capacity. And it should have been used.
But it wasn’t, and now a whirlwind will be reaped.
I am desperately sorry for your son and every other eighteen year old.
Sixteen year olds at least have a meaningful chance to put it right.
As a "Briton" who got German citizenship this year, the reason why many of us have rushed to do this is that Germany does not normally allow dual citizenship. An exception is made for citizens of other EU countries. Applying for German citizenship in the next years would involve giving up British citizenship if successful, whereas those of us who have already done it can keep both. Numbers will definitely go down again. Also the process of getting citizenship is not much harder than getting leave to stay. 2 months after handing in a form and supporting documents and paying about 200 euros I got my citizenship.
I also know people who spend part of their lives in Germany who have formalised their status here, where previously they had just been here as EU citizens (with an EHIC card)
I'm not sure those figures are evidence of much. But I do know health professionals who had been considering moving TO the UK who ruled it out after the Brexit vote and May's later moronic comments about only wanting British doctors in the NHS.
I was lucky enough to be born with dual citizenship, but given the anti-Europe messages that come out of the UK Little England these days, I no longer identify as British and use my Irish passport when a passport is requested.
Its weird you say that when it appears our citizenship laws appear more open than many others.
???
I do not have to apply for British citizenship, but I know a few Americans who have done so and they describe it as an expensive, time consuming and difficult process.
Does anyone know how we are doing these days granting residency to EU people who have lived here for 20 or 30 years?
My comment was on response to your sneering contempt on little englanders when our dual citizenship acceptance seems more open than some others .
Few countries insist on you having single citizenship so there is nothing unusual about the UK allowing dual or multiple citizenship.
"There is wide variation within Trafford in the proportion of the population belonging to a BAME; for example ranging from 5.7% in the West locality, to 37.4% in the North locality. See locality profiles for further information."
As a "Briton" who got German citizenship this year, the reason why many of us have rushed to do this is that Germany does not normally allow dual citizenship. An exception is made for citizens of other EU countries. Applying for German citizenship in the next years would involve giving up British citizenship if successful, whereas those of us who have already done it can keep both. Numbers will definitely go down again. Also the process of getting citizenship is not much harder than getting leave to stay. 2 months after handing in a form and supporting documents and paying about 200 euros I got my citizenship.
I also know people who spend part of their lives in Germany who have formalised their status here, where previously they had just been here as EU citizens (with an EHIC card)
I'm not sure those figures are evidence of much. But I do know health professionals who had been considering moving TO the UK who ruled it out after the Brexit vote and May's later moronic comments about only wanting British doctors in the NHS.
I was lucky enough to be born with dual citizenship, but given the anti-Europe messages that come out of the UK Little England these days, I no longer identify as British and use my Irish passport when a passport is requested.
Its weird you say that when it appears our citizenship laws appear more open than many others.
They’re a *lot* tighter than they used to be. Try getting citizenship for your wife, if she’s not lived in the UK for at least half a decade.
What the actual fuck? On what evidentiary basis would they be adjusting grades up under these circumstances?
It looks to me as though they’ve picked 6% of the changed results at random in order to bleat that they didn’t just moderate everyone down.
But if they did, I am afraid, @DavidL and others with family affected, that renders the entirety of the grades utterly meaningless.
This is going to be a train wreck. Take any odds on the Scottish Education minister being out of office by the end of August.
And if OFQUAL have done the same, Gavin Williamson is also a dead man walking.
The basis on which they are "adjusting" the grades is the performance of the school over the last 5 years. So if the school typically got 20% "A"s and this year is forecasting 40% then the results of that school will be adjusted downwards. They can do this because the schools had to rank each pupil in order, something that they must have absolutely hated doing.
There are so many problems. My son did a Higher in computing as did another couple of the "bright" kids. This was unusual and the results of the school in computing in previous years reflected a different quality of student. We are concerned he will be marked down as a result.
A rapidly improving school is going to be penalised by this.
An exceptional year group (like my son's) is also penalised. One of the boys in my son's year got a prize last year from the best standard grades in Scotland. Kids of good ability in that year group face the risk of being marked down.
I am not sure that there was an obviously better way to do this but there are going to be a lot of unhappy kids (and parents) in Scotland this morning.
Yes David, I can see why they might adjust down. But why are they adjusting up? Do they think teachers will wantonly under predict in these circumstances?
I would not adjust a grade up were I in their shoes unless I had hard evidence - say, a mock paper - in my hands to back me up.
And I would think twice about adjusting grades down without calling in papers as well. Otherwise you’re just laying yourself wide open to trouble.
They’re going to have to spend far more on fighting appeals than they would have done just moderating the bloody thing properly to start with.
And meanwhile, thousands of teenagers are being wantonly damaged.
I must confess I found it astonishing that any results were being upgraded. Is it really possible, in these days of league tables, that there is some integrity in education yet? Wow.
Pains me to say it, but it’s much more likely the statistics are being cynically manipulated by the SQA in a bid to stave off criticism.
If so it has been the most epic fail in education since a Munich science teacher told Albert Einstein he didn’t have a scientific mind.
Of course, the elephant in the room is how poor the exam system as a whole is, which is why it does have a habit of throwing up daft results. I cherish particularly the time I appealed a complete fail for a grade A student, to receive a truly grovelling apology from the chief executive - they had marked somebody else’s paper. Similarly, I would still like to know how one, not overbright student got two As and a B despite never opening a book for two years.
But the big mistake here is that there’s not even a pretence of a proper process. SQA have misgivings? Fine. Wouldn’t be human if not. But call in papers and see what’s there before making actual changes. Don’t jut make them on the basis of mathematical models put together by drug addled failures with IQs in double figures.
EDITED because I didn’t mean ‘you’ as in DavidL.
They have done this without access to any evidence at all. The schools were not allowed to submit any evidence in support of their assessments, no mocks or prelims as we call them, no class work, nothing.
One of my son's friends, whose dad just happens to be on the school board, has got an A in economics despite getting a C in his prelim. Bright kid but lazy. The school clearly listed him much higher in the class than the prelim results would have justified.
Like the Einstein story, I'm going to pinch that.
