Just saw the Selby interview, Ronnie won the mind games too.
I have some sympathy with Selby's view -Ronnie can be an arse sometimes but in this case I believe he was trying (in that smash it all over the place frame) to get it over with to purify his snooker for the last 3 frames. In essence he wasn't being disrespectful in this case he was bizarrely trying to find a way to win in only the way Ronnie can think. What happened in the last 3 frames though no other snooker player could ever have done . Ronnie is the ultimate contrarian , you even see it with his insistence about talking about getting a cue action from Amazon . He has to be different and he is very good at being different - occasionally he looks a prat , more often though he looks a genius
Good summary. Irritating bloke but also interesting and unusual. And as a snooker player incomparable.
"Well, put it this way, I feel very low in myself. I can't see much in the future, and I feel that any second something terrible is going to happen to me."
More on T cell immune response. Encouraging both for long term immunity, and (less quantifiable) for the possibility of a proportion of the population having some sort of useful immune memory from previous coronavirus infection.
Robust T cell immunity in convalescent individuals with asymptomatic or mild COVID-19 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867420310084 SARS-CoV-2-specific memory T cells will likely prove critical for long-term immune protection against COVID-19. We here systematically mapped the functional and phenotypic landscape of SARS-CoV-2-specific T cell responses in unexposed individuals, exposed family members, and individuals with acute or convalescent COVID-19. Acute phase SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells displayed a highly activated cytotoxic phenotype that correlated with various clinical markers of disease severity, whereas convalescent phase SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells were polyfunctional and displayed a stem-like memory phenotype. Importantly, SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells were detectable in antibody-seronegative exposed family members and convalescent individuals with a history of asymptomatic and mild COVID-19. Our collective dataset shows that SARS-CoV-2 elicits robust, broad and highly functional memory T cell responses, suggesting that natural exposure or infection may prevent recurrent episodes of severe COVID-19.
My strategy would be to drive across a border and finish my holiday in Germany or Italy. A non-stop drive across France to the Tunnel would be acceptable to avoid quarantine.
I suspect most people's strategy will be to follow the Cummings example and just ignore the quarantine. How is it being policed?
Yes, exactly. I find it hard to believe the cops are now going to be knocking on maybe 200,000 doors to make sure returning holidaymakers-from-France are staying home.
And I speak as someone determined to go on a much-anticipated trip to Greece next Friday. Even as cases rise there....
If no one is planning to quarantine, why the rush home, as reported in the news? Unless, of course, most people aren't rushing home at all and the great repatriation is hyperbole...
Manufactured needless drama to knock the exams fiasco off the front page.
Utterly pathetic state of affairs.
Except there is no exams fiasco is there.
But we have discovered that teachers grade predictions are less reliable than an estate agent's valuation.
You show no insight into this topic.
It's not one of your good ones.
I'm right though aren't I.
A lesson in life is to under-promise and over-deliver.
Over-promise and then tantrum will not get you far.
No you're not right. If you think about how the algorithm worked and then about how a reasonable and responsible teacher would predict individual grades for each individual child it is obvious that the first will in aggregate give lower grades. I am going to sleep now but we can go through it in detail next time if you like.
Just How Far Will Trump Go? https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/08/trumps-weaponization-usps-and-census/615235/ ... Trump is systematically enlisting agencies, including the Postal Service, Census Bureau, Department of Justice, and Department of Homeland Security, that traditionally have been considered at least somewhat insulated from political machinations to reward his allies and punish those he considers his enemies. He is razing barriers between his personal and political interests and the core operations of the federal government to an extent that no president has previously attempted, a wide range of public-administration experts have told me.
“There’s always been temptation … but no president in modern times has taken action so explicitly and obviously—or transparently—to influence and actually direct these agencies to favor the party in power,” Paul Light, a public-service professor at New York University, told me. “None. None.”...
She issues a death threat in that letter. Why is that any more acceptable if the target is the odious Nigel Farage than, say, the equally odious Owen Jones, or a Black Lives Matters activist?
That's not so surprising. So far Starmer has not provided any positive reason to vote Labour. He's contributed nothing in terms of an alternative to the government's management of Covid and his after the event criticisms grate. He's also dull and his team unknown and invisible. What's to vote for other than Labour not being the Tories.
"Well, put it this way, I feel very low in myself. I can't see much in the future, and I feel that any second something terrible is going to happen to me."
My strategy would be to drive across a border and finish my holiday in Germany or Italy. A non-stop drive across France to the Tunnel would be acceptable to avoid quarantine.
I suspect most people's strategy will be to follow the Cummings example and just ignore the quarantine. How is it being policed?
Yes, exactly. I find it hard to believe the cops are now going to be knocking on maybe 200,000 doors to make sure returning holidaymakers-from-France are staying home.
And I speak as someone determined to go on a much-anticipated trip to Greece next Friday. Even as cases rise there....
If no one is planning to quarantine, why the rush home, as reported in the news? Unless, of course, most people aren't rushing home at all and the great repatriation is hyperbole...
Manufactured needless drama to knock the exams fiasco off the front page.
Utterly pathetic state of affairs.
Except there is no exams fiasco is there.
But we have discovered that teachers grade predictions are less reliable than an estate agent's valuation.
You show no insight into this topic.
It's not one of your good ones.
I'm right though aren't I.
A lesson in life is to under-promise and over-deliver.
Over-promise and then tantrum will not get you far.
In this instance it will probably get you a government U-turn by Monday.
But for what benefit ?
The uni courses will still be filled and we get a huge dollop of grade inflation baked into the system which just means that the grades required in future years rise in line.
And everyone ends up thinking they're more talented than they are and/or becomes more self-entitled.
While big, bad world gets harder by the year.
It would be more honest to stop school exams, use the time saved for something more productive, give everyone A grades if they turn up for two years and let universities set their own entrance criteria.
My strategy would be to drive across a border and finish my holiday in Germany or Italy. A non-stop drive across France to the Tunnel would be acceptable to avoid quarantine.
I suspect most people's strategy will be to follow the Cummings example and just ignore the quarantine. How is it being policed?
Yes, exactly. I find it hard to believe the cops are now going to be knocking on maybe 200,000 doors to make sure returning holidaymakers-from-France are staying home.
And I speak as someone determined to go on a much-anticipated trip to Greece next Friday. Even as cases rise there....
If no one is planning to quarantine, why the rush home, as reported in the news? Unless, of course, most people aren't rushing home at all and the great repatriation is hyperbole...
Manufactured needless drama to knock the exams fiasco off the front page.
Utterly pathetic state of affairs.
Except there is no exams fiasco is there.
But we have discovered that teachers grade predictions are less reliable than an estate agent's valuation.
You show no insight into this topic.
It's not one of your good ones.
I'm right though aren't I.
A lesson in life is to under-promise and over-deliver.
Over-promise and then tantrum will not get you far.
In this instance it will probably get you a government U-turn by Monday.
But for what benefit ?
The uni courses will still be filled and we get a huge dollop of grade inflation baked into the system which just means that the grades required in future years rise in line.
And everyone ends up thinking they're more talented than they are and/or becomes more self-entitled.
While big, bad world gets harder by the year.
It would be more honest to stop school exams, use the time saved for something more productive, give everyone A grades if they turn up for two years and let universities set their own entrance criteria.
What precisely would have been the harm in just allowing the teacher recommended grades through and back to normal exams next year?
My strategy would be to drive across a border and finish my holiday in Germany or Italy. A non-stop drive across France to the Tunnel would be acceptable to avoid quarantine.
I suspect most people's strategy will be to follow the Cummings example and just ignore the quarantine. How is it being policed?
Yes, exactly. I find it hard to believe the cops are now going to be knocking on maybe 200,000 doors to make sure returning holidaymakers-from-France are staying home.
And I speak as someone determined to go on a much-anticipated trip to Greece next Friday. Even as cases rise there....
If no one is planning to quarantine, why the rush home, as reported in the news? Unless, of course, most people aren't rushing home at all and the great repatriation is hyperbole...
Manufactured needless drama to knock the exams fiasco off the front page.
Utterly pathetic state of affairs.
Except there is no exams fiasco is there.
But we have discovered that teachers grade predictions are less reliable than an estate agent's valuation.
Sorry, but that's pure spin.
We've discovered that the Ofqual equation doesn't work very well. Ofqual tried the model on the 2019 exams, and they got about 40 % error rate between actual exam results and the output of their model.
People who have poked around in the Ofqual black box think they've worked out why it sometimes gives insane outputs (the C --> U downgrades, for example).
Oh, and lots of young people have had their plans for the autumn thrown up in the air, because some have A Level results that have been held down, whereas other have results that have been allowed to inflate.
My strategy would be to drive across a border and finish my holiday in Germany or Italy. A non-stop drive across France to the Tunnel would be acceptable to avoid quarantine.
I suspect most people's strategy will be to follow the Cummings example and just ignore the quarantine. How is it being policed?
Yes, exactly. I find it hard to believe the cops are now going to be knocking on maybe 200,000 doors to make sure returning holidaymakers-from-France are staying home.
And I speak as someone determined to go on a much-anticipated trip to Greece next Friday. Even as cases rise there....
If no one is planning to quarantine, why the rush home, as reported in the news? Unless, of course, most people aren't rushing home at all and the great repatriation is hyperbole...
Manufactured needless drama to knock the exams fiasco off the front page.
Utterly pathetic state of affairs.
Except there is no exams fiasco is there.
But we have discovered that teachers grade predictions are less reliable than an estate agent's valuation.
You show no insight into this topic.
It's not one of your good ones.
I'm right though aren't I.
A lesson in life is to under-promise and over-deliver.
Over-promise and then tantrum will not get you far.
No you're not right. If you think about how the algorithm worked and then about how a reasonable and responsible teacher would predict individual grades for each individual child it is obvious that the first will in aggregate give lower grades. I am going to sleep now but we can go through it in detail next time if you like.
My strategy would be to drive across a border and finish my holiday in Germany or Italy. A non-stop drive across France to the Tunnel would be acceptable to avoid quarantine.
I suspect most people's strategy will be to follow the Cummings example and just ignore the quarantine. How is it being policed?
Yes, exactly. I find it hard to believe the cops are now going to be knocking on maybe 200,000 doors to make sure returning holidaymakers-from-France are staying home.
And I speak as someone determined to go on a much-anticipated trip to Greece next Friday. Even as cases rise there....
If no one is planning to quarantine, why the rush home, as reported in the news? Unless, of course, most people aren't rushing home at all and the great repatriation is hyperbole...
Manufactured needless drama to knock the exams fiasco off the front page.
Utterly pathetic state of affairs.
Except there is no exams fiasco is there.
But we have discovered that teachers grade predictions are less reliable than an estate agent's valuation.
You show no insight into this topic.
It's not one of your good ones.
I'm right though aren't I.
A lesson in life is to under-promise and over-deliver.
Over-promise and then tantrum will not get you far.
No you're not right. If you think about how the algorithm worked and then about how a reasonable and responsible teacher would predict individual grades for each individual child it is obvious that the first will in aggregate give lower grades. I am going to sleep now but we can go through it in detail next time if you like.
In this case lower is more accurate.
Do you want accurate grades or higher grades ?
What evidence do you have for the notion that the ofqual results are more accurate?
