I like the principle but online password criteria would mostly rule out CorrectHorseBatteryStaple. Too many characters, no numbers or special characters.
It would make a "good" passphrase for your password manager, in which you can store all your random online passwords.
I notice Philip never actually answered why he supports Eton existing, he just went onto deflect.
Why do you support Waitrose or M & S or the Ritz hotel or Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce or Oxford and Cambridge existing either? Because the produce high quality services and products.
Same as an outstanding academy or comprehensive or grammar school compared to an inadequate or requires improvement state school
And if you have money you can avoid all of this and go to a school which will give you connections and a better chance of getting into a good Uni.
The solution to use your analogy, is to ensure that Tesco has products that are as good as those offered at Waitrose, not to ban Waitrose from selling better quality products.
If Tesco produced as good or better products than Waitrose, Waitrose customers would go to Tesco and prices would rise their accordingly and Tesco customers would then go to Waitrose whose prices would fall accordingly.
Basic market economics
If you believe in private education you dont believe in equality of opportunity.
Indisputably a true statement. The supporters of private education who I tip my hat to are those who man up and face this. Who say that, yes, it violates the principle of equal opportunities and, yes, it hampers social mobility, but that in their opinion this is a price worth paying for the things it delivers.
But such people are in my experience few and far between. Far more common is the disingenuous, issue-avoiding platitude: "I'm not a fan of private schools but they only exist because of the failures of the state system. Fix that and the problem goes away." Grrr to this. It's a shallow and/or bad faith argument.
Only the left believe that parents should not be allowed to spend their money in the way they want to. The left want everyone to be equally disadvantaged. its politics to the lowest common denominator.
There are two things in life you should not be allowed better access to just because you can afford it, they are health and education, after that it’s up to the individual. But whilst those that can buy these privileges they will continue to maintain the total farce of claiming freedom of choice, carry on deluding yourselves it helps you sleep at night.
I notice Philip never actually answered why he supports Eton existing, he just went onto deflect.
I never saw that question or replied to it did I?
To answer the question I support it (and the rest of the sector) existing because I believe free competition ultimately improves all. I believe if education became state schools only then education overall would get worse not better.
In a competitive market extreme edge cases like that will help a tiny proportion of pupils who go to it, paid for by their parents, but the school will seek to be the best it can be to maintain its premium. Any innovations the schools like that come up with can and should be looked at by the much bigger state sector and adopted where appropriate.
Plus of course voluntarily paying for education reduces the drain on the state educational budget.
Finally people should have by principle the right to pay for what they want to do ... And I see no downside to it at all.
You forgot the most important reason.
Private schools show what can be done. But isn't. If they didn't exist, the True Believers in the current state system would declare Mission Accomplished. International comparisons would be shrugged off with "different culture" excuses.
They show what can be done if you filter off an advantaged pupil intake and then advantage them further with vastly higher funding per head. But I'm not sure that needs to be demonstrated. I think I could guess.
I like the principle but online password criteria would mostly rule out CorrectHorseBatteryStaple. Too many characters, no numbers or special characters.
It would make a "good" passphrase for your password manager, in which you can store all your random online passwords.
Do people use password managers? Seems dangerous to me? Im overly cynical but why would I trust the companies that run them?
I notice Philip never actually answered why he supports Eton existing, he just went onto deflect.
I never saw that question or replied to it did I?
To answer the question I support it (and the rest of the sector) existing because I believe free competition ultimately improves all. I believe if education became state schools only then education overall would get worse not better.
In a competitive market extreme edge cases like that will help a tiny proportion of pupils who go to it, paid for by their parents, but the school will seek to be the best it can be to maintain its premium. Any innovations the schools like that come up with can and should be looked at by the much bigger state sector and adopted where appropriate.
Plus of course voluntarily paying for education reduces the drain on the state educational budget.
Finally people should have by principle the right to pay for what they want to do ... And I see no downside to it at all.
You forgot the most important reason.
Private schools show what can be done. But isn't. If they didn't exist, the True Believers in the current state system would declare Mission Accomplished. International comparisons would be shrugged off with "different culture" excuses.
They show what can be done if you filter off an advantaged pupil intake and then advantage them further with vastly higher funding per head. But I'm not sure that needs to be demonstrated. I think I could guess.