That’s what’s so damn stupid. We could - and should - have been asked for evidence. Mocks. Coursework (although Cummings got rid of that in England). Heck, even exam questions done in lessons.
But even A-level Art work wasn’t allowed to be submitted. That’s how daft this process is.
It was always going to be a train wreck, but it looks as though in a stroke of sheer genius the governments have made it worse.
(In England of course we can’t use five years of data because most courses have been running for only two to three years).
They simply did not have the capacity to consider anything as pettifogging as "evidence". One of my daughter's friends worked for the SQA for a period of time. The quality of thinking (I use the word very loosely) that she experienced was almost beyond belief, at least it would have been unless you had prior contact.
This is stressful.
The exam boards had that capacity. And it should have been used.
But it wasn’t, and now a whirlwind will be reaped.
I am desperately sorry for your son and every other eighteen year old.
Sixteen year olds at least have a meaningful chance to put it right.
My son does too in that he is applying to English Universities who will be more interested in his advanced higher results next year but for the bulk of kids going to Scottish Universities this is it. His sister got an unconditional from Edinburgh on the basis of her Higher results following which her commitment to her advanced highers...declined.
The really scary idea was that this might be repeated if kids don't get back to school. Historically, when the EIS has said jump the only question from the Scottish government has been, "how high?" The EIS are not signed up to kids going back yet. If they muck about I can see a Scottish government frightened of the difference between state and private performance going off the chart concluding that having people sit exams is "unfair".
How can an article seeking to make the point that ‘only’ 20% of the infections were from BAME, back it up by quoting a BAME population of 14.5%? Incredible
“ Eleanor Roaf, the director of public health in Trafford, said 80% of its infections in the last week were in the white community, and she urged the region’s 2.8 million residents to concentrate “much harder on what we can do to stop the wider spread”.
...in Trafford, one of the wealthiest and whitest of Greater Manchester’s 10 boroughs, the vast majority of infections in the last week were in the white community. Just 14.5% of Trafford residents are black or ethnic minority, according to the last census.“
The point they were trying to highlight is that white people should not go thinking that this is a disease that mainly effects other populations. This will be obvious to most, but I'm sure there are plenty who misinterpret "The BAME population are disproportionately affected by Covid-19" as "White people rarely get it"
What the actual fuck? On what evidentiary basis would they be adjusting grades up under these circumstances?
It looks to me as though they’ve picked 6% of the changed results at random in order to bleat that they didn’t just moderate everyone down.
But if they did, I am afraid, @DavidL and others with family affected, that renders the entirety of the grades utterly meaningless.
This is going to be a train wreck. Take any odds on the Scottish Education minister being out of office by the end of August.
And if OFQUAL have done the same, Gavin Williamson is also a dead man walking.
The basis on which they are "adjusting" the grades is the performance of the school over the last 5 years. So if the school typically got 20% "A"s and this year is forecasting 40% then the results of that school will be adjusted downwards. They can do this because the schools had to rank each pupil in order, something that they must have absolutely hated doing.
There are so many problems. My son did a Higher in computing as did another couple of the "bright" kids. This was unusual and the results of the school in computing in previous years reflected a different quality of student. We are concerned he will be marked down as a result.
A rapidly improving school is going to be penalised by this.
An exceptional year group (like my son's) is also penalised. One of the boys in my son's year got a prize last year from the best standard grades in Scotland. Kids of good ability in that year group face the risk of being marked down.
I am not sure that there was an obviously better way to do this but there are going to be a lot of unhappy kids (and parents) in Scotland this morning.
Yes David, I can see why they might adjust down. But why are they adjusting up? Do they think teachers will wantonly under predict in these circumstances?
I would not adjust a grade up were I in their shoes unless I had hard evidence - say, a mock paper - in my hands to back me up.
And I would think twice about adjusting grades down without calling in papers as well. Otherwise you’re just laying yourself wide open to trouble.
They’re going to have to spend far more on fighting appeals than they would have done just moderating the bloody thing properly to start with.
And meanwhile, thousands of teenagers are being wantonly damaged.
I must confess I found it astonishing that any results were being upgraded. Is it really possible, in these days of league tables, that there is some integrity in education yet? Wow.
Pains me to say it, but it’s much more likely the statistics are being cynically manipulated by the SQA in a bid to stave off criticism.
If so it has been the most epic fail in education since a Munich science teacher told Albert Einstein he didn’t have a scientific mind.
Of course, the elephant in the room is how poor the exam system as a whole is, which is why it does have a habit of throwing up daft results. I cherish particularly the time I appealed a complete fail for a grade A student, to receive a truly grovelling apology from the chief executive - they had marked somebody else’s paper. Similarly, I would still like to know how one, not overbright student got two As and a B despite never opening a book for two years.
But the big mistake here is that there’s not even a pretence of a proper process. SQA have misgivings? Fine. Wouldn’t be human if not. But call in papers and see what’s there before making actual changes. Don’t jut make them on the basis of mathematical models put together by drug addled failures with IQs in double figures.
EDITED because I didn’t mean ‘you’ as in DavidL.
They have done this without access to any evidence at all. The schools were not allowed to submit any evidence in support of their assessments, no mocks or prelims as we call them, no class work, nothing.
One of my son's friends, whose dad just happens to be on the school board, has got an A in economics despite getting a C in his prelim. Bright kid but lazy. The school clearly listed him much higher in the class than the prelim results would have justified.
Like the Einstein story, I'm going to pinch that.
That’s what’s so damn stupid. We could - and should - have been asked for evidence. Mocks. Coursework (although Cummings got rid of that in England). Heck, even exam questions done in lessons.
But even A-level Art work wasn’t allowed to be submitted. That’s how daft this process is.
It was always going to be a train wreck, but it looks as though in a stroke of sheer genius the governments have made it worse.
(In England of course we can’t use five years of data because most courses have been running for only two to three years).
They simply did not have the capacity to consider anything as pettifogging as "evidence". One of my daughter's friends worked for the SQA for a period of time. The quality of thinking (I use the word very loosely) that she experienced was almost beyond belief, at least it would have been unless you had prior contact.
This is stressful.