That's not so surprising. So far Starmer has not provided any positive reason to vote Labour. He's contributed nothing in terms of an alternative to the government's management of Covid and his after the event criticisms grate. He's also dull and his team unknown and invisible. What's to vote for other than Labour not being the Tories.
There is also a growing sense that the govt has got a handle on Covid in a way other nations - France, Spain, Netherlands - have not.
This may be entirely false as a perspective. Maybe the UK has just got lucky, maybe our own second wave is coming (as holidaymakers return) nonetheless the hard data has the UK's R number notably down, compared to our peers.
That might be one reason the Tory lead has grown, slightly.
What precisely would have been the harm in just allowing the teacher recommended grades through and back to normal exams next year?
That would be unfair to those whose grades weren't inflated by their teachers. Probably a larger number than those unfairly marked down in the proposed unfair system.
No one should ever get less than an A* in their first language.
In fact, exams in English can be abolished. Think of the savings.....
One of the changes that was definitely noticeable in the C&G shambles reforms was that they did tighten up noticeably on MFL A-levels.
Although @Dura_Ace would know more than me, my understanding is they do now include substantial elements of literature, study and cultural knowledge that just wasn't there before. So they're not a gimme for native speakers as they once were.
Of course, that makes them bloody near impossible for the notoriously monoglot English...
Yes, there is a significant award in the exam for the ability to contextualise social and cultural themes based on the prescribed books and films. I could not tell you how many times I have watched Утомлённые солнцем with tutees.
There is also a translation into English which needs a very good command of English in order to reflect nuance and meaning.
Very few native Russian speakers would get A* in Russian A-level straight off the street due to those reasons. The number would be slightly, but not much, higher for native French speakers.
I don't know about other languages as I only teach those two at A-level.
She issues a death threat in that letter. Why is that any more acceptable if the target is the odious Nigel Farage than, say, the equally odious Owen Jones, or a Black Lives Matters activist?
She's not issued a death threat, just voiced what his actions make her feel like doing.
What precisely would have been the harm in just allowing the teacher recommended grades through and back to normal exams next year?
That would be unfair to those whose grades weren't inflated by their teachers. Probably a larger number than those unfairly marked down in the proposed unfair system.
And you can tell which ones those were... how exactly?
My strategy would be to drive across a border and finish my holiday in Germany or Italy. A non-stop drive across France to the Tunnel would be acceptable to avoid quarantine.
I suspect most people's strategy will be to follow the Cummings example and just ignore the quarantine. How is it being policed?
Yes, exactly. I find it hard to believe the cops are now going to be knocking on maybe 200,000 doors to make sure returning holidaymakers-from-France are staying home.
And I speak as someone determined to go on a much-anticipated trip to Greece next Friday. Even as cases rise there....
If no one is planning to quarantine, why the rush home, as reported in the news? Unless, of course, most people aren't rushing home at all and the great repatriation is hyperbole...
Manufactured needless drama to knock the exams fiasco off the front page.
Utterly pathetic state of affairs.
Except there is no exams fiasco is there.
But we have discovered that teachers grade predictions are less reliable than an estate agent's valuation.
You show no insight into this topic.
It's not one of your good ones.
I'm right though aren't I.
A lesson in life is to under-promise and over-deliver.
Over-promise and then tantrum will not get you far.
In this instance it will probably get you a government U-turn by Monday.
But for what benefit ?
The uni courses will still be filled and we get a huge dollop of grade inflation baked into the system which just means that the grades required in future years rise in line.
And everyone ends up thinking they're more talented than they are and/or becomes more self-entitled.
While big, bad world gets harder by the year.
It would be more honest to stop school exams, use the time saved for something more productive, give everyone A grades if they turn up for two years and let universities set their own entrance criteria.
What precisely would have been the harm in just allowing the teacher recommended grades through and back to normal exams next year?
You think it would be 'back to normal' next year ?
I don't see it.
Over-predicting grades would have been shown to have worked so there would likely be even more over-predicting next year.
So then what happens when the 2021 exam results are seen to be both way lower than the predicted grades and way lower than the 2020 awarded grades ?
Everyone then demands that higher grades are awarded.
And why not - its the pupils who will be taking exams in 2021 who will have their education disrupted far more than those of this year.
So why should they lose out ? They shouldn't.
If there should be 40% A grades in 2020, then 40% A grades should become the standard for every year from now onwards.
My strategy would be to drive across a border and finish my holiday in Germany or Italy. A non-stop drive across France to the Tunnel would be acceptable to avoid quarantine.
I suspect most people's strategy will be to follow the Cummings example and just ignore the quarantine. How is it being policed?
Yes, exactly. I find it hard to believe the cops are now going to be knocking on maybe 200,000 doors to make sure returning holidaymakers-from-France are staying home.
And I speak as someone determined to go on a much-anticipated trip to Greece next Friday. Even as cases rise there....
If no one is planning to quarantine, why the rush home, as reported in the news? Unless, of course, most people aren't rushing home at all and the great repatriation is hyperbole...
Manufactured needless drama to knock the exams fiasco off the front page.
Utterly pathetic state of affairs.
Except there is no exams fiasco is there.
But we have discovered that teachers grade predictions are less reliable than an estate agent's valuation.
Sorry, but that's pure spin.
We've discovered that the Ofqual equation doesn't work very well. Ofqual tried the model on the 2019 exams, and they got about 40 % error rate between actual exam results and the output of their model.
People who have poked around in the Ofqual black box think they've worked out why it sometimes gives insane outputs (the C --> U downgrades, for example).
Oh, and lots of young people have had their plans for the autumn thrown up in the air, because some have A Level results that have been held down, whereas other have results that have been allowed to inflate.
But no fiasco here. Oh no.
I didn't think OfQual could actually come up with a worse approach than SQA yet somehow they have.
My strategy would be to drive across a border and finish my holiday in Germany or Italy. A non-stop drive across France to the Tunnel would be acceptable to avoid quarantine.
I suspect most people's strategy will be to follow the Cummings example and just ignore the quarantine. How is it being policed?
Yes, exactly. I find it hard to believe the cops are now going to be knocking on maybe 200,000 doors to make sure returning holidaymakers-from-France are staying home.
And I speak as someone determined to go on a much-anticipated trip to Greece next Friday. Even as cases rise there....
If no one is planning to quarantine, why the rush home, as reported in the news? Unless, of course, most people aren't rushing home at all and the great repatriation is hyperbole...
Manufactured needless drama to knock the exams fiasco off the front page.
Utterly pathetic state of affairs.
Except there is no exams fiasco is there.
But we have discovered that teachers grade predictions are less reliable than an estate agent's valuation.
You show no insight into this topic.
It's not one of your good ones.
I'm right though aren't I.
A lesson in life is to under-promise and over-deliver.
Over-promise and then tantrum will not get you far.
In this instance it will probably get you a government U-turn by Monday.
But for what benefit ?
The uni courses will still be filled and we get a huge dollop of grade inflation baked into the system which just means that the grades required in future years rise in line.
And everyone ends up thinking they're more talented than they are and/or becomes more self-entitled.
While big, bad world gets harder by the year.
It would be more honest to stop school exams, use the time saved for something more productive, give everyone A grades if they turn up for two years and let universities set their own entrance criteria.
What precisely would have been the harm in just allowing the teacher recommended grades through and back to normal exams next year?
You think it would be 'back to normal' next year ?
I don't see it.
Over-predicting grades would have been shown to have worked so there would likely be even more over-predicting next year.
So then what happens when the 2021 exam results are seen to be both way lower than the predicted grades and way lower than the 2020 awarded grades ?
Everyone then demands that higher grades are awarded.
And why not - its the pupils who will be taking exams in 2021 who will have their education disrupted far more than those of this year.
So why should they lose out ? They shouldn't.
If there should be 40% A grades in 2020, then 40% A grades should become the standard for every year from now onwards.
The other thing is that it could have turned nasty if from the outset the decision rested with the teachers. I can imagine some parents kicking off if their kid didn’t get what they thought they deserved.
That's not so surprising. So far Starmer has not provided any positive reason to vote Labour. He's contributed nothing in terms of an alternative to the government's management of Covid and his after the event criticisms grate. He's also dull and his team unknown and invisible. What's to vote for other than Labour not being the Tories.
There is also a growing sense that the govt has got a handle on Covid in a way other nations - France, Spain, Netherlands - have not.
This may be entirely false as a perspective. Maybe the UK has just got lucky, maybe our own second wave is coming (as holidaymakers return) nonetheless the hard data has the UK's R number notably down, compared to our peers.
That might be one reason the Tory lead has grown, slightly.
"There is also a growing sense that the govt has got a handle on Covid in a way other nations - France, Spain, Netherlands - have not. "
Our deaths per million capita and our drop in GDP suggest otherwise.
My strategy would be to drive across a border and finish my holiday in Germany or Italy. A non-stop drive across France to the Tunnel would be acceptable to avoid quarantine.
I suspect most people's strategy will be to follow the Cummings example and just ignore the quarantine. How is it being policed?
Yes, exactly. I find it hard to believe the cops are now going to be knocking on maybe 200,000 doors to make sure returning holidaymakers-from-France are staying home.
And I speak as someone determined to go on a much-anticipated trip to Greece next Friday. Even as cases rise there....
If no one is planning to quarantine, why the rush home, as reported in the news? Unless, of course, most people aren't rushing home at all and the great repatriation is hyperbole...
Manufactured needless drama to knock the exams fiasco off the front page.
Utterly pathetic state of affairs.
Except there is no exams fiasco is there.
But we have discovered that teachers grade predictions are less reliable than an estate agent's valuation.
You show no insight into this topic.
It's not one of your good ones.
I'm right though aren't I.
A lesson in life is to under-promise and over-deliver.
Over-promise and then tantrum will not get you far.
In this instance it will probably get you a government U-turn by Monday.
But for what benefit ?
The uni courses will still be filled and we get a huge dollop of grade inflation baked into the system which just means that the grades required in future years rise in line.
And everyone ends up thinking they're more talented than they are and/or becomes more self-entitled.
While big, bad world gets harder by the year.
It would be more honest to stop school exams, use the time saved for something more productive, give everyone A grades if they turn up for two years and let universities set their own entrance criteria.
What precisely would have been the harm in just allowing the teacher recommended grades through and back to normal exams next year?
Puts the following years at a disadvantage or creates an asterisk year where employers disregard results for that cohort completely. The government effed it up by cancelling exams and then teachers tried to game the system, encouraged by heads no doubt, so they could move up the league tables.
That's not so surprising. So far Starmer has not provided any positive reason to vote Labour. He's contributed nothing in terms of an alternative to the government's management of Covid and his after the event criticisms grate. He's also dull and his team unknown and invisible. What's to vote for other than Labour not being the Tories.
There is also a growing sense that the govt has got a handle on Covid in a way other nations - France, Spain, Netherlands - have not.
This may be entirely false as a perspective. Maybe the UK has just got lucky, maybe our own second wave is coming (as holidaymakers return) nonetheless the hard data has the UK's R number notably down, compared to our peers.
That might be one reason the Tory lead has grown, slightly.
"There is also a growing sense that the govt has got a handle on Covid in a way other nations - France, Spain, Netherlands - have not. "
Our deaths per million capita and our drop in GDP suggest otherwise.
You'd be hard pushed to claim that France and Spain are doing better on Covid management than the UK right now.
She issues a death threat in that letter. Why is that any more acceptable if the target is the odious Nigel Farage than, say, the equally odious Owen Jones, or a Black Lives Matters activist?