Which is where your insight fails.
The spend per pupil, once you drop the olympic size swimming pools etc is surprisingly low on the actual education bit, relative to state spend.
The success of some of the Free Schools, with quite "bog standard" intake is further evidence.
I like the principle but online password criteria would mostly rule out CorrectHorseBatteryStaple. Too many characters, no numbers or special characters.
It would make a "good" passphrase for your password manager, in which you can store all your random online passwords.
Do people use password managers? Seems dangerous to me? Im overly cynical but why would I trust the companies that run them?
Quite happy to use Google's as it means it's easy to sign into stuff on my phone, but whenever 2 step verification is an option I always choose it.
I notice Philip never actually answered why he supports Eton existing, he just went onto deflect.
Why do you support Waitrose or M & S or the Ritz hotel or Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce or Oxford and Cambridge existing either? Because the produce high quality services and products.
Same as an outstanding academy or comprehensive or grammar school compared to an inadequate or requires improvement state school
And if you have money you can avoid all of this and go to a school which will give you connections and a better chance of getting into a good Uni.
The solution to use your analogy, is to ensure that Tesco has products that are as good as those offered at Waitrose, not to ban Waitrose from selling better quality products.
If Tesco produced as good or better products than Waitrose, Waitrose customers would go to Tesco and prices would rise their accordingly and Tesco customers would then go to Waitrose whose prices would fall accordingly.
Basic market economics
If you believe in private education you dont believe in equality of opportunity.
Indisputably a true statement. The supporters of private education who I tip my hat to are those who man up and face this. Who say that, yes, it violates the principle of equal opportunities and, yes, it hampers social mobility, but that in their opinion this is a price worth paying for the things it delivers.
But such people are in my experience few and far between. Far more common is the disingenuous, issue-avoiding platitude: "I'm not a fan of private schools but they only exist because of the failures of the state system. Fix that and the problem goes away." Grrr to this. It's a shallow and/or bad faith argument.
Only the left believe that parents should not be allowed to spend their money in the way they want to. The left want everyone to be equally disadvantaged. its politics to the lowest common denominator.
It's impossible by definition for everyone to be equally disadvantaged. Advantage and disadvantage is a relative concept. It has no meaning in an absolute context.
I notice Philip never actually answered why he supports Eton existing, he just went onto deflect.
Why do you support Waitrose or M & S or the Ritz hotel or Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce or Oxford and Cambridge existing either? Because the produce high quality services and products.
Same as an outstanding academy or comprehensive or grammar school compared to an inadequate or requires improvement state school
And if you have money you can avoid all of this and go to a school which will give you connections and a better chance of getting into a good Uni.
The solution to use your analogy, is to ensure that Tesco has products that are as good as those offered at Waitrose, not to ban Waitrose from selling better quality products.
If Tesco produced as good or better products than Waitrose, Waitrose customers would go to Tesco and prices would rise their accordingly and Tesco customers would then go to Waitrose whose prices would fall accordingly.
Basic market economics
If you believe in private education you dont believe in equality of opportunity.
Indisputably a true statement. The supporters of private education who I tip my hat to are those who man up and face this. Who say that, yes, it violates the principle of equal opportunities and, yes, it hampers social mobility, but that in their opinion this is a price worth paying for the things it delivers.
But such people are in my experience few and far between. Far more common is the disingenuous, issue-avoiding platitude: "I'm not a fan of private schools but they only exist because of the failures of the state system. Fix that and the problem goes away." Grrr to this. It's a shallow and/or bad faith argument.
Only the left believe that parents should not be allowed to spend their money in the way they want to. The left want everyone to be equally disadvantaged. its politics to the lowest common denominator.
Nonsense, everyone believes in some rules about how we spend our money (funding terrorism, hiring a hitman, bribing officials etc). The debate is simply what the rules are which makes it a broad spectrum rather than the binary the left believe x,y or z extremes and are therefore terrible.
I notice Philip never actually answered why he supports Eton existing, he just went onto deflect.
Why do you support Waitrose or M & S or the Ritz hotel or Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce or Oxford and Cambridge existing either? Because the produce high quality services and products.
