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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » An opportunity for Sir Keir to set the agenda
“Grades will instead be issued according to Ofqual’s statistical model, relying on a school’s recent exam history.” The computer ensures your future determined by the school you went to, and there is nothing you can do about it. https://t.co/pvk1cvGdNJ
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Just as an aside, this sort of nonsense long precedes the current crisis (grades being wrong). I had six exams for my Religious Studies A-level. The first I got an A, I think, the second and third were apparently a D and E which miraculously improved by quite a lot when I asked for remarking/reassessment. [Sadly wasn't possible due to, er, leaving school for the similarly badly assessed final pair of exams].
F1: very interesting grid, bar the front row. Really nice to see Hulkenberg perform superbly in qualifying. Rough for Kvyat. He and Ricciardo might have good races.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/07/its-taken-just-12-months-for-boris-johnson-to-create-a-government-of-sleaze
Betting PostF1: backed Kvyat for points at 6.5 (7 with boost). He was into the points last weekend and only failed to score due to a reliability failure. This time he was fast enough to be top 10 but got a time eliminated.
https://enormo-haddock.blogspot.com/2020/08/70th-anniversary-grand-prix-pre-race.html
Sounds like 'You can't possibly have achieved an A; your school has never had a pupil with one before.'
Hmmm.
The primary school my younger son attended had, his year, three boys who were each capable of an 11+ 'pass' in the opinion of the experienced final year teacher. However, the rules said that only two could. On exam day my son had a cold.
Result.... 6-7 years later he said that 'couldn't possibly have been 'that good' he'd failed his 11+, hadn't he?
I do have one minor quibble though. You compare Gavin Williamson to Frank Spencer. That’s monstrously unfair. Frank Spencer was well meaning and quite funny.
Obviously, there are a number of reasons, most of which have nothing to do with the exams themselves. But if it sparks a debate about class sizes and forces the government to lower them, and leads to an understanding that postcodes should be less important than talent in any system, as horrendous as this is going to be over the next three months at least some good will come of it.
On kremlinology, this row will no doubt fuel #ClassicDom's conviction that only he and his data science cronies truly understand statistics and probability.
Nowadays I don't want to know what you know what I need to know is how well you can find things out.
I've recommended prisons in Sub-sarahan Africa here for ages, great to see others arriving at a similar conclusion. I'd only put violent criminals serving long sentences in them, because there wouldn't be any point shipping someone out for 30 days.
However, knowing as much as I do about them, I have no doubt that it would have been just as big a disaster if they had been.
And the statistical modelling is entirely their fault.
My daughter is not acadamic but has worked hard to get what other would regard as mediocre grades. I am concerned that even our modest hopes will be dashed and she ends up with grades lower than she has already evidenced that she is capable of by way of the recent mock exams - just because of some ruddy algorythm.
It is no good saying "she can still take the GCSEs in November". The work involved from a standing start to take these exams now is a non-starter.
We risk denting children`s self-esteem for life. It`s that serious.
Better to remain in the fantasy world and screw over everyone else.
So historical research, geography fieldwork, and even musical composition were only saved by a narrow margin.
How anyone could have thought abandoning coursework entirely was a good idea is beyond me, even with all its possible flaws.
I do think this will cut through better than most issues. People are about the children and will easily believe the government could have come up.with something better.
My view - controversial I know - is that this issue epitomises the knee-jerk over-reactions to the virus. I don`t think that schools should have been closed at all, or at least kept open for the exam cohorts so that the exams could proceed as planned.
Even being paid to take them I think many places would baulk at the idea.
Rather, this populist bunch are making policy on the hoof after taking on board the latest brain-farts from their focus groups. This doesn`t come up to the status of ideology by a long chalk. It`s like Blairism for idiots. I wish they were basing things on ideology.
Gosh, if any of this is accurate the 'summer opening' of Spain would appear to have been too much too fast.
Why were AS levels messed with? It seemed a perfectly good system to me.
That being said, there were alternatives that would have been far more meaningful than what’s happened now.
Joe Biden is due to announce his running mate some time this week, so it is likely some people will know his decision before it becomes public. Tread carefully.