She's not issued a death threat, just voiced what his actions make her feel like doing.
I'm pretty sure that if you tweeted that you wanted to bash the head in of, say, Diane Abbott, you'd be in trouble. What's the difference?
What precisely would have been the harm in just allowing the teacher recommended grades through and back to normal exams next year?
That would be unfair to those whose grades weren't inflated by their teachers. Probably a larger number than those unfairly marked down in the proposed unfair system.
And you can tell which ones those were... how exactly?
You can't. That doesn't make one arbitrary set of grades, which are known to be systematically wrong on average, better than another arbitrary set of grades which are statistically reasonable, on average.
There's no good answer here. To get accurate and consistent exam results you need to, you know, hold exams.
My strategy would be to drive across a border and finish my holiday in Germany or Italy. A non-stop drive across France to the Tunnel would be acceptable to avoid quarantine.
I suspect most people's strategy will be to follow the Cummings example and just ignore the quarantine. How is it being policed?
Yes, exactly. I find it hard to believe the cops are now going to be knocking on maybe 200,000 doors to make sure returning holidaymakers-from-France are staying home.
And I speak as someone determined to go on a much-anticipated trip to Greece next Friday. Even as cases rise there....
If no one is planning to quarantine, why the rush home, as reported in the news? Unless, of course, most people aren't rushing home at all and the great repatriation is hyperbole...
Manufactured needless drama to knock the exams fiasco off the front page.
Utterly pathetic state of affairs.
Except there is no exams fiasco is there.
But we have discovered that teachers grade predictions are less reliable than an estate agent's valuation.
You show no insight into this topic.
It's not one of your good ones.
I'm right though aren't I.
A lesson in life is to under-promise and over-deliver.
Over-promise and then tantrum will not get you far.
In this instance it will probably get you a government U-turn by Monday.
But for what benefit ?
The uni courses will still be filled and we get a huge dollop of grade inflation baked into the system which just means that the grades required in future years rise in line.
And everyone ends up thinking they're more talented than they are and/or becomes more self-entitled.
While big, bad world gets harder by the year.
It would be more honest to stop school exams, use the time saved for something more productive, give everyone A grades if they turn up for two years and let universities set their own entrance criteria.
What precisely would have been the harm in just allowing the teacher recommended grades through and back to normal exams next year?
You think it would be 'back to normal' next year ?
I don't see it.
Over-predicting grades would have been shown to have worked so there would likely be even more over-predicting next year.
So then what happens when the 2021 exam results are seen to be both way lower than the predicted grades and way lower than the 2020 awarded grades ?
Everyone then demands that higher grades are awarded.
And why not - its the pupils who will be taking exams in 2021 who will have their education disrupted far more than those of this year.
So why should they lose out ? They shouldn't.
If there should be 40% A grades in 2020, then 40% A grades should become the standard for every year from now onwards.
Next year, assuming exams take place, there won't be any centre assessment grades.
When you have individual submitted exams to compare and the overall results need to be downgraded for whatever reason, that can be done fairly on the basis of the individual's actual exam paper. Without that, it's a lottery.
We just need to accept that 2020 is an unusual year.
That's not so surprising. So far Starmer has not provided any positive reason to vote Labour. He's contributed nothing in terms of an alternative to the government's management of Covid and his after the event criticisms grate. He's also dull and his team unknown and invisible. What's to vote for other than Labour not being the Tories.
There is also a growing sense that the govt has got a handle on Covid in a way other nations - France, Spain, Netherlands - have not.
This may be entirely false as a perspective. Maybe the UK has just got lucky, maybe our own second wave is coming (as holidaymakers return) nonetheless the hard data has the UK's R number notably down, compared to our peers.
That might be one reason the Tory lead has grown, slightly.
"There is also a growing sense that the govt has got a handle on Covid in a way other nations - France, Spain, Netherlands - have not. "
Our deaths per million capita and our drop in GDP suggest otherwise.
Not true, the GDP numbers are all comparable in a like for like and the UK is having a better rebound, I think we will recover more GDP faster than most of the rest of Europe. Spain, Italy and France are going to have very slow recoveries.
That's not so surprising. So far Starmer has not provided any positive reason to vote Labour. He's contributed nothing in terms of an alternative to the government's management of Covid and his after the event criticisms grate. He's also dull and his team unknown and invisible. What's to vote for other than Labour not being the Tories.
There is also a growing sense that the govt has got a handle on Covid in a way other nations - France, Spain, Netherlands - have not.
This may be entirely false as a perspective. Maybe the UK has just got lucky, maybe our own second wave is coming (as holidaymakers return) nonetheless the hard data has the UK's R number notably down, compared to our peers.
That might be one reason the Tory lead has grown, slightly.
"There is also a growing sense that the govt has got a handle on Covid in a way other nations - France, Spain, Netherlands - have not. "
Our deaths per million capita and our drop in GDP suggest otherwise.
Not true, the GDP numbers are all comparable in a like for like and the UK is having a better rebound, I think we will recover more GDP faster than most of the rest of Europe. Spain, Italy and France are going to have very slow recoveries.
Well, I hope you're right re our GDP, let's see how it looks by the end of the year shall we.
That's not so surprising. So far Starmer has not provided any positive reason to vote Labour. He's contributed nothing in terms of an alternative to the government's management of Covid and his after the event criticisms grate. He's also dull and his team unknown and invisible. What's to vote for other than Labour not being the Tories.
There is also a growing sense that the govt has got a handle on Covid in a way other nations - France, Spain, Netherlands - have not.
This may be entirely false as a perspective. Maybe the UK has just got lucky, maybe our own second wave is coming (as holidaymakers return) nonetheless the hard data has the UK's R number notably down, compared to our peers.
That might be one reason the Tory lead has grown, slightly.
"There is also a growing sense that the govt has got a handle on Covid in a way other nations - France, Spain, Netherlands - have not. "
Our deaths per million capita and our drop in GDP suggest otherwise.
Not true, the GDP numbers are all comparable in a like for like and the UK is having a better rebound, I think we will recover more GDP faster than most of the rest of Europe. Spain, Italy and France are going to have very slow recoveries.
Why do you believe we will recover more quickly? We've also got to recover more than other countries.
My strategy would be to drive across a border and finish my holiday in Germany or Italy. A non-stop drive across France to the Tunnel would be acceptable to avoid quarantine.
I suspect most people's strategy will be to follow the Cummings example and just ignore the quarantine. How is it being policed?
Yes, exactly. I find it hard to believe the cops are now going to be knocking on maybe 200,000 doors to make sure returning holidaymakers-from-France are staying home.
And I speak as someone determined to go on a much-anticipated trip to Greece next Friday. Even as cases rise there....
If no one is planning to quarantine, why the rush home, as reported in the news? Unless, of course, most people aren't rushing home at all and the great repatriation is hyperbole...
Manufactured needless drama to knock the exams fiasco off the front page.
Utterly pathetic state of affairs.
Except there is no exams fiasco is there.
But we have discovered that teachers grade predictions are less reliable than an estate agent's valuation.
You show no insight into this topic.
It's not one of your good ones.
I'm right though aren't I.
A lesson in life is to under-promise and over-deliver.
Over-promise and then tantrum will not get you far.
In this instance it will probably get you a government U-turn by Monday.
But for what benefit ?
The uni courses will still be filled and we get a huge dollop of grade inflation baked into the system which just means that the grades required in future years rise in line.
And everyone ends up thinking they're more talented than they are and/or becomes more self-entitled.
While big, bad world gets harder by the year.
It would be more honest to stop school exams, use the time saved for something more productive, give everyone A grades if they turn up for two years and let universities set their own entrance criteria.
What precisely would have been the harm in just allowing the teacher recommended grades through and back to normal exams next year?
You think it would be 'back to normal' next year ?
I don't see it.
Over-predicting grades would have been shown to have worked so there would likely be even more over-predicting next year.
So then what happens when the 2021 exam results are seen to be both way lower than the predicted grades and way lower than the 2020 awarded grades ?
Everyone then demands that higher grades are awarded.
And why not - its the pupils who will be taking exams in 2021 who will have their education disrupted far more than those of this year.
So why should they lose out ? They shouldn't.
If there should be 40% A grades in 2020, then 40% A grades should become the standard for every year from now onwards.
Next year, assuming exams take place, there won't be any centre assessment grades.
When you have individual submitted exams to compare and the overall results need to be downgraded for whatever reason, that can be done fairly on the basis of the individual's actual exam paper. Without that, it's a lottery.
We just need to accept that 2020 is an unusual year.
Sorry Ben but I really don't see that.
There will be too many people with an interest in maintaining higher grades.
In the case of the 2021 pupils with justification.
What precisely would have been the harm in just allowing the teacher recommended grades through and back to normal exams next year?
That would be unfair to those whose grades weren't inflated by their teachers. Probably a larger number than those unfairly marked down in the proposed unfair system.
And you can tell which ones those were... how exactly?
You can't. That doesn't make one arbitrary set of grades, which are known to be systematically wrong on average, better than another arbitrary set of grades which are statistically reasonable, on average.
There's no good answer here. To get accurate and consistent exam results you need to, you know, hold exams.
It will be interesting to see how many of the 'unfair' grades lead to exams being taken in the autumn.
The fundamental problem is there can be no "accurate" or indeed any degree of accuracy in exam grades, as there have been no exams. Failure to accept this is the basic error. Had the football season been finished by a simulation no one would have accepted it. No matter how good the algorithm used. Not sure what ought to have happened but basing admissions to Uni on exam grades in the absence of any exams is untenable and ought to have been foreseen.
My strategy would be to drive across a border and finish my holiday in Germany or Italy. A non-stop drive across France to the Tunnel would be acceptable to avoid quarantine.
I suspect most people's strategy will be to follow the Cummings example and just ignore the quarantine. How is it being policed?
Yes, exactly. I find it hard to believe the cops are now going to be knocking on maybe 200,000 doors to make sure returning holidaymakers-from-France are staying home.
And I speak as someone determined to go on a much-anticipated trip to Greece next Friday. Even as cases rise there....
If no one is planning to quarantine, why the rush home, as reported in the news? Unless, of course, most people aren't rushing home at all and the great repatriation is hyperbole...
Manufactured needless drama to knock the exams fiasco off the front page.
Utterly pathetic state of affairs.
Except there is no exams fiasco is there.
But we have discovered that teachers grade predictions are less reliable than an estate agent's valuation.
You show no insight into this topic.
It's not one of your good ones.
I'm right though aren't I.
A lesson in life is to under-promise and over-deliver.
Over-promise and then tantrum will not get you far.
In this instance it will probably get you a government U-turn by Monday.
But for what benefit ?
The uni courses will still be filled and we get a huge dollop of grade inflation baked into the system which just means that the grades required in future years rise in line.
And everyone ends up thinking they're more talented than they are and/or becomes more self-entitled.
While big, bad world gets harder by the year.
It would be more honest to stop school exams, use the time saved for something more productive, give everyone A grades if they turn up for two years and let universities set their own entrance criteria.
What precisely would have been the harm in just allowing the teacher recommended grades through and back to normal exams next year?
You think it would be 'back to normal' next year ?
I don't see it.
Over-predicting grades would have been shown to have worked so there would likely be even more over-predicting next year.
So then what happens when the 2021 exam results are seen to be both way lower than the predicted grades and way lower than the 2020 awarded grades ?