Same as an outstanding academy or comprehensive or grammar school compared to an inadequate or requires improvement state school
And if you have money you can avoid all of this and go to a school which will give you connections and a better chance of getting into a good Uni.
The solution to use your analogy, is to ensure that Tesco has products that are as good as those offered at Waitrose, not to ban Waitrose from selling better quality products.
If Tesco produced as good or better products than Waitrose, Waitrose customers would go to Tesco and prices would rise their accordingly and Tesco customers would then go to Waitrose whose prices would fall accordingly.
Basic market economics
If you believe in private education you dont believe in equality of opportunity.
Indisputably a true statement. The supporters of private education who I tip my hat to are those who man up and face this. Who say that, yes, it violates the principle of equal opportunities and, yes, it hampers social mobility, but that in their opinion this is a price worth paying for the things it delivers.
But such people are in my experience few and far between. Far more common is the disingenuous, issue-avoiding platitude: "I'm not a fan of private schools but they only exist because of the failures of the state system. Fix that and the problem goes away." Grrr to this. It's a shallow and/or bad faith argument.
Only the left believe that parents should not be allowed to spend their money in the way they want to. The left want everyone to be equally disadvantaged. its politics to the lowest common denominator.
There are two things in life you should not be allowed better access to just because you can afford it, they are health and education, after that it’s up to the individual. But whilst those that can buy these privileges they will continue to maintain the total farce of claiming freedom of choice, carry on deluding yourselves it helps you sleep at night.
So, no private schools, music lesons, tutors, football academies, stage schools, ballet lessons....... persish the thought that any kind of talent should be developed through the parents voluntarily deciding to help and nurture their children. I wonder what Diane Abbott, Harriet Harman among countless Labour politicians would feel about that.....
I like the principle but online password criteria would mostly rule out CorrectHorseBatteryStaple. Too many characters, no numbers or special characters.
It would make a "good" passphrase for your password manager, in which you can store all your random online passwords.
Do people use password managers? Seems dangerous to me? Im overly cynical but why would I trust the companies that run them?
Quite happy to use Google's as it means it's easy to sign into stuff on my phone, but whenever 2 step verification is an option I always choose it.
Agreed that 2 stop verification feels so much stronger and safer.
I notice Philip never actually answered why he supports Eton existing, he just went onto deflect.
Why do you support Waitrose or M & S or the Ritz hotel or Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce or Oxford and Cambridge existing either? Because the produce high quality services and products.
Same as an outstanding academy or comprehensive or grammar school compared to an inadequate or requires improvement state school
And if you have money you can avoid all of this and go to a school which will give you connections and a better chance of getting into a good Uni.
The solution to use your analogy, is to ensure that Tesco has products that are as good as those offered at Waitrose, not to ban Waitrose from selling better quality products.
If Tesco produced as good or better products than Waitrose, Waitrose customers would go to Tesco and prices would rise their accordingly and Tesco customers would then go to Waitrose whose prices would fall accordingly.
Basic market economics
If you believe in private education you dont believe in equality of opportunity.
Indisputably a true statement. The supporters of private education who I tip my hat to are those who man up and face this. Who say that, yes, it violates the principle of equal opportunities and, yes, it hampers social mobility, but that in their opinion this is a price worth paying for the things it delivers.
But such people are in my experience few and far between. Far more common is the disingenuous, issue-avoiding platitude: "I'm not a fan of private schools but they only exist because of the failures of the state system. Fix that and the problem goes away." Grrr to this. It's a shallow and/or bad faith argument.
Only the left believe that parents should not be allowed to spend their money in the way they want to. The left want everyone to be equally disadvantaged. its politics to the lowest common denominator.
There are two things in life you should not be allowed better access to just because you can afford it, they are health and education, after that it’s up to the individual. But whilst those that can buy these privileges they will continue to maintain the total farce of claiming freedom of choice, carry on deluding yourselves it helps you sleep at night.
The NHS nor the State Education system will never be able to provide what is actually needed, it can only be rationed which is what it happens. That is what Private Health and Private Education exist. If you restrict education and health in the manner you suggest , people will just leave the country to achieve their needs, and the brain drain will further diminish the Country, if indeed that is possible..