The exam boards had that capacity. And it should have been used.
But it wasn’t, and now a whirlwind will be reaped.
I am desperately sorry for your son and every other eighteen year old.
Sixteen year olds at least have a meaningful chance to put it right.
My son does too in that he is applying to English Universities who will be more interested in his advanced higher results next year but for the bulk of kids going to Scottish Universities this is it. His sister got an unconditional from Edinburgh on the basis of her Higher results following which her commitment to her advanced highers...declined.
The really scary idea was that this might be repeated if kids don't get back to school. Historically, when the EIS has said jump the only question from the Scottish government has been, "how high?" The EIS are not signed up to kids going back yet. If they muck about I can see a Scottish government frightened of the difference between state and private performance going off the chart concluding that having people sit exams is "unfair".
In which scenario, I imagine most Scottish private schools would switch to international exams if they’re running.
Which wouldn’t be well received in Scotland, I imagine.
How can an article seeking to make the point that ‘only’ 20% of the infections were from BAME, back it up by quoting a BAME population of 14.5%? Incredible
“ Eleanor Roaf, the director of public health in Trafford, said 80% of its infections in the last week were in the white community, and she urged the region’s 2.8 million residents to concentrate “much harder on what we can do to stop the wider spread”.
...in Trafford, one of the wealthiest and whitest of Greater Manchester’s 10 boroughs, the vast majority of infections in the last week were in the white community. Just 14.5% of Trafford residents are black or ethnic minority, according to the last census.“
You'd think that part-time epidemiologst and full-time wanker Chris Addision would know that anyone who caught Covid from Eid festival celebrations (31st July) would barely be showing symptoms yet. The Government has just extended the period of isolation from 7 days to 9 because they realised 7 wasn't long enough to be sure. So lets wait a few days to see if there is any Eid spike before we can breathe a sigh of relief.
Granddaughter-in-law is waiting with some trepidation for the 'results' of the sixth-formers for whom she submitted grade estimates. I haven't spoken to Grandson II yet, who is 17 and preparing for A level next year. Can't give him a lot of confidence!
Part of what makes Trump such a compelling character is the unknowable nature of his motivation. There is zero political benefit to him in any way to comment on GM's legal travails. Yet he does and at some length. Why? Is he just mentally ill? Is it is as simple as that?
Biden is going to be so boring if he wins.
Which is actually a risk, given how fond most Americans are of an entertaining story, there will surely be some wanting to see a few more chapters.
I'd rather watch four years of Trump going full Sapumurat Niyazov than four years of Biden having a very worthy decline in total senescence. The West is over now anyway so we might as well have a laugh before we all have to buy shoeshine boxes and learn how to say 'please' and 'thank you' in Mandarin.
The problem is that "four years of Trump going full Sapumurat Niyazov" means watching Trump being Supreme Leader for the rest of his life, and then nominating one of his offspring as his sucessor.
It just means the teachers were ridiculously over generous to start with. Results overall "better" than last year so this downgrading if anything didn't go far enough.
It just means the teachers were ridiculously over generous to start with. Results overall "better" than last year so this downgrading if anything didn't go far enough.
They adjusted grades up because teachers were ridiculously over-generous?
How can an article seeking to make the point that ‘only’ 20% of the infections were from BAME, back it up by quoting a BAME population of 14.5%? Incredible
“ Eleanor Roaf, the director of public health in Trafford, said 80% of its infections in the last week were in the white community, and she urged the region’s 2.8 million residents to concentrate “much harder on what we can do to stop the wider spread”.
...in Trafford, one of the wealthiest and whitest of Greater Manchester’s 10 boroughs, the vast majority of infections in the last week were in the white community. Just 14.5% of Trafford residents are black or ethnic minority, according to the last census.“
You'd think that part-time epidemiologst and full-time wanker Chris Addision would know that anyone who caught Covid from Eid festival celebrations (31st July) would barely be showing symptoms yet. The Government has just extended the period of isolation from 7 days to 9 because they realised 7 wasn't long enough to be sure. So lets wait a few days to see if there is any Eid spike before we can breathe a sigh of relief.
Well, yes. But in The Guardian article he cites, they literally disprove their argument with the research they quote, but are so blind to any other view than their own that they don’t see it. Amazing
As a "Briton" who got German citizenship this year, the reason why many of us have rushed to do this is that Germany does not normally allow dual citizenship. An exception is made for citizens of other EU countries. Applying for German citizenship in the next years would involve giving up British citizenship if successful, whereas those of us who have already done it can keep both. Numbers will definitely go down again. Also the process of getting citizenship is not much harder than getting leave to stay. 2 months after handing in a form and supporting documents and paying about 200 euros I got my citizenship.
I also know people who spend part of their lives in Germany who have formalised their status here, where previously they had just been here as EU citizens (with an EHIC card)
I'm not sure those figures are evidence of much. But I do know health professionals who had been considering moving TO the UK who ruled it out after the Brexit vote and May's later moronic comments about only wanting British doctors in the NHS.
I was lucky enough to be born with dual citizenship, but given the anti-Europe messages that come out of the UK Little England these days, I no longer identify as British and use my Irish passport when a passport is requested.
Its weird you say that when it appears our citizenship laws appear more open than many others.
They’re a *lot* tighter than they used to be. Try getting citizenship for your wife, if she’s not lived in the UK for at least half a decade.
The requirement is three years of legal residence for the spouses of UK citizens.
Totally, O/T but I was thinking more about the question, which crops up from time to time here, whether Nazism is worse than communism. Why is it still more respectable to be a communist than a Nazi?
I think the answer has to be that despite the loathsome nature of Lenin, Stalin, and their cliques:-
1. The mass of men and women of the Soviet Union displayed extraordinary valour in WWII, and the world owes them a debt of gratitude for it.
2. For all their brutality and cruelty, the Soviets never implemented the equivalent of Generalplan Ost, or the Holocaust, on the countries they occupied.
That said, there is nothing that can be said for the regimes of Pol Pot or Kim Il Sung, which were as cruel as the Nazis.