Everyone then demands that higher grades are awarded.
And why not - its the pupils who will be taking exams in 2021 who will have their education disrupted far more than those of this year.
So why should they lose out ? They shouldn't.
If there should be 40% A grades in 2020, then 40% A grades should become the standard for every year from now onwards.
Next year, assuming exams take place, there won't be any centre assessment grades.
When you have individual submitted exams to compare and the overall results need to be downgraded for whatever reason, that can be done fairly on the basis of the individual's actual exam paper. Without that, it's a lottery.
We just need to accept that 2020 is an unusual year.
Sorry Ben but I really don't see that.
There will be too many people with an interest in maintaining higher grades.
In the case of the 2021 pupils with justification.
It's been a total fuck-up. This is really not a good look:
The fundamental problem is there can be no "accurate" or indeed any degree of accuracy in exam grades, as there have been no exams. Failure to accept this is the basic error. Had the football season been finished by a simulation no one would have accepted it. No matter how good the algorithm used. Not sure what ought to have happened but basing admissions to Uni on exam grades in the absence of any exams is untenable and ought to have been foreseen.
Agreed. The football analogy is a good one - Man U would have won the simulated Premiership on the basis of 'past performance'.
That's not so surprising. So far Starmer has not provided any positive reason to vote Labour. He's contributed nothing in terms of an alternative to the government's management of Covid and his after the event criticisms grate. He's also dull and his team unknown and invisible. What's to vote for other than Labour not being the Tories.
There is also a growing sense that the govt has got a handle on Covid in a way other nations - France, Spain, Netherlands - have not.
This may be entirely false as a perspective. Maybe the UK has just got lucky, maybe our own second wave is coming (as holidaymakers return) nonetheless the hard data has the UK's R number notably down, compared to our peers.
That might be one reason the Tory lead has grown, slightly.
"There is also a growing sense that the govt has got a handle on Covid in a way other nations - France, Spain, Netherlands - have not. "
Our deaths per million capita and our drop in GDP suggest otherwise.
Not true, the GDP numbers are all comparable in a like for like and the UK is having a better rebound, I think we will recover more GDP faster than most of the rest of Europe. Spain, Italy and France are going to have very slow recoveries.
I hope so, though the ongoing desolation of central London disturbs me.
What Britain will avoid is the annihilation of its tourist industry, which is less important anyway.
France is going to take a powerful hit, Spain is just shafted. I pray Greece swerves the worst: they’ve already been through a Crash.
That's not so surprising. So far Starmer has not provided any positive reason to vote Labour. He's contributed nothing in terms of an alternative to the government's management of Covid and his after the event criticisms grate. He's also dull and his team unknown and invisible. What's to vote for other than Labour not being the Tories.
There is also a growing sense that the govt has got a handle on Covid in a way other nations - France, Spain, Netherlands - have not.
This may be entirely false as a perspective. Maybe the UK has just got lucky, maybe our own second wave is coming (as holidaymakers return) nonetheless the hard data has the UK's R number notably down, compared to our peers.
That might be one reason the Tory lead has grown, slightly.
"There is also a growing sense that the govt has got a handle on Covid in a way other nations - France, Spain, Netherlands - have not. "
Our deaths per million capita and our drop in GDP suggest otherwise.
Not true, the GDP numbers are all comparable in a like for like and the UK is having a better rebound, I think we will recover more GDP faster than most of the rest of Europe. Spain, Italy and France are going to have very slow recoveries.
Why do you believe we will recover more quickly? We've also got to recover more than other countries.
This time next year PB tories will be blaming our poor recovery on Brexit, rather than government mismanagement.
She issues a death threat in that letter. Why is that any more acceptable if the target is the odious Nigel Farage than, say, the equally odious Owen Jones, or a Black Lives Matters activist?
She's not issued a death threat, just voiced what his actions make her feel like doing.
I'm pretty sure that if you tweeted that you wanted to bash the head in of, say, Diane Abbott, you'd be in trouble. What's the difference?
It’s always been the case that threats of violence against people to the right of the threat maker, or by Brexit Blockers are seen as throwaway comments (Osborne cutting up May and putting her in a fridge) whilst the opposite are taken literally (Farage saying he’d pick up a rifle and go back into battle)
My strategy would be to drive across a border and finish my holiday in Germany or Italy. A non-stop drive across France to the Tunnel would be acceptable to avoid quarantine.
I suspect most people's strategy will be to follow the Cummings example and just ignore the quarantine. How is it being policed?
Yes, exactly. I find it hard to believe the cops are now going to be knocking on maybe 200,000 doors to make sure returning holidaymakers-from-France are staying home.
And I speak as someone determined to go on a much-anticipated trip to Greece next Friday. Even as cases rise there....
If no one is planning to quarantine, why the rush home, as reported in the news? Unless, of course, most people aren't rushing home at all and the great repatriation is hyperbole...
Manufactured needless drama to knock the exams fiasco off the front page.
Utterly pathetic state of affairs.
Except there is no exams fiasco is there.
But we have discovered that teachers grade predictions are less reliable than an estate agent's valuation.
You show no insight into this topic.
It's not one of your good ones.
I'm right though aren't I.
A lesson in life is to under-promise and over-deliver.
Over-promise and then tantrum will not get you far.
In this instance it will probably get you a government U-turn by Monday.
But for what benefit ?
The uni courses will still be filled and we get a huge dollop of grade inflation baked into the system which just means that the grades required in future years rise in line.
And everyone ends up thinking they're more talented than they are and/or becomes more self-entitled.
While big, bad world gets harder by the year.
It would be more honest to stop school exams, use the time saved for something more productive, give everyone A grades if they turn up for two years and let universities set their own entrance criteria.
What precisely would have been the harm in just allowing the teacher recommended grades through and back to normal exams next year?
You think it would be 'back to normal' next year ?
I don't see it.
Over-predicting grades would have been shown to have worked so there would likely be even more over-predicting next year.
So then what happens when the 2021 exam results are seen to be both way lower than the predicted grades and way lower than the 2020 awarded grades ?
Everyone then demands that higher grades are awarded.
And why not - its the pupils who will be taking exams in 2021 who will have their education disrupted far more than those of this year.
So why should they lose out ? They shouldn't.
If there should be 40% A grades in 2020, then 40% A grades should become the standard for every year from now onwards.
Next year, assuming exams take place, there won't be any centre assessment grades.
When you have individual submitted exams to compare and the overall results need to be downgraded for whatever reason, that can be done fairly on the basis of the individual's actual exam paper. Without that, it's a lottery.
We just need to accept that 2020 is an unusual year.
Sorry Ben but I really don't see that.
There will be too many people with an interest in maintaining higher grades.
In the case of the 2021 pupils with justification.
It's been a total fuck-up. This is really not a good look:
I think the independents and the comps have gone up by 10% though, from 20 to 22 and 43 to 47?
My strategy would be to drive across a border and finish my holiday in Germany or Italy. A non-stop drive across France to the Tunnel would be acceptable to avoid quarantine.
I suspect most people's strategy will be to follow the Cummings example and just ignore the quarantine. How is it being policed?
Yes, exactly. I find it hard to believe the cops are now going to be knocking on maybe 200,000 doors to make sure returning holidaymakers-from-France are staying home.
And I speak as someone determined to go on a much-anticipated trip to Greece next Friday. Even as cases rise there....
If no one is planning to quarantine, why the rush home, as reported in the news? Unless, of course, most people aren't rushing home at all and the great repatriation is hyperbole...
Manufactured needless drama to knock the exams fiasco off the front page.
Utterly pathetic state of affairs.
Except there is no exams fiasco is there.
But we have discovered that teachers grade predictions are less reliable than an estate agent's valuation.
You show no insight into this topic.
It's not one of your good ones.
I'm right though aren't I.
A lesson in life is to under-promise and over-deliver.
Over-promise and then tantrum will not get you far.
In this instance it will probably get you a government U-turn by Monday.
But for what benefit ?
The uni courses will still be filled and we get a huge dollop of grade inflation baked into the system which just means that the grades required in future years rise in line.
And everyone ends up thinking they're more talented than they are and/or becomes more self-entitled.
While big, bad world gets harder by the year.
It would be more honest to stop school exams, use the time saved for something more productive, give everyone A grades if they turn up for two years and let universities set their own entrance criteria.
What precisely would have been the harm in just allowing the teacher recommended grades through and back to normal exams next year?
You think it would be 'back to normal' next year ?
I don't see it.
Over-predicting grades would have been shown to have worked so there would likely be even more over-predicting next year.
So then what happens when the 2021 exam results are seen to be both way lower than the predicted grades and way lower than the 2020 awarded grades ?
Everyone then demands that higher grades are awarded.
And why not - its the pupils who will be taking exams in 2021 who will have their education disrupted far more than those of this year.
So why should they lose out ? They shouldn't.
If there should be 40% A grades in 2020, then 40% A grades should become the standard for every year from now onwards.
Next year, assuming exams take place, there won't be any centre assessment grades.
When you have individual submitted exams to compare and the overall results need to be downgraded for whatever reason, that can be done fairly on the basis of the individual's actual exam paper. Without that, it's a lottery.
We just need to accept that 2020 is an unusual year.
Sorry Ben but I really don't see that.
There will be too many people with an interest in maintaining higher grades.
In the case of the 2021 pupils with justification.
It's been a total fuck-up. This is really not a good look:
It really hasn't.
Grades are at a record high and the vast majority of pupils will be happy.
Or at least they should be - if not then big, bad world is going to teach them some hard lessons.
The uni courses will be filled and life will roll on.
Are there individual problems ? Certainly but there is every year and there's scope for appeals and exams to be actually taken.
Its not perfect but we're in a global pandemic and lots of people are losing out - I know people who have lost their jobs or lost serious amounts of money or have health issues or have lost members of their family.
If anyone wants 100% perfection then they're in the wrong time, in the wrong country and in the wrong world.
The fundamental problem is there can be no "accurate" or indeed any degree of accuracy in exam grades, as there have been no exams. Failure to accept this is the basic error. Had the football season been finished by a simulation no one would have accepted it. No matter how good the algorithm used. Not sure what ought to have happened but basing admissions to Uni on exam grades in the absence of any exams is untenable and ought to have been foreseen.
When a system is stressed you see what it attempts to preserve above all else. And that is when you see what is important to the system.
The thing the education system seems to have decided to preserve is exam results.
In the face of, as you say, there being no exams. Quite incredible.
My strategy would be to drive across a border and finish my holiday in Germany or Italy. A non-stop drive across France to the Tunnel would be acceptable to avoid quarantine.
I suspect most people's strategy will be to follow the Cummings example and just ignore the quarantine. How is it being policed?
Yes, exactly. I find it hard to believe the cops are now going to be knocking on maybe 200,000 doors to make sure returning holidaymakers-from-France are staying home.
And I speak as someone determined to go on a much-anticipated trip to Greece next Friday. Even as cases rise there....
If no one is planning to quarantine, why the rush home, as reported in the news? Unless, of course, most people aren't rushing home at all and the great repatriation is hyperbole...
Manufactured needless drama to knock the exams fiasco off the front page.
Utterly pathetic state of affairs.
Except there is no exams fiasco is there.
But we have discovered that teachers grade predictions are less reliable than an estate agent's valuation.
You show no insight into this topic.
It's not one of your good ones.
I'm right though aren't I.