It is noticeable that liquidity is down this morning on Betfair as players take their money off the table rather than risk being caught out by those in the know.
For what it is worth, Betfair's current back prices to not much money are:
Kamala Harris: 2.3
Susan Rice: 3.95
Gretchen Whitmer: 7.4
Elizabeth Warren: 21
Michelle Obama: 21
Tammy Duckworth: 24
Val Demings: 24
Karen Bass: 42
Keisha Lance Bottoms: 44
Michelle Lujan Grisham: 90
Hillary Clinton: 130
Gina Raimondo: 150
Stacey Abrams: 200
Barack Obama: 200
I don't think that's the reason for cock ups and bad policies.
It's sounds like a nonsense theory to me, too simple an explanation for being bad at their jobs.
Other than mere assumption that journalists are uniquely bad at being MPs because of the impact of their former profession, why would that actually be the case? Do you think the non-journalist ones are great?
Like today, he gets a big headline in the paper saying schools must open, but no preparations have been made by Government to facilitate that.
The fact that the only job he has ever had is chasing favourable headlines would seem to be relevant.
And it did mean that students going down the university route would have life defining exams every year from the age of 16 to 21 with the possible exception of the second year of university (depending on course and institution).
But whether what has replaced them is any better is at least questionable. One of the key problems is it has narrowed the spread of subjects students take at post 16, which isn’t ideal. It means less crossover at a high level between sciences, humanities and arts, for example.
And of course, it means that if exams are interrupted (as in this case) we have insufficient data to work on.
I`m thinking Reps are a a bit long at 2.92 to win Wisconsin. Thin market though. Arizona is interesting too.
I think it is a rather silly idea that his past job is so determinative of his actions. Plenty of politicians chase headlines without having been journalists. And I think focusing on it that way risks people taking the message 'we shouldn't have former journalists as leaders' rather than 'we shouldn't have crap people as leaders'. Your explanation has no explanation why it is, in this one case, that former profession is so impactful. I think it is too trite an explanation, and I don't think it stacks up.
Gove, who is allegedly the motive force in Government, is a former journalist.
Correlation does not equal causation, but it's a pretty big clue...
The whole situation with schools and universities seems to have been a farce from start to finish. I understand we're in the midst of a deadly pandemic, and i understand that things couldn't automatically continue as normal. But how much can it really be said that
1) the downsides of the actions taken were given much attention at all in focus on the short term measures?
2) how much, if these downsides were given more than a cursory acknowledgement, has there really been a massive focus on minimising those downsides as much as possible.
All that is happening was entirely predictable, and was predicted, from the time that schools and universities started shutting down. I don't believe it was really impossible for extra focus to be made on exam cohorts (particularly A-Level ones). I don't believe it should have been impossible to put in place widespread structure learning for the couple of months of teaching that were lost in schools, and don't believe it should have been impossible for pupils to sit exams somehow. Probably in a traditional way, taking advantage of the extra space available in unused buildings to allow social distancing. Or even via some online mechanism (as many professional bodies now do routinely - so the expertise to do so exists)
With the possibility of putting in place an additional September/October sitting for those who really were disadvantaged.
Its all 'my team vs your team' with some people.
I suspect that Gove was probably more consistent in his opinion writing, Johnson was often just a professional contrarian.
I condemn BoZo for the things he does.
There is no comparison.
The government are stepping on a landmine here and will soon be carrying a bloody foot around in their hat. If you ever want to raise the venomous and undying enmity of Middle (as opposed to Little) England then fuck around with their kids' A level results.
Wait for him to use a clip of him being cheered by reporters!
They’re all the same.
Now lets compare the 'talent' in Cameron's government - Fox, Grayling, IDS, Lansley, Letwin, Osborne, Warsi.
You condemn Boris because you've chosen a different side just as you cheered Cameron because you chose his side.
So you cheered Cameron for the same things you condemn Boris for.
The work consisted of a set of tests done in school at a time determined by the school where many of the questions were open questions with a very limited set of acceptable answers. The best bit was the students’ teachers were responsible for marking the work and so were sent a copy of the mark scheme at the beginning of the whole process.