How can an article seeking to make the point that ‘only’ 20% of the infections were from BAME, back it up by quoting a BAME population of 14.5%? Incredible
“ Eleanor Roaf, the director of public health in Trafford, said 80% of its infections in the last week were in the white community, and she urged the region’s 2.8 million residents to concentrate “much harder on what we can do to stop the wider spread”.
...in Trafford, one of the wealthiest and whitest of Greater Manchester’s 10 boroughs, the vast majority of infections in the last week were in the white community. Just 14.5% of Trafford residents are black or ethnic minority, according to the last census.“
You'd think that part-time epidemiologst and full-time wanker Chris Addision would know that anyone who caught Covid from Eid festival celebrations (31st July) would barely be showing symptoms yet. The Government has just extended the period of isolation from 7 days to 9 because they realised 7 wasn't long enough to be sure. So lets wait a few days to see if there is any Eid spike before we can breathe a sigh of relief.
Well, yes. But in The Guardian article he cites, they literally disprove their argument with the research they quote, but are so blind to any other view than their own that they don’t see it. Amazing
I think innumerate might be the word you are looking for.
It just means the teachers were ridiculously over generous to start with. Results overall "better" than last year so this downgrading if anything didn't go far enough.
How can an article seeking to make the point that ‘only’ 20% of the infections were from BAME, back it up by quoting a BAME population of 14.5%? Incredible
“ Eleanor Roaf, the director of public health in Trafford, said 80% of its infections in the last week were in the white community, and she urged the region’s 2.8 million residents to concentrate “much harder on what we can do to stop the wider spread”.
...in Trafford, one of the wealthiest and whitest of Greater Manchester’s 10 boroughs, the vast majority of infections in the last week were in the white community. Just 14.5% of Trafford residents are black or ethnic minority, according to the last census.“
You'd think that part-time epidemiologst and full-time wanker Chris Addision would know that anyone who caught Covid from Eid festival celebrations (31st July) would barely be showing symptoms yet. The Government has just extended the period of isolation from 7 days to 9 because they realised 7 wasn't long enough to be sure. So lets wait a few days to see if there is any Eid spike before we can breathe a sigh of relief.
Well, yes. But in The Guardian article he cites, they literally disprove their argument with the research they quote, but are so blind to any other view than their own that they don’t see it. Amazing
I think innumerate might be the word you are looking for.
A word like 'disinnumerate' is needed (cf. disingenuous).
How can an article seeking to make the point that ‘only’ 20% of the infections were from BAME, back it up by quoting a BAME population of 14.5%? Incredible
“ Eleanor Roaf, the director of public health in Trafford, said 80% of its infections in the last week were in the white community, and she urged the region’s 2.8 million residents to concentrate “much harder on what we can do to stop the wider spread”.
...in Trafford, one of the wealthiest and whitest of Greater Manchester’s 10 boroughs, the vast majority of infections in the last week were in the white community. Just 14.5% of Trafford residents are black or ethnic minority, according to the last census.“
You'd think that part-time epidemiologst and full-time wanker Chris Addision would know that anyone who caught Covid from Eid festival celebrations (31st July) would barely be showing symptoms yet. The Government has just extended the period of isolation from 7 days to 9 because they realised 7 wasn't long enough to be sure. So lets wait a few days to see if there is any Eid spike before we can breathe a sigh of relief.
Well, yes. But in The Guardian article he cites, they literally disprove their argument with the research they quote, but are so blind to any other view than their own that they don’t see it. Amazing
I think innumerate might be the word you are looking for.
I don't think they are innumerate, they are just too blind to anything that doesn't fit their agenda to notice.
Totally, O/T but I was thinking more about the question, which crops up from time to time here, whether Nazism is worse than communism. Why is it still more respectable to be a communist than a Nazi?
I think the answer has to be that despite the loathsome nature of Lenin, Stalin, and their cliques:-
1. The mass of men and women of the Soviet Union displayed extraordinary valour in WWII, and the world owes them a debt of gratitude for it.
2. For all their brutality and cruelty, the Soviets never implemented the equivalent of Generalplan Ost, or the Holocaust, on the countries they occupied.
That said, there is nothing that can be said for the regimes of Pol Pot or Kim Il Sung, which were as cruel as the Nazis.
"I suppose some people might judge that on balance Mao did more good than harm, you can't say that about the Nazis" - Diane Abbott
What the actual fuck? On what evidentiary basis would they be adjusting grades up under these circumstances?
It looks to me as though they’ve picked 6% of the changed results at random in order to bleat that they didn’t just moderate everyone down.
But if they did, I am afraid, @DavidL and others with family affected, that renders the entirety of the grades utterly meaningless.
This is going to be a train wreck. Take any odds on the Scottish Education minister being out of office by the end of August.
And if OFQUAL have done the same, Gavin Williamson is also a dead man walking.
The basis on which they are "adjusting" the grades is the performance of the school over the last 5 years. So if the school typically got 20% "A"s and this year is forecasting 40% then the results of that school will be adjusted downwards. They can do this because the schools had to rank each pupil in order, something that they must have absolutely hated doing.
There are so many problems. My son did a Higher in computing as did another couple of the "bright" kids. This was unusual and the results of the school in computing in previous years reflected a different quality of student. We are concerned he will be marked down as a result.
A rapidly improving school is going to be penalised by this.
An exceptional year group (like my son's) is also penalised. One of the boys in my son's year got a prize last year from the best standard grades in Scotland. Kids of good ability in that year group face the risk of being marked down.
I am not sure that there was an obviously better way to do this but there are going to be a lot of unhappy kids (and parents) in Scotland this morning.
Yes David, I can see why they might adjust down. But why are they adjusting up? Do they think teachers will wantonly under predict in these circumstances?
I would not adjust a grade up were I in their shoes unless I had hard evidence - say, a mock paper - in my hands to back me up.
And I would think twice about adjusting grades down without calling in papers as well. Otherwise you’re just laying yourself wide open to trouble.
They’re going to have to spend far more on fighting appeals than they would have done just moderating the bloody thing properly to start with.
And meanwhile, thousands of teenagers are being wantonly damaged.
I must confess I found it astonishing that any results were being upgraded. Is it really possible, in these days of league tables, that there is some integrity in education yet? Wow.