A lesson in life is to under-promise and over-deliver.
Over-promise and then tantrum will not get you far.
In this instance it will probably get you a government U-turn by Monday.
But for what benefit ?
The uni courses will still be filled and we get a huge dollop of grade inflation baked into the system which just means that the grades required in future years rise in line.
And everyone ends up thinking they're more talented than they are and/or becomes more self-entitled.
While big, bad world gets harder by the year.
It would be more honest to stop school exams, use the time saved for something more productive, give everyone A grades if they turn up for two years and let universities set their own entrance criteria.
What precisely would have been the harm in just allowing the teacher recommended grades through and back to normal exams next year?
You think it would be 'back to normal' next year ?
I don't see it.
Over-predicting grades would have been shown to have worked so there would likely be even more over-predicting next year.
So then what happens when the 2021 exam results are seen to be both way lower than the predicted grades and way lower than the 2020 awarded grades ?
Everyone then demands that higher grades are awarded.
And why not - its the pupils who will be taking exams in 2021 who will have their education disrupted far more than those of this year.
So why should they lose out ? They shouldn't.
If there should be 40% A grades in 2020, then 40% A grades should become the standard for every year from now onwards.
Next year, assuming exams take place, there won't be any centre assessment grades.
When you have individual submitted exams to compare and the overall results need to be downgraded for whatever reason, that can be done fairly on the basis of the individual's actual exam paper. Without that, it's a lottery.
We just need to accept that 2020 is an unusual year.
Sorry Ben but I really don't see that.
There will be too many people with an interest in maintaining higher grades.
In the case of the 2021 pupils with justification.
It's been a total fuck-up. This is really not a good look:
Doesn't that show comprehensives doing better than grammar schools ?
That normally sees the PB lefties get the pom-poms out.
What precisely would have been the harm in just allowing the teacher recommended grades through and back to normal exams next year?
That would be unfair to those whose grades weren't inflated by their teachers. Probably a larger number than those unfairly marked down in the proposed unfair system.
And you can tell which ones those were... how exactly?
You can't. That doesn't make one arbitrary set of grades, which are known to be systematically wrong on average, better than another arbitrary set of grades which are statistically reasonable, on average.
There's no good answer here. To get accurate and consistent exam results you need to, you know, hold exams.
If there's doubt on what someone's grade should be then I think its reasonable to give the benefit of the doubt to the student.
If there is a clear and unambiguous reason to downgrade then fair enough, but if there is any reasonable doubt at all then the student should get the benefit of the doubt.
If that means more A's than "average" so be it. If some guilty people go free then we don't incarcerate random innocent people in order to ensure that our average incarceration rate is maintained.
The fundamental problem is there can be no "accurate" or indeed any degree of accuracy in exam grades, as there have been no exams. Failure to accept this is the basic error. Had the football season been finished by a simulation no one would have accepted it. No matter how good the algorithm used. Not sure what ought to have happened but basing admissions to Uni on exam grades in the absence of any exams is untenable and ought to have been foreseen.
Agreed. The football analogy is a good one - Man U would have won the simulated Premiership on the basis of 'past performance'.
My strategy would be to drive across a border and finish my holiday in Germany or Italy. A non-stop drive across France to the Tunnel would be acceptable to avoid quarantine.
I suspect most people's strategy will be to follow the Cummings example and just ignore the quarantine. How is it being policed?
Yes, exactly. I find it hard to believe the cops are now going to be knocking on maybe 200,000 doors to make sure returning holidaymakers-from-France are staying home.
And I speak as someone determined to go on a much-anticipated trip to Greece next Friday. Even as cases rise there....
If no one is planning to quarantine, why the rush home, as reported in the news? Unless, of course, most people aren't rushing home at all and the great repatriation is hyperbole...
Manufactured needless drama to knock the exams fiasco off the front page.
Utterly pathetic state of affairs.
Except there is no exams fiasco is there.
But we have discovered that teachers grade predictions are less reliable than an estate agent's valuation.
You show no insight into this topic.
It's not one of your good ones.
I'm right though aren't I.
A lesson in life is to under-promise and over-deliver.
Over-promise and then tantrum will not get you far.
In this instance it will probably get you a government U-turn by Monday.
But for what benefit ?
The uni courses will still be filled and we get a huge dollop of grade inflation baked into the system which just means that the grades required in future years rise in line.
And everyone ends up thinking they're more talented than they are and/or becomes more self-entitled.
While big, bad world gets harder by the year.
It would be more honest to stop school exams, use the time saved for something more productive, give everyone A grades if they turn up for two years and let universities set their own entrance criteria.
What precisely would have been the harm in just allowing the teacher recommended grades through and back to normal exams next year?
You think it would be 'back to normal' next year ?
I don't see it.
Over-predicting grades would have been shown to have worked so there would likely be even more over-predicting next year.
So then what happens when the 2021 exam results are seen to be both way lower than the predicted grades and way lower than the 2020 awarded grades ?
Everyone then demands that higher grades are awarded.
And why not - its the pupils who will be taking exams in 2021 who will have their education disrupted far more than those of this year.
So why should they lose out ? They shouldn't.
If there should be 40% A grades in 2020, then 40% A grades should become the standard for every year from now onwards.
Next year, assuming exams take place, there won't be any centre assessment grades.
When you have individual submitted exams to compare and the overall results need to be downgraded for whatever reason, that can be done fairly on the basis of the individual's actual exam paper. Without that, it's a lottery.
We just need to accept that 2020 is an unusual year.
Sorry Ben but I really don't see that.
There will be too many people with an interest in maintaining higher grades.
In the case of the 2021 pupils with justification.
It's been a total fuck-up. This is really not a good look:
I think the independents and the comps have gone up by 10% though, from 20 to 22 and 43 to 47?
I think that chart should say percentage points increase. As you say, it’s an important distinction.
Just How Far Will Trump Go? https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/08/trumps-weaponization-usps-and-census/615235/ ... Trump is systematically enlisting agencies, including the Postal Service, Census Bureau, Department of Justice, and Department of Homeland Security, that traditionally have been considered at least somewhat insulated from political machinations to reward his allies and punish those he considers his enemies. He is razing barriers between his personal and political interests and the core operations of the federal government to an extent that no president has previously attempted, a wide range of public-administration experts have told me.
“There’s always been temptation … but no president in modern times has taken action so explicitly and obviously—or transparently—to influence and actually direct these agencies to favor the party in power,” Paul Light, a public-service professor at New York University, told me. “None. None.”...
HIs top two temporary appointees at DHS following Nielson's resignation have been deemed to have been promoted illegally and are now under review to see whether they have taken any illegal actions during their tenure in these positions given that they had no authority to hold them ...
Just How Far Will Trump Go? https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/08/trumps-weaponization-usps-and-census/615235/ ... Trump is systematically enlisting agencies, including the Postal Service, Census Bureau, Department of Justice, and Department of Homeland Security, that traditionally have been considered at least somewhat insulated from political machinations to reward his allies and punish those he considers his enemies. He is razing barriers between his personal and political interests and the core operations of the federal government to an extent that no president has previously attempted, a wide range of public-administration experts have told me.
“There’s always been temptation … but no president in modern times has taken action so explicitly and obviously—or transparently—to influence and actually direct these agencies to favor the party in power,” Paul Light, a public-service professor at New York University, told me. “None. None.”...
HIs top two temporary appointees at DHS following Nielson's resignation have been deemed to have been promoted illegally and are now under review to see whether they have taken any illegal actions during their tenure in these positions given that they had no authority to hold them ...
I've not really followed the story closely enough to judge, but I would wonder if the same people held that conclusion prior to events 'conspiring to reveal' it as a conclusion, which would be a happy coincidence.
That's not so surprising. So far Starmer has not provided any positive reason to vote Labour. He's contributed nothing in terms of an alternative to the government's management of Covid and his after the event criticisms grate. He's also dull and his team unknown and invisible. What's to vote for other than Labour not being the Tories.
There is also a growing sense that the govt has got a handle on Covid in a way other nations - France, Spain, Netherlands - have not.
This may be entirely false as a perspective. Maybe the UK has just got lucky, maybe our own second wave is coming (as holidaymakers return) nonetheless the hard data has the UK's R number notably down, compared to our peers.
That might be one reason the Tory lead has grown, slightly.
"There is also a growing sense that the govt has got a handle on Covid in a way other nations - France, Spain, Netherlands - have not. "
Our deaths per million capita and our drop in GDP suggest otherwise.
Not true, the GDP numbers are all comparable in a like for like and the UK is having a better rebound, I think we will recover more GDP faster than most of the rest of Europe. Spain, Italy and France are going to have very slow recoveries.
I hope so, though the ongoing desolation of central London disturbs me.
What Britain will avoid is the annihilation of its tourist industry, which is less important anyway.
France is going to take a powerful hit, Spain is just shafted. I pray Greece swerves the worst: they’ve already been through a Crash.
But the UK tourist industry isn't monolithic.
There are the places which attract foreign tourists - London, Edinburgh, Oxford, Cambridge, Canterbury, York etc - and these might struggle.
Whereas the seaside / countryside areas rely on UK tourists and so should do reasonably well.
That's not so surprising. So far Starmer has not provided any positive reason to vote Labour. He's contributed nothing in terms of an alternative to the government's management of Covid and his after the event criticisms grate. He's also dull and his team unknown and invisible. What's to vote for other than Labour not being the Tories.
There is also a growing sense that the govt has got a handle on Covid in a way other nations - France, Spain, Netherlands - have not.
This may be entirely false as a perspective. Maybe the UK has just got lucky, maybe our own second wave is coming (as holidaymakers return) nonetheless the hard data has the UK's R number notably down, compared to our peers.
That might be one reason the Tory lead has grown, slightly.
"There is also a growing sense that the govt has got a handle on Covid in a way other nations - France, Spain, Netherlands - have not. "
Our deaths per million capita and our drop in GDP suggest otherwise.
Not true, the GDP numbers are all comparable in a like for like and the UK is having a better rebound, I think we will recover more GDP faster than most of the rest of Europe. Spain, Italy and France are going to have very slow recoveries.
The key to a strong recovery is to contain the virus. The safer people feel, the more they will get back to normal.
Economically everything else is pretty much secondary.
My strategy would be to drive across a border and finish my holiday in Germany or Italy. A non-stop drive across France to the Tunnel would be acceptable to avoid quarantine.
I suspect most people's strategy will be to follow the Cummings example and just ignore the quarantine. How is it being policed?
Yes, exactly. I find it hard to believe the cops are now going to be knocking on maybe 200,000 doors to make sure returning holidaymakers-from-France are staying home.
And I speak as someone determined to go on a much-anticipated trip to Greece next Friday. Even as cases rise there....
If no one is planning to quarantine, why the rush home, as reported in the news? Unless, of course, most people aren't rushing home at all and the great repatriation is hyperbole...
Manufactured needless drama to knock the exams fiasco off the front page.
Utterly pathetic state of affairs.
Except there is no exams fiasco is there.
But we have discovered that teachers grade predictions are less reliable than an estate agent's valuation.
You show no insight into this topic.
It's not one of your good ones.
I'm right though aren't I.
A lesson in life is to under-promise and over-deliver.
Over-promise and then tantrum will not get you far.
In this instance it will probably get you a government U-turn by Monday.
But for what benefit ?
The uni courses will still be filled and we get a huge dollop of grade inflation baked into the system which just means that the grades required in future years rise in line.