In Chemistry at least the mode mark (i.e. the most common) was 100%.
Getting rid of that system was long overdue and it’s replacement (where teachers certify that the students have done the required practical work on a pass/fail basis) is much better. The questions that had been on the tests are now in the actual exams.
I would have been pretty angry had the teachers got to decide what my grades would be. It's ridiculous.
In private schools, year end exams are standard. Even term end exams are not uncommon. Plus tests through the year.
In the run up to GCSE/A level, homework from questions from past papers is standard - every single week.
By the time I sat my A levels, it felt like the 11-millionth exam I had done. All the questions were *variations* on the ones in past papers - I had been put through every question in the previous decade for the subjects I did.
Why would Cameron lock the country down before the pandemic even happened? It's complete nonsense.
"poured fuel over division to force his way."
Yeah no politician has ever done that before lolz. Come back Saint Tony all is forgiven.
Its just the opportunities they get, the events that happen, the degree to which they will push things, the skill they have in their mendacity.
Boris is a liar, Cameron was a liar.
I'll tell you what governments do:
They pander to the rich and powerful
They bribe their supporters to stay loyal
They neglect essential infrastructure in favour of vanity projects
They posture about the world at a cost of lives and money
They fail to do proper preparation or show attention to detail
They're mendacious and corrupt
The only differences are how good they are at fooling enough of the people enough of the time.
Whether one liar is 5% more dishonest than another liar is merely an academic point.
It was assumed that the schools best able to teach through the epidemic - remote schooling or other - would be the private schools and the leading state schools.
It was further assumed that the probable result would be worse grades overall, with everyone taking some kind of hit. But the bottom end (poorest students) would have been a disaster.
Leading to a university intake which would be the worst for the "diversity" metrics in a generation. Or 2.
Another was the tendency of weaker students treat the AS exams as a trial run and then rely on re-sits to bring them back up to where they should be: this often put them even further behind as they were trying to revise for resits when their peers who had done well first time round could concentrate solely on the new modules.
Some universities, Cambridge in particular, specified that they were only interested in the grades achieved at first attempt, but most didn’t mind.
An aquitaine of my wife is from the disadvantaged end of things. Her son wants to become an engineer - via a career in the RAF.
At his school, there was *some* prep for GCSEs, last year. In the science GCSEs he took, there was one mock exam, and a slack handful of past paper questions.
He did past paper questions, every week. Himself. And got a wall of top marks.
The only child in the school to do so.
The gap between what he got at school and what I did (and will happen at my daughters schools) was staggering.
Or did you read it ?
The unlimited detention without trial of thousands of people is not something practised by every government since Blair.
Come on keep up.
I can’t say why your teachers thought what they did, though sometimes a low prediction in mocks is used as a wake up call to get a student working.
Which in turn causes a problem with University entrance because their model of offers is based upon the expected overall pass rates. So I don't see entrance qualifications coming down this year, if anything they will edge up because the sad truth is that the results these kids will get will have less value than they did in previous years.
This is the price we paid for closing the schools and "protecting" the least vulnerable in our society. Its tough on them and unfair. And frankly we did not think hard enough about it before making the decisions for them.
The reason I did better is that school had finished a few months early and we had a chance to study at home, which is far more effective (for me anyway) than trying to learn anything in school.
Teachers in other schools may well have had significant chunks still to teach and if their pupils did not have easy access to e-learning they may have had little chance of ever covering those last sections of the specification. They would have been at a major disadvantage.
Javid is a loss but given what has happened its been vital that the Downing Street neighbours are closely aligned.
Ken Clarke and others had decided to retire.
So who does that leave ? Ellwood and Greg Clarke. I can't even remember what jobs they've had which shows how little impression they've made one way or another.
In fact how many of your list have had impressive cabinet careers ? Hunt and Ken Clarke. The rest are 6/10 people at best.
As to being Remainers given how the 2017-19 governments were undermined by defections and resignations (and that includes Boris) then I do have some sympathy for wanting to reduce the risk of that happening again.