Pains me to say it, but it’s much more likely the statistics are being cynically manipulated by the SQA in a bid to stave off criticism.
If so it has been the most epic fail in education since a Munich science teacher told Albert Einstein he didn’t have a scientific mind.
Of course, the elephant in the room is how poor the exam system as a whole is, which is why it does have a habit of throwing up daft results. I cherish particularly the time I appealed a complete fail for a grade A student, to receive a truly grovelling apology from the chief executive - they had marked somebody else’s paper. Similarly, I would still like to know how one, not overbright student got two As and a B despite never opening a book for two years.
But the big mistake here is that there’s not even a pretence of a proper process. SQA have misgivings? Fine. Wouldn’t be human if not. But call in papers and see what’s there before making actual changes. Don’t jut make them on the basis of mathematical models put together by drug addled failures with IQs in double figures.
EDITED because I didn’t mean ‘you’ as in DavidL.
They have done this without access to any evidence at all. The schools were not allowed to submit any evidence in support of their assessments, no mocks or prelims as we call them, no class work, nothing.
One of my son's friends, whose dad just happens to be on the school board, has got an A in economics despite getting a C in his prelim. Bright kid but lazy. The school clearly listed him much higher in the class than the prelim results would have justified.
Like the Einstein story, I'm going to pinch that.
That’s what’s so damn stupid. We could - and should - have been asked for evidence. Mocks. Coursework (although Cummings got rid of that in England). Heck, even exam questions done in lessons.
But even A-level Art work wasn’t allowed to be submitted. That’s how daft this process is.
It was always going to be a train wreck, but it looks as though in a stroke of sheer genius the governments have made it worse.
(In England of course we can’t use five years of data because most courses have been running for only two to three years).
They simply did not have the capacity to consider anything as pettifogging as "evidence". One of my daughter's friends worked for the SQA for a period of time. The quality of thinking (I use the word very loosely) that she experienced was almost beyond belief, at least it would have been unless you had prior contact.
This is stressful.
The exam boards had that capacity. And it should have been used.
But it wasn’t, and now a whirlwind will be reaped.
I am desperately sorry for your son and every other eighteen year old.
Sixteen year olds at least have a meaningful chance to put it right.
My son does too in that he is applying to English Universities who will be more interested in his advanced higher results next year but for the bulk of kids going to Scottish Universities this is it. His sister got an unconditional from Edinburgh on the basis of her Higher results following which her commitment to her advanced highers...declined.
The really scary idea was that this might be repeated if kids don't get back to school. Historically, when the EIS has said jump the only question from the Scottish government has been, "how high?" The EIS are not signed up to kids going back yet. If they muck about I can see a Scottish government frightened of the difference between state and private performance going off the chart concluding that having people sit exams is "unfair".
In which scenario, I imagine most Scottish private schools would switch to international exams if they’re running.
Which wouldn’t be well received in Scotland, I imagine.
Some - not sure if all - private schools were already using A levels (rather than Highers) and IB to meet the demands of their markets.
What the actual fuck? On what evidentiary basis would they be adjusting grades up under these circumstances?
It looks to me as though they’ve picked 6% of the changed results at random in order to bleat that they didn’t just moderate everyone down.
But if they did, I am afraid, @DavidL and others with family affected, that renders the entirety of the grades utterly meaningless.
This is going to be a train wreck. Take any odds on the Scottish Education minister being out of office by the end of August.
And if OFQUAL have done the same, Gavin Williamson is also a dead man walking.
The basis on which they are "adjusting" the grades is the performance of the school over the last 5 years. So if the school typically got 20% "A"s and this year is forecasting 40% then the results of that school will be adjusted downwards. They can do this because the schools had to rank each pupil in order, something that they must have absolutely hated doing.
There are so many problems. My son did a Higher in computing as did another couple of the "bright" kids. This was unusual and the results of the school in computing in previous years reflected a different quality of student. We are concerned he will be marked down as a result.
A rapidly improving school is going to be penalised by this.
An exceptional year group (like my son's) is also penalised. One of the boys in my son's year got a prize last year from the best standard grades in Scotland. Kids of good ability in that year group face the risk of being marked down.
I am not sure that there was an obviously better way to do this but there are going to be a lot of unhappy kids (and parents) in Scotland this morning.
Yes David, I can see why they might adjust down. But why are they adjusting up? Do they think teachers will wantonly under predict in these circumstances?
I would not adjust a grade up were I in their shoes unless I had hard evidence - say, a mock paper - in my hands to back me up.
And I would think twice about adjusting grades down without calling in papers as well. Otherwise you’re just laying yourself wide open to trouble.
They’re going to have to spend far more on fighting appeals than they would have done just moderating the bloody thing properly to start with.
And meanwhile, thousands of teenagers are being wantonly damaged.
I must confess I found it astonishing that any results were being upgraded. Is it really possible, in these days of league tables, that there is some integrity in education yet? Wow.
Well it’s one way to close the attainment gap...
6% of 25% is hardly closing much of a gap. 93% reduction by some faceless civil servant tw*t is a national scandal.
Totally, O/T but I was thinking more about the question, which crops up from time to time here, whether Nazism is worse than communism. Why is it still more respectable to be a communist than a Nazi?
I think the answer has to be that despite the loathsome nature of Lenin, Stalin, and their cliques:-
1. The mass of men and women of the Soviet Union displayed extraordinary valour in WWII, and the world owes them a debt of gratitude for it.
2. For all their brutality and cruelty, the Soviets never implemented the equivalent of Generalplan Ost, or the Holocaust, on the countries they occupied.
That said, there is nothing that can be said for the regimes of Pol Pot or Kim Il Sung, which were as cruel as the Nazis.
I think it's simpler than that. Communism was, ultimately, a failure, but it was a failure that at least superficially had some significant successes. The planned economy of Stalin, for example, created an economic superpower in the Soviet Union. In 1914 the largest armaments factory in the Russian Empire made 17 rifles. In 1945 they had churned out enough tanks to overrun all of Europe. When Mao took over China in 1949 it was a political, social and economic basket case. By 1976 it was a serious world power again.