And everyone ends up thinking they're more talented than they are and/or becomes more self-entitled.
While big, bad world gets harder by the year.
It would be more honest to stop school exams, use the time saved for something more productive, give everyone A grades if they turn up for two years and let universities set their own entrance criteria.
What precisely would have been the harm in just allowing the teacher recommended grades through and back to normal exams next year?
You think it would be 'back to normal' next year ?
I don't see it.
Over-predicting grades would have been shown to have worked so there would likely be even more over-predicting next year.
So then what happens when the 2021 exam results are seen to be both way lower than the predicted grades and way lower than the 2020 awarded grades ?
Everyone then demands that higher grades are awarded.
And why not - its the pupils who will be taking exams in 2021 who will have their education disrupted far more than those of this year.
So why should they lose out ? They shouldn't.
If there should be 40% A grades in 2020, then 40% A grades should become the standard for every year from now onwards.
Next year, assuming exams take place, there won't be any centre assessment grades.
When you have individual submitted exams to compare and the overall results need to be downgraded for whatever reason, that can be done fairly on the basis of the individual's actual exam paper. Without that, it's a lottery.
We just need to accept that 2020 is an unusual year.
Sorry Ben but I really don't see that.
There will be too many people with an interest in maintaining higher grades.
In the case of the 2021 pupils with justification.
It's been a total fuck-up. This is really not a good look:
I think the independents and the comps have gone up by 10% though, from 20 to 22 and 43 to 47?
I think that chart should say percentage points increase. As you say, it’s an important distinction.
@Kinabalu was cockahoop at the eventual Scottish bonus for some students.
That's not so surprising. So far Starmer has not provided any positive reason to vote Labour. He's contributed nothing in terms of an alternative to the government's management of Covid and his after the event criticisms grate. He's also dull and his team unknown and invisible. What's to vote for other than Labour not being the Tories.
There is also a growing sense that the govt has got a handle on Covid in a way other nations - France, Spain, Netherlands - have not.
This may be entirely false as a perspective. Maybe the UK has just got lucky, maybe our own second wave is coming (as holidaymakers return) nonetheless the hard data has the UK's R number notably down, compared to our peers.
That might be one reason the Tory lead has grown, slightly.
"There is also a growing sense that the govt has got a handle on Covid in a way other nations - France, Spain, Netherlands - have not. "
Our deaths per million capita and our drop in GDP suggest otherwise.
You'd be hard pushed to claim that France and Spain are doing better on Covid management than the UK right now.
We're all at the lower end of that particular table I'd guess. I wonder how their leaders are doing right now - I'm generally wary of a focus on the personalities (and even competence) of political leaders being as impactful as we like to think, of a uniqueness (good and bad) to something that hits everybody, as the government leaders of various states can be very different and yet end up with similarly bad outcomes.
I had long arguments with Alistair Meeks because he thought Farage was threatening violence, and I thought he was obviously making an analogy, whilst I thought it was poor form from Osborne, and he didn’t
The fundamental problem is there can be no "accurate" or indeed any degree of accuracy in exam grades, as there have been no exams. Failure to accept this is the basic error. Had the football season been finished by a simulation no one would have accepted it. No matter how good the algorithm used. Not sure what ought to have happened but basing admissions to Uni on exam grades in the absence of any exams is untenable and ought to have been foreseen.
Agreed. The football analogy is a good one - Man U would have won the simulated Premiership on the basis of 'past performance'.
As each game was the equivalent of an exam there was enough to be marked on.
The equivalent would have been every team claiming they would have won all their remaining games based on their own predictions.
She issues a death threat in that letter. Why is that any more acceptable if the target is the odious Nigel Farage than, say, the equally odious Owen Jones, or a Black Lives Matters activist?
She's not issued a death threat, just voiced what his actions make her feel like doing.
Even if we don't consider it as a death threat, it's odious. Right wing snowflakes can often incorrectly be hypersensitive to someone being mean about them and claiming it would not happen to their lefty counterparts, but if that comment were not about Farage I don't think it unreasonable to think more people would be upset, when we should be equally as upset (or sanguin) if it were about the Dalai Lama.
I've not really followed the story closely enough to judge, but I would wonder if the same people held that conclusion prior to events 'conspiring to reveal' it as a conclusion, which would be a happy coincidence.
If that was the aim of the system, its not very good at it in general! The UK's system is far too vague to be a true ranking, with everyone clustered together in letters.
I went to High School in Australia, though I didn't do the VCEs while there the system they had and I believe have is incredibly ruthless in comparison to ours. At the time I was there every student who sat the VCEs would get ranked in an overall percentile grading called ENTER. That grading was a percentile grading and went from 30.00 (pass mark, did better than the 30% of the population that failed, below that is undisclosed) to 99.95 (top possible percentile rank, better than 99.95% of people). The percentile ranking goes up in increments of 0.05 with approximately 20 pupils in each 0.05 ranking.
So eg if a student got a percentile ranking of 91.45 then they did better than 91.45% of all other pupils that year and worse than 8.5% of all pupils.
That system is entirely ruthless and literally a method of ranking people. Not possible to scrape into a higher grade or narrowly miss, since each grade is a step of 0.05 percentile to the next step. At the time too 30 percent were guaranteed to fail, though that to be fair includes everyone who dropped out without sitting the exams.
Just saw the Selby interview, Ronnie won the mind games too.
I have some sympathy with Selby's view -Ronnie can be an arse sometimes but in this case I believe he was trying (in that smash it all over the place frame) to get it over with to purify his snooker for the last 3 frames. In essence he wasn't being disrespectful in this case he was bizarrely trying to find a way to win in only the way Ronnie can think. What happened in the last 3 frames though no other snooker player could ever have done . Ronnie is the ultimate contrarian , you even see it with his insistence about talking about getting a cue action from Amazon . He has to be different and he is very good at being different - occasionally he looks a prat , more often though he looks a genius
Good summary. Irritating bloke but also interesting and unusual. And as a snooker player incomparable.
That he is unusual in personality is the reason even people who don't care about snooker, like me, know about him. Sports need big personalities like that, even if that includes arseholes.
My strategy would be to drive across a border and finish my holiday in Germany or Italy. A non-stop drive across France to the Tunnel would be acceptable to avoid quarantine.
I suspect most people's strategy will be to follow the Cummings example and just ignore the quarantine. How is it being policed?
Yes, exactly. I find it hard to believe the cops are now going to be knocking on maybe 200,000 doors to make sure returning holidaymakers-from-France are staying home.
And I speak as someone determined to go on a much-anticipated trip to Greece next Friday. Even as cases rise there....
If no one is planning to quarantine, why the rush home, as reported in the news? Unless, of course, most people aren't rushing home at all and the great repatriation is hyperbole...
Manufactured needless drama to knock the exams fiasco off the front page.
Utterly pathetic state of affairs.
Except there is no exams fiasco is there.
But we have discovered that teachers grade predictions are less reliable than an estate agent's valuation.
You show no insight into this topic.
It's not one of your good ones.
I'm right though aren't I.
A lesson in life is to under-promise and over-deliver.
Over-promise and then tantrum will not get you far.
No you're not right. If you think about how the algorithm worked and then about how a reasonable and responsible teacher would predict individual grades for each individual child it is obvious that the first will in aggregate give lower grades. I am going to sleep now but we can go through it in detail next time if you like.
In this case lower is more accurate.
Do you want accurate grades or higher grades ?
I know which one the pupils and parents, and therefore most politicians, would want.
I've not really followed the story closely enough to judge, but I would wonder if the same people held that conclusion prior to events 'conspiring to reveal' it as a conclusion, which would be a happy coincidence.
If that was the aim of the system, its not very good at it in general! The UK's system is far too vague to be a true ranking, with everyone clustered together in letters.
I went to High School in Australia, though I didn't do the VCEs while there the system they had and I believe have is incredibly ruthless in comparison to ours. At the time I was there every student who sat the VCEs would get ranked in an overall percentile grading called ENTER. That grading was a percentile grading and went from 30.00 (pass mark, did better than the 30% of the population that failed, below that is undisclosed) to 99.95 (top possible percentile rank, better than 99.95% of people). The percentile ranking goes up in increments of 0.05 with approximately 20 pupils in each 0.05 ranking.
So eg if a student got a percentile ranking of 91.45 then they did better than 91.45% of all other pupils that year and worse than 8.5% of all pupils.
That system is entirely ruthless and literally a method of ranking people. Not possible to scrape into a higher grade or narrowly miss, since each grade is a step of 0.05 percentile to the next step. At the time too 30 percent were guaranteed to fail, though that to be fair includes everyone who dropped out without sitting the exams.
My strategy would be to drive across a border and finish my holiday in Germany or Italy. A non-stop drive across France to the Tunnel would be acceptable to avoid quarantine.
I suspect most people's strategy will be to follow the Cummings example and just ignore the quarantine. How is it being policed?
Yes, exactly. I find it hard to believe the cops are now going to be knocking on maybe 200,000 doors to make sure returning holidaymakers-from-France are staying home.
And I speak as someone determined to go on a much-anticipated trip to Greece next Friday. Even as cases rise there....
If no one is planning to quarantine, why the rush home, as reported in the news? Unless, of course, most people aren't rushing home at all and the great repatriation is hyperbole...
Manufactured needless drama to knock the exams fiasco off the front page.
Utterly pathetic state of affairs.
Except there is no exams fiasco is there.
But we have discovered that teachers grade predictions are less reliable than an estate agent's valuation.
You show no insight into this topic.
It's not one of your good ones.
I'm right though aren't I.
A lesson in life is to under-promise and over-deliver.
Over-promise and then tantrum will not get you far.
No you're not right. If you think about how the algorithm worked and then about how a reasonable and responsible teacher would predict individual grades for each individual child it is obvious that the first will in aggregate give lower grades. I am going to sleep now but we can go through it in detail next time if you like.
In this case lower is more accurate.
Do you want accurate grades or higher grades ?
I know which one the pupils and parents, and therefore most politicians, would want.
Indeed.
People want higher grades not honest grades.
But the problem is if everyone gets higher grades then they all become worthless grades.
Please, please spend a ton of your advertising money in NY, Donald.
Got to love Honest Abe lurking in the background - reckon that's Trumpsky's response to the Lincoln Project.
Plus he (Trumpsky, not Lincoln) wants Biden to put money into NY State. But NOT much chance of that happening, methinks.
Well... Upstate should vote GOP I think
Some parts of upstate are pretty Trumpy, it is true (the official definition of Appalachia includes New York's "Southern Tier", the row of counties that abut Pennsylvania's northern border). Without NYC and its environs, the state is a mixture of Mid-West-style farmland and rustbelt, but with enough other big(ish) cities like Buffalo and Rochester, and college towns like Ithaca and Syracuse, that it would be a battleground state. With NYC and its suburbs and exurbs though, it'd take Lukashenkovite levels of ballot rigging for the state to go red.
My strategy would be to drive across a border and finish my holiday in Germany or Italy. A non-stop drive across France to the Tunnel would be acceptable to avoid quarantine.
I suspect most people's strategy will be to follow the Cummings example and just ignore the quarantine. How is it being policed?
Yes, exactly. I find it hard to believe the cops are now going to be knocking on maybe 200,000 doors to make sure returning holidaymakers-from-France are staying home.
And I speak as someone determined to go on a much-anticipated trip to Greece next Friday. Even as cases rise there....