I notice Philip never actually answered why he supports Eton existing, he just went onto deflect.
I never saw that question or replied to it did I?
To answer the question I support it (and the rest of the sector) existing because I believe free competition ultimately improves all. I believe if education became state schools only then education overall would get worse not better.
In a competitive market extreme edge cases like that will help a tiny proportion of pupils who go to it, paid for by their parents, but the school will seek to be the best it can be to maintain its premium. Any innovations the schools like that come up with can and should be looked at by the much bigger state sector and adopted where appropriate.
Plus of course voluntarily paying for education reduces the drain on the state educational budget.
Finally people should have by principle the right to pay for what they want to do ... And I see no downside to it at all.
You forgot the most important reason.
Private schools show what can be done. But isn't. If they didn't exist, the True Believers in the current state system would declare Mission Accomplished. International comparisons would be shrugged off with "different culture" excuses.
They show what can be done if you filter off an advantaged pupil intake and then advantage them further with vastly higher funding per head. But I'm not sure that needs to be demonstrated. I think I could guess.
Which is where your insight fails.
The spend per pupil, once you drop the olympic size swimming pools etc is surprisingly low on the actual education bit, relative to state spend.
The success of some of the Free Schools, with quite "bog standard" intake is further evidence.
On average it is almost triple per pupil. That's the big picture. Of course you can find plenty of exceptions. But the truth of my overall statement is not materially impacted.
I notice Philip never actually answered why he supports Eton existing, he just went onto deflect.
Why do you support Waitrose or M & S or the Ritz hotel or Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce or Oxford and Cambridge existing either? Because the produce high quality services and products.
Same as an outstanding academy or comprehensive or grammar school compared to an inadequate or requires improvement state school
And if you have money you can avoid all of this and go to a school which will give you connections and a better chance of getting into a good Uni.
The solution to use your analogy, is to ensure that Tesco has products that are as good as those offered at Waitrose, not to ban Waitrose from selling better quality products.
If Tesco produced as good or better products than Waitrose, Waitrose customers would go to Tesco and prices would rise their accordingly and Tesco customers would then go to Waitrose whose prices would fall accordingly.
Basic market economics
If you believe in private education you dont believe in equality of opportunity.
Indisputably a true statement. The supporters of private education who I tip my hat to are those who man up and face this. Who say that, yes, it violates the principle of equal opportunities and, yes, it hampers social mobility, but that in their opinion this is a price worth paying for the things it delivers.
But such people are in my experience few and far between. Far more common is the disingenuous, issue-avoiding platitude: "I'm not a fan of private schools but they only exist because of the failures of the state system. Fix that and the problem goes away." Grrr to this. It's a shallow and/or bad faith argument.
Only the left believe that parents should not be allowed to spend their money in the way they want to. The left want everyone to be equally disadvantaged. its politics to the lowest common denominator.
There are two things in life you should not be allowed better access to just because you can afford it, they are health and education, after that it’s up to the individual. But whilst those that can buy these privileges they will continue to maintain the total farce of claiming freedom of choice, carry on deluding yourselves it helps you sleep at night.
The NHS nor the State Education system will never be able to provide what is actually needed, it can only be rationed which is what it happens. That is what Private Health and Private Education exist. If you restrict education and health in the manner you suggest , people will just leave the country to achieve their needs, and the brain drain will further diminish the Country, if indeed that is possible..
I notice Philip never actually answered why he supports Eton existing, he just went onto deflect.
Why do you support Waitrose or M & S or the Ritz hotel or Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce or Oxford and Cambridge existing either? Because the produce high quality services and products.
Same as an outstanding academy or comprehensive or grammar school compared to an inadequate or requires improvement state school
And if you have money you can avoid all of this and go to a school which will give you connections and a better chance of getting into a good Uni.
The solution to use your analogy, is to ensure that Tesco has products that are as good as those offered at Waitrose, not to ban Waitrose from selling better quality products.
If Tesco produced as good or better products than Waitrose, Waitrose customers would go to Tesco and prices would rise their accordingly and Tesco customers would then go to Waitrose whose prices would fall accordingly.
Basic market economics
If you believe in private education you dont believe in equality of opportunity.