Now you could argue - correctly - that these successes were at best decidedly mixed. For example, the Soviet economy grew at 5.5% a year from about 1922 to 1960. That's a remarkable rate of growth, but it's actually slightly lower than the rate under the Tsars (6%) and it disguises the fact that while industry exploded, agriculture imploded and millions starved. Far more people died in the Ukraine under Stalin than died in the Holocaust under Hitler. Similarly, had Deng been allowed to maintain his economic policies after the Great Famine of the late 1950s, China would have grown far faster and would also have been much less troubled and repressive. The Cultural Revolution was hugely damaging.
But they are at least, achievements. Name one achievement of Nazism that has actually stood the test of time. Economic recovery? Not really, they had food rationing even before the war, because they couldn't import both food and war materials. Architecture? Most of it was flattened in World War Two. Sustained, if modest and gradual, increases in living standards, which the Soviet Union did achieve from Khrushchev onwards? No.
It is worth pointing out though - in support of your argument - that I was once told Mussolini remains quite popular in Italy, as the man who gave them lots of new infrastructure and rebuilt the army and navy so Italy became a proper power. I don't know how true that is - @Cyclefree would be able to help - but it suggests that the reason for far right getting a worse press in this country than the far left is, straightforwardly, that 'far-right=Hitler' in the popular mind.
How can an article seeking to make the point that ‘only’ 20% of the infections were from BAME, back it up by quoting a BAME population of 14.5%? Incredible
“ Eleanor Roaf, the director of public health in Trafford, said 80% of its infections in the last week were in the white community, and she urged the region’s 2.8 million residents to concentrate “much harder on what we can do to stop the wider spread”.
...in Trafford, one of the wealthiest and whitest of Greater Manchester’s 10 boroughs, the vast majority of infections in the last week were in the white community. Just 14.5% of Trafford residents are black or ethnic minority, according to the last census.“
You'd think that part-time epidemiologst and full-time wanker Chris Addision would know that anyone who caught Covid from Eid festival celebrations (31st July) would barely be showing symptoms yet. The Government has just extended the period of isolation from 7 days to 9 because they realised 7 wasn't long enough to be sure. So lets wait a few days to see if there is any Eid spike before we can breathe a sigh of relief.
Well, yes. But in The Guardian article he cites, they literally disprove their argument with the research they quote, but are so blind to any other view than their own that they don’t see it. Amazing
I think innumerate might be the word you are looking for.
I don't think they are innumerate, they are just too blind to anything that doesn't fit their agenda to notice.
What's wrong with BOTH innumerate and blind. 'Tis the Guardian.
What the actual fuck? On what evidentiary basis would they be adjusting grades up under these circumstances?
It looks to me as though they’ve picked 6% of the changed results at random in order to bleat that they didn’t just moderate everyone down.
But if they did, I am afraid, @DavidL and others with family affected, that renders the entirety of the grades utterly meaningless.
This is going to be a train wreck. Take any odds on the Scottish Education minister being out of office by the end of August.
And if OFQUAL have done the same, Gavin Williamson is also a dead man walking.
The basis on which they are "adjusting" the grades is the performance of the school over the last 5 years. So if the school typically got 20% "A"s and this year is forecasting 40% then the results of that school will be adjusted downwards. They can do this because the schools had to rank each pupil in order, something that they must have absolutely hated doing.
There are so many problems. My son did a Higher in computing as did another couple of the "bright" kids. This was unusual and the results of the school in computing in previous years reflected a different quality of student. We are concerned he will be marked down as a result.
A rapidly improving school is going to be penalised by this.
An exceptional year group (like my son's) is also penalised. One of the boys in my son's year got a prize last year from the best standard grades in Scotland. Kids of good ability in that year group face the risk of being marked down.
I am not sure that there was an obviously better way to do this but there are going to be a lot of unhappy kids (and parents) in Scotland this morning.
Yes David, I can see why they might adjust down. But why are they adjusting up? Do they think teachers will wantonly under predict in these circumstances?
I would not adjust a grade up were I in their shoes unless I had hard evidence - say, a mock paper - in my hands to back me up.
And I would think twice about adjusting grades down without calling in papers as well. Otherwise you’re just laying yourself wide open to trouble.
They’re going to have to spend far more on fighting appeals than they would have done just moderating the bloody thing properly to start with.
And meanwhile, thousands of teenagers are being wantonly damaged.
I must confess I found it astonishing that any results were being upgraded. Is it really possible, in these days of league tables, that there is some integrity in education yet? Wow.
Well it’s one way to close the attainment gap...
6% of 25% is hardly closing much of a gap. 93% reduction by some faceless civil servant tw*t is a national scandal.
Not a civil servant, to be precise, but a staff member of a NDPB.
Totally, O/T but I was thinking more about the question, which crops up from time to time here, whether Nazism is worse than communism. Why is it still more respectable to be a communist than a Nazi?
I think the answer has to be that despite the loathsome nature of Lenin, Stalin, and their cliques:-
1. The mass of men and women of the Soviet Union displayed extraordinary valour in WWII, and the world owes them a debt of gratitude for it.
2. For all their brutality and cruelty, the Soviets never implemented the equivalent of Generalplan Ost, or the Holocaust, on the countries they occupied.
That said, there is nothing that can be said for the regimes of Pol Pot or Kim Il Sung, which were as cruel as the Nazis.
"I suppose some people might judge that on balance Mao did more good than harm, you can't say that about the Nazis" - Diane Abbott
Er - no.
You might argue the Communist Party of China did more good than harm between 1949 and 1989, but that was usually in spite of Mao not because of him. Mao was Dominic Cummings with an actual murderous streak. Magnificent in leading the Communists through the decades long civil war, utterly and completely useless as a national leader.
When I heard this on the radio I immediately thought of Godfather II.
'Young man, I hear you and your friends are stealing goods. But you don't even send a dress to my house. No respect! You know I've got three daughters. This is my neighborhood. You and your friends should show me some respect. You should let me wet my beak a little.'
:-) Trump can't quite get the style right. Rather than saying John Lewis "chose not to come to" his inauguration, he should have said Lewis was absent at Ivanka's wedding. Cue the music. No proper mafia boss would shout "You're fired" either.