If no one is planning to quarantine, why the rush home, as reported in the news? Unless, of course, most people aren't rushing home at all and the great repatriation is hyperbole...
Manufactured needless drama to knock the exams fiasco off the front page.
Utterly pathetic state of affairs.
Except there is no exams fiasco is there.
But we have discovered that teachers grade predictions are less reliable than an estate agent's valuation.
You show no insight into this topic.
It's not one of your good ones.
I'm right though aren't I.
A lesson in life is to under-promise and over-deliver.
Over-promise and then tantrum will not get you far.
No you're not right. If you think about how the algorithm worked and then about how a reasonable and responsible teacher would predict individual grades for each individual child it is obvious that the first will in aggregate give lower grades. I am going to sleep now but we can go through it in detail next time if you like.
In this case lower is more accurate.
Do you want accurate grades or higher grades ?
I know which one the pupils and parents, and therefore most politicians, would want.
Indeed.
People want higher grades not honest grades.
But the problem is if everyone gets higher grades then they all become worthless grades.
But if others get higher than they should, only to be balanced off by some getting worse than they should have, then that is worse than worthless.
If there is doubt, the benefit of the doubt should go with the student.
My strategy would be to drive across a border and finish my holiday in Germany or Italy. A non-stop drive across France to the Tunnel would be acceptable to avoid quarantine.
I suspect most people's strategy will be to follow the Cummings example and just ignore the quarantine. How is it being policed?
Yes, exactly. I find it hard to believe the cops are now going to be knocking on maybe 200,000 doors to make sure returning holidaymakers-from-France are staying home.
And I speak as someone determined to go on a much-anticipated trip to Greece next Friday. Even as cases rise there....
If no one is planning to quarantine, why the rush home, as reported in the news? Unless, of course, most people aren't rushing home at all and the great repatriation is hyperbole...
Manufactured needless drama to knock the exams fiasco off the front page.
Utterly pathetic state of affairs.
Except there is no exams fiasco is there.
But we have discovered that teachers grade predictions are less reliable than an estate agent's valuation.
You show no insight into this topic.
It's not one of your good ones.
I'm right though aren't I.
A lesson in life is to under-promise and over-deliver.
Over-promise and then tantrum will not get you far.
No you're not right. If you think about how the algorithm worked and then about how a reasonable and responsible teacher would predict individual grades for each individual child it is obvious that the first will in aggregate give lower grades. I am going to sleep now but we can go through it in detail next time if you like.
In this case lower is more accurate.
Do you want accurate grades or higher grades ?
I know which one the pupils and parents, and therefore most politicians, would want.
Indeed.
People want higher grades not honest grades.
But the problem is if everyone gets higher grades then they all become worthless grades.
But if others get higher than they should, only to be balanced off by some getting worse than they should have, then that is worse than worthless.
If there is doubt, the benefit of the doubt should go with the student.
Should everyone get higher than they should just to stop one person getting worse than they should ?
Its better to try to give everyone what they should get and put in place mechanisms to rectify for those who get less than they should.
The fundamental problem is there can be no "accurate" or indeed any degree of accuracy in exam grades, as there have been no exams. Failure to accept this is the basic error. Had the football season been finished by a simulation no one would have accepted it. No matter how good the algorithm used. Not sure what ought to have happened but basing admissions to Uni on exam grades in the absence of any exams is untenable and ought to have been foreseen.
Agreed. The football analogy is a good one - Man U would have won the simulated Premiership on the basis of 'past performance'.
As each game was the equivalent of an exam there was enough to be marked on.
The equivalent would have been every team claiming they would have won all their remaining games based on their own predictions.
The equivalent is grading this season on predictions moderated by past 3 years performance. Result. City champions. Sheff Utd, Newcastle and Norwich relegated. 1 out of 4.
My strategy would be to drive across a border and finish my holiday in Germany or Italy. A non-stop drive across France to the Tunnel would be acceptable to avoid quarantine.
I suspect most people's strategy will be to follow the Cummings example and just ignore the quarantine. How is it being policed?
Yes, exactly. I find it hard to believe the cops are now going to be knocking on maybe 200,000 doors to make sure returning holidaymakers-from-France are staying home.
And I speak as someone determined to go on a much-anticipated trip to Greece next Friday. Even as cases rise there....
If no one is planning to quarantine, why the rush home, as reported in the news? Unless, of course, most people aren't rushing home at all and the great repatriation is hyperbole...
Manufactured needless drama to knock the exams fiasco off the front page.
Utterly pathetic state of affairs.
Except there is no exams fiasco is there.
But we have discovered that teachers grade predictions are less reliable than an estate agent's valuation.
You show no insight into this topic.
It's not one of your good ones.
I'm right though aren't I.
A lesson in life is to under-promise and over-deliver.
Over-promise and then tantrum will not get you far.
No you're not right. If you think about how the algorithm worked and then about how a reasonable and responsible teacher would predict individual grades for each individual child it is obvious that the first will in aggregate give lower grades. I am going to sleep now but we can go through it in detail next time if you like.
In this case lower is more accurate.
Do you want accurate grades or higher grades ?
I know which one the pupils and parents, and therefore most politicians, would want.
Indeed.
People want higher grades not honest grades.
But the problem is if everyone gets higher grades then they all become worthless grades.
But if others get higher than they should, only to be balanced off by some getting worse than they should have, then that is worse than worthless.
If there is doubt, the benefit of the doubt should go with the student.
Should everyone get higher than they should just to stop one person getting worse than they should ?
Its better to try to give everyone what they should get and put in place mechanisms to rectify for those who get less than they should.
Innocent until proven guilty. If there is no doubt then drop the grade, but if there is then yes give the higher one.
The fundamental problem is there can be no "accurate" or indeed any degree of accuracy in exam grades, as there have been no exams. Failure to accept this is the basic error. Had the football season been finished by a simulation no one would have accepted it. No matter how good the algorithm used. Not sure what ought to have happened but basing admissions to Uni on exam grades in the absence of any exams is untenable and ought to have been foreseen.
Agreed. The football analogy is a good one - Man U would have won the simulated Premiership on the basis of 'past performance'.
As each game was the equivalent of an exam there was enough to be marked on.
The equivalent would have been every team claiming they would have won all their remaining games based on their own predictions.
The equivalent is grading this season on predictions moderated by past 3 years performance. Result. City champions. Sheff Utd, Newcastle and Norwich relegated. 1 out of 4.
Not when the games / exams have already happened.
Any grading would have been on the unplayed games only.
The fundamental problem is there can be no "accurate" or indeed any degree of accuracy in exam grades, as there have been no exams. Failure to accept this is the basic error. Had the football season been finished by a simulation no one would have accepted it. No matter how good the algorithm used. Not sure what ought to have happened but basing admissions to Uni on exam grades in the absence of any exams is untenable and ought to have been foreseen.
Agreed. The football analogy is a good one - Man U would have won the simulated Premiership on the basis of 'past performance'.
As each game was the equivalent of an exam there was enough to be marked on.
The equivalent would have been every team claiming they would have won all their remaining games based on their own predictions.
The equivalent is grading this season on predictions moderated by past 3 years performance. Result. City champions. Sheff Utd, Newcastle and Norwich relegated. 1 out of 4.
Not when the games / exams have already happened.
Any grading would have been on the unplayed games only.
Yes but since the "exams" hadn't happened what has been done here is the equivalent of doing the entire season based on prior predictions, not just the end of it.
The fundamental problem is there can be no "accurate" or indeed any degree of accuracy in exam grades, as there have been no exams. Failure to accept this is the basic error. Had the football season been finished by a simulation no one would have accepted it. No matter how good the algorithm used. Not sure what ought to have happened but basing admissions to Uni on exam grades in the absence of any exams is untenable and ought to have been foreseen.
Agreed. The football analogy is a good one - Man U would have won the simulated Premiership on the basis of 'past performance'.
As each game was the equivalent of an exam there was enough to be marked on.
The equivalent would have been every team claiming they would have won all their remaining games based on their own predictions.
The equivalent is grading this season on predictions moderated by past 3 years performance. Result. City champions. Sheff Utd, Newcastle and Norwich relegated. 1 out of 4.
Not when the games / exams have already happened.
Any grading would have been on the unplayed games only.
Yes but since the "exams" hadn't happened what has been done here is the equivalent of doing the entire season based on prior predictions, not just the end of it.
Exactly its not comparing like with like - its a ludicrous analogy.
The fundamental problem is there can be no "accurate" or indeed any degree of accuracy in exam grades, as there have been no exams. Failure to accept this is the basic error. Had the football season been finished by a simulation no one would have accepted it. No matter how good the algorithm used. Not sure what ought to have happened but basing admissions to Uni on exam grades in the absence of any exams is untenable and ought to have been foreseen.
Agreed. The football analogy is a good one - Man U would have won the simulated Premiership on the basis of 'past performance'.
As each game was the equivalent of an exam there was enough to be marked on.
The equivalent would have been every team claiming they would have won all their remaining games based on their own predictions.
The equivalent is grading this season on predictions moderated by past 3 years performance. Result. City champions. Sheff Utd, Newcastle and Norwich relegated. 1 out of 4.
Not when the games / exams have already happened.
Any grading would have been on the unplayed games only.
Yes but since the "exams" hadn't happened what has been done here is the equivalent of doing the entire season based on prior predictions, not just the end of it.
Exactly its not comparing like with like - its a ludicrous analogy.
No, I got the point of the analogy I'm just not sure you've picked it up. The purpose of the analogy is to demonstrate just how inaccurate basing one year's results on prior results is. Each year will have differences.
If benefit of the doubt was being given to the pupils then the grades would have gone up by more than they have. Averages being close just means boosting some more so they have a better grade than they should have, while others have a worse grade than they should have - that isn't any more accurate than everyone having the grade they should have got or better. Or simply saying there are no grades this year since there were no exams.
The fundamental problem is there can be no "accurate" or indeed any degree of accuracy in exam grades, as there have been no exams. Failure to accept this is the basic error. Had the football season been finished by a simulation no one would have accepted it. No matter how good the algorithm used. Not sure what ought to have happened but basing admissions to Uni on exam grades in the absence of any exams is untenable and ought to have been foreseen.
Agreed. The football analogy is a good one - Man U would have won the simulated Premiership on the basis of 'past performance'.
As each game was the equivalent of an exam there was enough to be marked on.
The equivalent would have been every team claiming they would have won all their remaining games based on their own predictions.
The equivalent is grading this season on predictions moderated by past 3 years performance. Result. City champions. Sheff Utd, Newcastle and Norwich relegated. 1 out of 4.
Not when the games / exams have already happened.
Any grading would have been on the unplayed games only.
Yes but since the "exams" hadn't happened what has been done here is the equivalent of doing the entire season based on prior predictions, not just the end of it.
Exactly its not comparing like with like - its a ludicrous analogy.
No, I got the point of the analogy I'm just not sure you've picked it up. The purpose of the analogy is to demonstrate just how inaccurate basing one year's results on prior results is. Each year will have differences.
If benefit of the doubt was being given to the pupils then the grades would have gone up by more than they have. Averages being close just means boosting some more so they have a better grade than they should have, while others have a worse grade than they should have - that isn't any more accurate than everyone having the grade they should have got or better. Or simply saying there are no grades this year since there were no exams.
And your evidence for that claim is ?