Indisputably a true statement. The supporters of private education who I tip my hat to are those who man up and face this. Who say that, yes, it violates the principle of equal opportunities and, yes, it hampers social mobility, but that in their opinion this is a price worth paying for the things it delivers.
But such people are in my experience few and far between. Far more common is the disingenuous, issue-avoiding platitude: "I'm not a fan of private schools but they only exist because of the failures of the state system. Fix that and the problem goes away." Grrr to this. It's a shallow and/or bad faith argument.
Only the left believe that parents should not be allowed to spend their money in the way they want to. The left want everyone to be equally disadvantaged. its politics to the lowest common denominator.
There are two things in life you should not be allowed better access to just because you can afford it, they are health and education, after that it’s up to the individual. But whilst those that can buy these privileges they will continue to maintain the total farce of claiming freedom of choice, carry on deluding yourselves it helps you sleep at night.
The NHS nor the State Education system will never be able to provide what is actually needed, it can only be rationed which is what it happens. That is what Private Health and Private Education exist. If you restrict education and health in the manner you suggest , people will just leave the country to achieve their needs, and the brain drain will further diminish the Country, if indeed that is possible..
Be assured that the govt and cabinet are working night and day, and very productively, to further diminish the country.
I notice Philip never actually answered why he supports Eton existing, he just went onto deflect.
Why do you support Waitrose or M & S or the Ritz hotel or Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce or Oxford and Cambridge existing either? Because the produce high quality services and products.
Same as an outstanding academy or comprehensive or grammar school compared to an inadequate or requires improvement state school
And if you have money you can avoid all of this and go to a school which will give you connections and a better chance of getting into a good Uni.
The solution to use your analogy, is to ensure that Tesco has products that are as good as those offered at Waitrose, not to ban Waitrose from selling better quality products.
If Tesco produced as good or better products than Waitrose, Waitrose customers would go to Tesco and prices would rise their accordingly and Tesco customers would then go to Waitrose whose prices would fall accordingly.
Basic market economics
If you believe in private education you dont believe in equality of opportunity.
Indisputably a true statement. The supporters of private education who I tip my hat to are those who man up and face this. Who say that, yes, it violates the principle of equal opportunities and, yes, it hampers social mobility, but that in their opinion this is a price worth paying for the things it delivers.
But such people are in my experience few and far between. Far more common is the disingenuous, issue-avoiding platitude: "I'm not a fan of private schools but they only exist because of the failures of the state system. Fix that and the problem goes away." Grrr to this. It's a shallow and/or bad faith argument.
While on the other hand private schools are loved by many on the left.
It gives them a nice target to focus resentments on and an explanation for the failures of state education.
What people most purport to hate is so often what they are secretly dependent upon.
The algorithm is the wrong answer to the wrong question, and the Government are rightly being awarded a U.
The point of university offers and A-level results in response to those offers is to appropriately and accurately differentiate between individuals in the cohort. The average ability in the cohort is only relevant as far as the level of the ability in that cohort reads across to the ability to cope with the university work (and the specific individuals difference from that average is also crucial).
The Government have trotted out a system which fails to have any plausibility in accurately differentiating individuals and instead ascribes a guess that the average won’t have appreciably changed and forces an overall result across the cohort to match that. Failing in every respect for the individuals and universities.
And now universities (who cannot offer places to all their offers) are tied in to this failed output, the administration is done, the accommodation is in train, and teenagers who “failed” to get A*AA but got AA*A (different subject order) have lost places due to not getting their exact results in exams they didn’t take and grades that didn’t reflect the results they didn’t get.
What an inextricable and total omnishambles. Utter failure.
How do you accurately differentiate between pupils when they will have had their grade predictions made differently ?
I have no idea. Possibly based on the offers made by the universities (who will have taken into account the school's historical bias and any interviews of the candidate).
However, the principles of science tell us you do not need to know the right answer to be able to identify a wrong answer. The one given was a wrong answer.
I notice Philip never actually answered why he supports Eton existing, he just went onto deflect.
Why do you support Waitrose or M & S or the Ritz hotel or Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce or Oxford and Cambridge existing either? Because the produce high quality services and products.