Now he wants a "large percentage" of Tik Tok. Can't be long until he accuses China itself of being a criminal outfit.
Back in May 1989 in the famous "Ivanarama" issue of "Spy" magazine cited as the origin of the nickname "The Donald", what the text actually says is "The Don". He's such a card!
What the actual fuck? On what evidentiary basis would they be adjusting grades up under these circumstances?
It looks to me as though they’ve picked 6% of the changed results at random in order to bleat that they didn’t just moderate everyone down.
But if they did, I am afraid, @DavidL and others with family affected, that renders the entirety of the grades utterly meaningless.
This is going to be a train wreck. Take any odds on the Scottish Education minister being out of office by the end of August.
And if OFQUAL have done the same, Gavin Williamson is also a dead man walking.
The basis on which they are "adjusting" the grades is the performance of the school over the last 5 years. So if the school typically got 20% "A"s and this year is forecasting 40% then the results of that school will be adjusted downwards. They can do this because the schools had to rank each pupil in order, something that they must have absolutely hated doing.
There are so many problems. My son did a Higher in computing as did another couple of the "bright" kids. This was unusual and the results of the school in computing in previous years reflected a different quality of student. We are concerned he will be marked down as a result.
A rapidly improving school is going to be penalised by this.
An exceptional year group (like my son's) is also penalised. One of the boys in my son's year got a prize last year from the best standard grades in Scotland. Kids of good ability in that year group face the risk of being marked down.
I am not sure that there was an obviously better way to do this but there are going to be a lot of unhappy kids (and parents) in Scotland this morning.
Yes David, I can see why they might adjust down. But why are they adjusting up? Do they think teachers will wantonly under predict in these circumstances?
I would not adjust a grade up were I in their shoes unless I had hard evidence - say, a mock paper - in my hands to back me up.
And I would think twice about adjusting grades down without calling in papers as well. Otherwise you’re just laying yourself wide open to trouble.
They’re going to have to spend far more on fighting appeals than they would have done just moderating the bloody thing properly to start with.
And meanwhile, thousands of teenagers are being wantonly damaged.
I must confess I found it astonishing that any results were being upgraded. Is it really possible, in these days of league tables, that there is some integrity in education yet? Wow.
Well it’s one way to close the attainment gap...
6% of 25% is hardly closing much of a gap. 93% reduction by some faceless civil servant tw*t is a national scandal.
Not a civil servant, to be precise, but a staff member of a NDPB.
Comments
If the twin evils of Trump and Boris Johnson's Bluekip where swept off the board of politics, my world would be a brighter, better place. Both are a blight.
https://twitter.com/lorraine/status/1290567744577056768?s=21
Hospitalisation by date of hospitalisation should be something that its possible to automate getting pretty swiftly I would have thought? I would have thought hospitalisations would get locked on the day they get hospitalised so if the hospitals are sending data across daily I don't understand why it would need to take much more than 24 hours or so to get the accurate data.
That's different to other data sets that naturally lag much more, but that seems like an odd one to be lagging so badly. Means that not only are you looking at the rear view mirror if you look at hospitalisations (Since it takes about a fortnight to go from infection to hospital but then its taking) another fortnight for the hospitalisations that have actually happened already to even show in the data. So this data is essentially a month out of date already by the first day you even get it.
That just shows how silly PHE death figures are
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Pettus
https://twitter.com/MrMcEnaney/status/1290569668487516160?s=20
https://twitter.com/MrMcEnaney/status/1290574213103968257?s=20
https://twitter.com/MrMcEnaney/status/1290572297770872832?s=20
Multiply that by multiple companies (multiple levels), local laws, local government (multiple levels) etc for the US.
To be honest, I am surprised that the reporting lag is so low.
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1290454069551783936?s=20
I do not have to apply for British citizenship, but I know a few Americans who have done so and they describe it as an expensive, time consuming and difficult process.
Does anyone know how we are doing these days granting residency to EU people who have lived here for 20 or 30 years?
It seems insane.
Fax plus manual dat entry is still a dominant mode of data transmission between providers.
The MUMPS programming language is just the icing on the cake. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUMPS
It's nothing like the excitement when his sister got her actual results. I feel really sorry for him and his cohort that they have lost their chance to shine.
If they haven't been wargaming this shitshow for the last 3 months then I have no idea what they have been doing.
It looks to me as though they’ve picked 6% of the changed results at random in order to bleat that they didn’t just moderate everyone down.
But if they did, I am afraid, @DavidL and others with family affected, that renders the entirety of the grades utterly meaningless.
This is going to be a train wreck. Take any odds on the Scottish Education minister being out of office by the end of August.
And if OFQUAL have done the same, Gavin Williamson is also a dead man walking.
However - and it is a big however - that should worry the likes of @eek even more, as OFQUAL is filled with career civil servants - mostly rather poor ones - who know nothing about assessment processes. Universities have already been on at them over the massive cock up that was a consultation on next year’s exams. If they get this wrong too...
There are so many problems. My son did a Higher in computing as did another couple of the "bright" kids. This was unusual and the results of the school in computing in previous years reflected a different quality of student. We are concerned he will be marked down as a result.
A rapidly improving school is going to be penalised by this.
An exceptional year group (like my son's) is also penalised. One of the boys in my son's year got a prize last year from the best standard grades in Scotland. Kids of good ability in that year group face the risk of being marked down.
I am not sure that there was an obviously better way to do this but there are going to be a lot of unhappy kids (and parents) in Scotland this morning.
I would not adjust a grade up were I in their shoes unless I had hard evidence - say, a mock paper - in my hands to back me up.
And I would think twice about adjusting grades down without calling in papers as well. Otherwise you’re just laying yourself wide open to trouble.
They’re going to have to spend far more on fighting appeals than they would have done just moderating the bloody thing properly to start with.
And meanwhile, thousands of teenagers are being wantonly damaged.
The results will be known within a few days, so a series of regular news stories...
But why should Gavin be a dead man walking? There is only one offence in Johnson's government, and Williamson hasn't committed it, because it isn't failure at your job.