The results are the highest ever but who cares about the people who will lose out by relying on bollox predictions.
If, as I said, you want to have a system where 40% get A grades then lets be honest about it.
And have 40% A grades every year.
Lets even make it retrospective if people want and increase everyone's grades for the last decade.
Typically hilarious interview with Ronnie O'Sullivan after the match tonight where the only thing he was interested in talking about was having a "decent cue action". Mark Selby accused him of being "a bit disrespectful".
My strategy would be to drive across a border and finish my holiday in Germany or Italy. A non-stop drive across France to the Tunnel would be acceptable to avoid quarantine.
I suspect most people's strategy will be to follow the Cummings example and just ignore the quarantine. How is it being policed?
Yes, exactly. I find it hard to believe the cops are now going to be knocking on maybe 200,000 doors to make sure returning holidaymakers-from-France are staying home.
And I speak as someone determined to go on a much-anticipated trip to Greece next Friday. Even as cases rise there....
If no one is planning to quarantine, why the rush home, as reported in the news? Unless, of course, most people aren't rushing home at all and the great repatriation is hyperbole...
Manufactured needless drama to knock the exams fiasco off the front page.
Utterly pathetic state of affairs.
Except there is no exams fiasco is there.
But we have discovered that teachers grade predictions are less reliable than an estate agent's valuation.
Sorry, but that's pure spin.
We've discovered that the Ofqual equation doesn't work very well. Ofqual tried the model on the 2019 exams, and they got about 40 % error rate between actual exam results and the output of their model.
People who have poked around in the Ofqual black box think they've worked out why it sometimes gives insane outputs (the C --> U downgrades, for example).
Oh, and lots of young people have had their plans for the autumn thrown up in the air, because some have A Level results that have been held down, whereas other have results that have been allowed to inflate.
But no fiasco here. Oh no.
I didn't think OfQual could actually come up with a worse approach than SQA yet somehow they have.
Nonsense. The Sturge and all of what passes for opposition in Scotland demanded something worse.
That's not so surprising. So far Starmer has not provided any positive reason to vote Labour. He's contributed nothing in terms of an alternative to the government's management of Covid and his after the event criticisms grate. He's also dull and his team unknown and invisible. What's to vote for other than Labour not being the Tories.
There is also a growing sense that the govt has got a handle on Covid in a way other nations - France, Spain, Netherlands - have not.
This may be entirely false as a perspective. Maybe the UK has just got lucky, maybe our own second wave is coming (as holidaymakers return) nonetheless the hard data has the UK's R number notably down, compared to our peers.
That might be one reason the Tory lead has grown, slightly.
"There is also a growing sense that the govt has got a handle on Covid in a way other nations - France, Spain, Netherlands - have not. "
Our deaths per million capita and our drop in GDP suggest otherwise.
You'd be hard pushed to claim that France and Spain are doing better on Covid management than the UK right now.
Anybody assessing the performance of a particular government at any one point in time should wait until, if it ever is, over. Only six weeks ago everything in Spain and France looked fine and controlled, Spain has not lost control in most of the country but has some serious hot spots that need to be managed.
Comments
Encouraging both for long term immunity, and (less quantifiable) for the possibility of a proportion of the population having some sort of useful immune memory from previous coronavirus infection.
Robust T cell immunity in convalescent individuals with asymptomatic or mild COVID-19
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867420310084
SARS-CoV-2-specific memory T cells will likely prove critical for long-term immune protection against COVID-19. We here systematically mapped the functional and phenotypic landscape of SARS-CoV-2-specific T cell responses in unexposed individuals, exposed family members, and individuals with acute or convalescent COVID-19. Acute phase SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells displayed a highly activated cytotoxic phenotype that correlated with various clinical markers of disease severity, whereas convalescent phase SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells were polyfunctional and displayed a stem-like memory phenotype. Importantly, SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells were detectable in antibody-seronegative exposed family members and convalescent individuals with a history of asymptomatic and mild COVID-19. Our collective dataset shows that SARS-CoV-2 elicits robust, broad and highly functional memory T cell responses, suggesting that natural exposure or infection may prevent recurrent episodes of severe COVID-19.
"Conservative 43% (–)
Labour 36% (-2)
Liberal Democrat 9% (+2)
Scottish National Party 4% (–)
Green 4% (–)
Plaid Cymru 0% (–)
Other 3% (–)"
https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-gb-voting-intention-12-august/
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/08/trumps-weaponization-usps-and-census/615235/
... Trump is systematically enlisting agencies, including the Postal Service, Census Bureau, Department of Justice, and Department of Homeland Security, that traditionally have been considered at least somewhat insulated from political machinations to reward his allies and punish those he considers his enemies. He is razing barriers between his personal and political interests and the core operations of the federal government to an extent that no president has previously attempted, a wide range of public-administration experts have told me.
“There’s always been temptation … but no president in modern times has taken action so explicitly and obviously—or transparently—to influence and actually direct these agencies to favor the party in power,” Paul Light, a public-service professor at New York University, told me. “None. None.”...
The uni courses will still be filled and we get a huge dollop of grade inflation baked into the system which just means that the grades required in future years rise in line.
And everyone ends up thinking they're more talented than they are and/or becomes more self-entitled.
While big, bad world gets harder by the year.
It would be more honest to stop school exams, use the time saved for something more productive, give everyone A grades if they turn up for two years and let universities set their own entrance criteria.
We've discovered that the Ofqual equation doesn't work very well. Ofqual tried the model on the 2019 exams, and they got about 40 % error rate between actual exam results and the output of their model.
https://twitter.com/xtophercook/status/1293841154782441474
People who have poked around in the Ofqual black box think they've worked out why it sometimes gives insane outputs (the C --> U downgrades, for example).
https://ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/2020/08/a-level-results-2020-how-have-grades-been-calculated/
Oh, and the Royal Statistical Society offered to help earlier on but couldn't come to an agreement about NDAs with the government.
https://twitter.com/RoyalStatSoc/status/1294308350285447177
Oh, and lots of young people have had their plans for the autumn thrown up in the air, because some have A Level results that have been held down, whereas other have results that have been allowed to inflate.
But no fiasco here. Oh no.
Do you want accurate grades or higher grades ?
This may be entirely false as a perspective. Maybe the UK has just got lucky, maybe our own second wave is coming (as holidaymakers return) nonetheless the hard data has the UK's R number notably down, compared to our peers.
That might be one reason the Tory lead has grown, slightly.
There is also a translation into English which needs a very good command of English in order to reflect nuance and meaning.
Very few native Russian speakers would get A* in Russian A-level straight off the street due to those reasons. The number would be slightly, but not much, higher for native French speakers.
I don't know about other languages as I only teach those two at A-level.
Note it is prior the results stuff, I don't see this making any difference.
Basically the Tories are about 8 points ahead and nothing seems to change that.
I don't see it.
Over-predicting grades would have been shown to have worked so there would likely be even more over-predicting next year.
So then what happens when the 2021 exam results are seen to be both way lower than the predicted grades and way lower than the 2020 awarded grades ?
Everyone then demands that higher grades are awarded.
And why not - its the pupils who will be taking exams in 2021 who will have their education disrupted far more than those of this year.
So why should they lose out ? They shouldn't.
If there should be 40% A grades in 2020, then 40% A grades should become the standard for every year from now onwards.
Our deaths per million capita and our drop in GDP suggest otherwise.
There's no good answer here. To get accurate and consistent exam results you need to, you know, hold exams.
When you have individual submitted exams to compare and the overall results need to be downgraded for whatever reason, that can be done fairly on the basis of the individual's actual exam paper. Without that, it's a lottery.
We just need to accept that 2020 is an unusual year.
There will be too many people with an interest in maintaining higher grades.
In the case of the 2021 pupils with justification.
Failure to accept this is the basic error.
Had the football season been finished by a simulation no one would have accepted it. No matter how good the algorithm used.
Not sure what ought to have happened but basing admissions to Uni on exam grades in the absence of any exams is untenable and ought to have been foreseen.
What Britain will avoid is the annihilation of its tourist industry, which is less important anyway.
France is going to take a powerful hit, Spain is just shafted. I pray Greece swerves the worst: they’ve already been through a Crash.
Grades are at a record high and the vast majority of pupils will be happy.
Or at least they should be - if not then big, bad world is going to teach them some hard lessons.
The uni courses will be filled and life will roll on.
Are there individual problems ? Certainly but there is every year and there's scope for appeals and exams to be actually taken.
Its not perfect but we're in a global pandemic and lots of people are losing out - I know people who have lost their jobs or lost serious amounts of money or have health issues or have lost members of their family.
If anyone wants 100% perfection then they're in the wrong time, in the wrong country and in the wrong world.
I think we will see more examples over this over the next few years.
The thing the education system seems to have decided to preserve is exam results.
In the face of, as you say, there being no exams. Quite incredible.
That normally sees the PB lefties get the pom-poms out.
If there is a clear and unambiguous reason to downgrade then fair enough, but if there is any reasonable doubt at all then the student should get the benefit of the doubt.
If that means more A's than "average" so be it. If some guilty people go free then we don't incarcerate random innocent people in order to ensure that our average incarceration rate is maintained.
There are the places which attract foreign tourists - London, Edinburgh, Oxford, Cambridge, Canterbury, York etc - and these might struggle.
Whereas the seaside / countryside areas rely on UK tourists and so should do reasonably well.
Economically everything else is pretty much secondary.
The equivalent would have been every team claiming they would have won all their remaining games based on their own predictions.
I went to High School in Australia, though I didn't do the VCEs while there the system they had and I believe have is incredibly ruthless in comparison to ours. At the time I was there every student who sat the VCEs would get ranked in an overall percentile grading called ENTER. That grading was a percentile grading and went from 30.00 (pass mark, did better than the 30% of the population that failed, below that is undisclosed) to 99.95 (top possible percentile rank, better than 99.95% of people). The percentile ranking goes up in increments of 0.05 with approximately 20 pupils in each 0.05 ranking.
So eg if a student got a percentile ranking of 91.45 then they did better than 91.45% of all other pupils that year and worse than 8.5% of all pupils.
That system is entirely ruthless and literally a method of ranking people. Not possible to scrape into a higher grade or narrowly miss, since each grade is a step of 0.05 percentile to the next step. At the time too 30 percent were guaranteed to fail, though that to be fair includes everyone who dropped out without sitting the exams.
People want higher grades not honest grades.
But the problem is if everyone gets higher grades then they all become worthless grades.
If there is doubt, the benefit of the doubt should go with the student.
Its better to try to give everyone what they should get and put in place mechanisms to rectify for those who get less than they should.
Result. City champions.
Sheff Utd, Newcastle and Norwich relegated.
1 out of 4.
Any grading would have been on the unplayed games only.
https://twitter.com/StopCityAirport/status/1294314585072295936
Not sure about the others.
Really bad news, however, for Brum, Swindon, etc
If benefit of the doubt was being given to the pupils then the grades would have gone up by more than they have. Averages being close just means boosting some more so they have a better grade than they should have, while others have a worse grade than they should have - that isn't any more accurate than everyone having the grade they should have got or better. Or simply saying there are no grades this year since there were no exams.
The results are the highest ever but who cares about the people who will lose out by relying on bollox predictions.
If, as I said, you want to have a system where 40% get A grades then lets be honest about it.
And have 40% A grades every year.
Lets even make it retrospective if people want and increase everyone's grades for the last decade.