Same as an outstanding academy or comprehensive or grammar school compared to an inadequate or requires improvement state school
And if you have money you can avoid all of this and go to a school which will give you connections and a better chance of getting into a good Uni.
The solution to use your analogy, is to ensure that Tesco has products that are as good as those offered at Waitrose, not to ban Waitrose from selling better quality products.
If Tesco produced as good or better products than Waitrose, Waitrose customers would go to Tesco and prices would rise their accordingly and Tesco customers would then go to Waitrose whose prices would fall accordingly.
Basic market economics
If you believe in private education you dont believe in equality of opportunity.
Indisputably a true statement. The supporters of private education who I tip my hat to are those who man up and face this. Who say that, yes, it violates the principle of equal opportunities and, yes, it hampers social mobility, but that in their opinion this is a price worth paying for the things it delivers.
But such people are in my experience few and far between. Far more common is the disingenuous, issue-avoiding platitude: "I'm not a fan of private schools but they only exist because of the failures of the state system. Fix that and the problem goes away." Grrr to this. It's a shallow and/or bad faith argument.
While on the other hand private schools are loved by many on the left.
It gives them a nice target to focus resentments on and an explanation for the failures of state education.
What people most purport to hate is so often what they are secretly dependent upon.
Never mind depend on - they use it themselves for their own children!
I notice Philip never actually answered why he supports Eton existing, he just went onto deflect.
Why do you support Waitrose or M & S or the Ritz hotel or Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce or Oxford and Cambridge existing either? Because the produce high quality services and products.
Same as an outstanding academy or comprehensive or grammar school compared to an inadequate or requires improvement state school
And if you have money you can avoid all of this and go to a school which will give you connections and a better chance of getting into a good Uni.
The solution to use your analogy, is to ensure that Tesco has products that are as good as those offered at Waitrose, not to ban Waitrose from selling better quality products.
If Tesco produced as good or better products than Waitrose, Waitrose customers would go to Tesco and prices would rise their accordingly and Tesco customers would then go to Waitrose whose prices would fall accordingly.
Basic market economics
If you believe in private education you dont believe in equality of opportunity.
Indisputably a true statement. The supporters of private education who I tip my hat to are those who man up and face this. Who say that, yes, it violates the principle of equal opportunities and, yes, it hampers social mobility, but that in their opinion this is a price worth paying for the things it delivers.
But such people are in my experience few and far between. Far more common is the disingenuous, issue-avoiding platitude: "I'm not a fan of private schools but they only exist because of the failures of the state system. Fix that and the problem goes away." Grrr to this. It's a shallow and/or bad faith argument.
Only the left believe that parents should not be allowed to spend their money in the way they want to. The left want everyone to be equally disadvantaged. its politics to the lowest common denominator.
There are two things in life you should not be allowed better access to just because you can afford it, they are health and education, after that it’s up to the individual. But whilst those that can buy these privileges they will continue to maintain the total farce of claiming freedom of choice, carry on deluding yourselves it helps you sleep at night.
The NHS nor the State Education system will never be able to provide what is actually needed, it can only be rationed which is what it happens. That is what Private Health and Private Education exist. If you restrict education and health in the manner you suggest , people will just leave the country to achieve their needs, and the brain drain will further diminish the Country, if indeed that is possible..
Be assured that the govt and cabinet are working night and day, and very productively, to further diminish the country.
I started by saying that if you believe in buying certain privileges you can’t believe in equality of opportunity, you’re free to buy them but don’t then claim you believe in that.
I notice Philip never actually answered why he supports Eton existing, he just went onto deflect.
Why do you support Waitrose or M & S or the Ritz hotel or Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce or Oxford and Cambridge existing either? Because the produce high quality services and products.
Same as an outstanding academy or comprehensive or grammar school compared to an inadequate or requires improvement state school
And if you have money you can avoid all of this and go to a school which will give you connections and a better chance of getting into a good Uni.
The solution to use your analogy, is to ensure that Tesco has products that are as good as those offered at Waitrose, not to ban Waitrose from selling better quality products.
If Tesco produced as good or better products than Waitrose, Waitrose customers would go to Tesco and prices would rise their accordingly and Tesco customers would then go to Waitrose whose prices would fall accordingly.