If so it has been the most epic fail in education since a Munich science teacher told Albert Einstein he didn’t have a scientific mind.
Of course, the elephant in the room is how poor the exam system as a whole is, which is why it does have a habit of throwing up daft results. I cherish particularly the time I appealed a complete fail for a grade A student, to receive a truly grovelling apology from the chief executive - they had marked somebody else’s paper. Similarly, I would still like to know how one, not overbright student got two As and a B despite never opening a book for two years.
But the big mistake here is that there’s not even a pretence of a proper process. SQA have misgivings? Fine. Wouldn’t be human if not. But call in papers and see what’s there before making actual changes. Don’t jut make them on the basis of mathematical models put together by drug addled failures with IQs in double figures.
EDITED because I didn’t mean ‘you’ as in DavidL.
And that’s the cardinal sin of this government.
https://twitter.com/mrchrisaddison/status/1290306139150721024?s=21
One of my son's friends, whose dad just happens to be on the school board, has got an A in economics despite getting a C in his prelim. Bright kid but lazy. The school clearly listed him much higher in the class than the prelim results would have justified.
Like the Einstein story, I'm going to pinch that.
But even A-level Art work wasn’t allowed to be submitted. That’s how daft this process is.
It was always going to be a train wreck, but it looks as though in a stroke of sheer genius the governments have made it worse.
(In England of course we can’t use five years of data because most courses have been running for only two to three years).
... said Napoleon after Waterloo.
... said Medina-Sidonia after Gravelines.
... said Charles II after the Medway.
... said Alex Salmond in 2021.
This is stressful.
https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/vopp-table-16-when-absentee-mail-ballot-processing-and-counting-can-begin.aspx
“ Eleanor Roaf, the director of public health in Trafford, said 80% of its infections in the last week were in the white community, and she urged the region’s 2.8 million residents to concentrate “much harder on what we can do to stop the wider spread”.
...in Trafford, one of the wealthiest and whitest of Greater Manchester’s 10 boroughs, the vast majority of infections in the last week were in the white community. Just 14.5% of Trafford residents are black or ethnic minority, according to the last census.“
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/03/coronavirus-80-new-cases-trafford-among-white-community
But it wasn’t, and now a whirlwind will be reaped.
I am desperately sorry for your son and every other eighteen year old.
Sixteen year olds at least have a meaningful chance to put it right.
http://www.traffordjsna.org.uk/About-Trafford/Key-demographics/Ethnic-groups.aspx
"There is wide variation within Trafford in the proportion of the population belonging to a BAME; for example ranging from 5.7% in the West locality, to 37.4% in the North locality. See locality profiles for further information."
http://www.traffordjsna.org.uk/docs/Traffords-Neighbourhoods-Docs/July-2019/North-locality-profile-250719.pdf
http://www.traffordjsna.org.uk/docs/Traffords-Neighbourhoods-Docs/July-2019/South-locality-profile-250719.pdf
http://www.traffordjsna.org.uk/docs/Traffords-Neighbourhoods-Docs/July-2019/Central-locality-profile-090719.pdf
http://www.traffordjsna.org.uk/docs/Traffords-Neighbourhoods-Docs/July-2019/West-locality-profile-090719.pdf
The really scary idea was that this might be repeated if kids don't get back to school. Historically, when the EIS has said jump the only question from the Scottish government has been, "how high?" The EIS are not signed up to kids going back yet. If they muck about I can see a Scottish government frightened of the difference between state and private performance going off the chart concluding that having people sit exams is "unfair".
Which wouldn’t be well received in Scotland, I imagine.
I haven't spoken to Grandson II yet, who is 17 and preparing for A level next year. Can't give him a lot of confidence!
I think the answer has to be that despite the loathsome nature of Lenin, Stalin, and their cliques:-
1. The mass of men and women of the Soviet Union displayed extraordinary valour in WWII, and the world owes them a debt of gratitude for it.
2. For all their brutality and cruelty, the Soviets never implemented the equivalent of Generalplan Ost, or the Holocaust, on the countries they occupied.
That said, there is nothing that can be said for the regimes of Pol Pot or Kim Il Sung, which were as cruel as the Nazis.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-53636296
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB4o5n2EGyA
Hilarious to see IDS moaning about the WA .
Now you could argue - correctly - that these successes were at best decidedly mixed. For example, the Soviet economy grew at 5.5% a year from about 1922 to 1960. That's a remarkable rate of growth, but it's actually slightly lower than the rate under the Tsars (6%) and it disguises the fact that while industry exploded, agriculture imploded and millions starved. Far more people died in the Ukraine under Stalin than died in the Holocaust under Hitler. Similarly, had Deng been allowed to maintain his economic policies after the Great Famine of the late 1950s, China would have grown far faster and would also have been much less troubled and repressive. The Cultural Revolution was hugely damaging.
But they are at least, achievements. Name one achievement of Nazism that has actually stood the test of time. Economic recovery? Not really, they had food rationing even before the war, because they couldn't import both food and war materials. Architecture? Most of it was flattened in World War Two. Sustained, if modest and gradual, increases in living standards, which the Soviet Union did achieve from Khrushchev onwards? No.
It is worth pointing out though - in support of your argument - that I was once told Mussolini remains quite popular in Italy, as the man who gave them lots of new infrastructure and rebuilt the army and navy so Italy became a proper power. I don't know how true that is - @Cyclefree would be able to help - but it suggests that the reason for far right getting a worse press in this country than the far left is, straightforwardly, that 'far-right=Hitler' in the popular mind.
You might argue the Communist Party of China did more good than harm between 1949 and 1989, but that was usually in spite of Mao not because of him. Mao was Dominic Cummings with an actual murderous streak. Magnificent in leading the Communists through the decades long civil war, utterly and completely useless as a national leader.
Now he wants a "large percentage" of Tik Tok. Can't be long until he accuses China itself of being a criminal outfit.
Back in May 1989 in the famous "Ivanarama" issue of "Spy" magazine cited as the origin of the nickname "The Donald", what the text actually says is "The Don". He's such a card!
I hope they have the Samaritans on speed dial.