Basic market economics
If you believe in private education you dont believe in equality of opportunity.
Indisputably a true statement. The supporters of private education who I tip my hat to are those who man up and face this. Who say that, yes, it violates the principle of equal opportunities and, yes, it hampers social mobility, but that in their opinion this is a price worth paying for the things it delivers.
But such people are in my experience few and far between. Far more common is the disingenuous, issue-avoiding platitude: "I'm not a fan of private schools but they only exist because of the failures of the state system. Fix that and the problem goes away." Grrr to this. It's a shallow and/or bad faith argument.
While on the other hand private schools are loved by many on the left.
It gives them a nice target to focus resentments on and an explanation for the failures of state education.
What people most purport to hate is so often what they are secretly dependent upon.
Oh for heaven's sake. You sound like some miserablist reactionary yogi.
I would like to think I am rubbish at exams but far better on the application and detail, so although I did terribly in my exams in particular case it does not impact my ability to be good at my job.
Why “correct horse battery” CHB? Is it some obscure literary reference, perhaps from Practical Horseman or Beastiality Today?
It's from XKCD, it's a comic strip about choosing a strong password.
In general people choose complicated passwords that are easy to guess, when if they chose four English words that are unrelated it would be easier to remember and harder for a computer to guess.
The example they used was CorrectHorseBatteryStaple. Unfortunately I could not fit the Staple.
I like the principle but online password criteria would mostly rule out CorrectHorseBatteryStaple. Too many characters, no numbers or special characters.
Simple workaround. Add an underscore somewhere, add a number. That works in most cases.
Is the top banner image different as a result of the hack?
Yes and no. After the hack and repair/rebuild, someone changed the banner to harmlessly prove pb is still vulnerable, and informed everyone by posting here.
I see some on here regard teachers as belonging to the state. Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll work for who I want (which currently is the state, but I would hate to lose the option to go elsewhere).
I notice Philip never actually answered why he supports Eton existing, he just went onto deflect.
Why do you support Waitrose or M & S or the Ritz hotel or Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce or Oxford and Cambridge existing either? Because the produce high quality services and products.
Same as an outstanding academy or comprehensive or grammar school compared to an inadequate or requires improvement state school
And if you have money you can avoid all of this and go to a school which will give you connections and a better chance of getting into a good Uni.
The solution to use your analogy, is to ensure that Tesco has products that are as good as those offered at Waitrose, not to ban Waitrose from selling better quality products.
If Tesco produced as good or better products than Waitrose, Waitrose customers would go to Tesco and prices would rise their accordingly and Tesco customers would then go to Waitrose whose prices would fall accordingly.
Basic market economics
If you believe in private education you dont believe in equality of opportunity.
Indisputably a true statement. The supporters of private education who I tip my hat to are those who man up and face this. Who say that, yes, it violates the principle of equal opportunities and, yes, it hampers social mobility, but that in their opinion this is a price worth paying for the things it delivers.
But such people are in my experience few and far between. Far more common is the disingenuous, issue-avoiding platitude: "I'm not a fan of private schools but they only exist because of the failures of the state system. Fix that and the problem goes away." Grrr to this. It's a shallow and/or bad faith argument.
Only the left believe that parents should not be allowed to spend their money in the way they want to. The left want everyone to be equally disadvantaged. its politics to the lowest common denominator.
There are two things in life you should not be allowed better access to just because you can afford it, they are health and education, after that it’s up to the individual. But whilst those that can buy these privileges they will continue to maintain the total farce of claiming freedom of choice, carry on deluding yourselves it helps you sleep at night.
The NHS nor the State Education system will never be able to provide what is actually needed, it can only be rationed which is what it happens. That is what Private Health and Private Education exist. If you restrict education and health in the manner you suggest , people will just leave the country to achieve their needs, and the brain drain will further diminish the Country, if indeed that is possible..
That may be true in health, where there are always more expensive and marginal treatments available. But it would be perfectly feasible to have a state education system, a bit better funded than now, that produced great outcomes. Most other European countries manage it, the only reason we can't is that we have a corrupt wealthy class intent on buying privileges for their kids who won't give it up. The same people who tell us they believe in equality of opportunity! It's pathetic.
Another piece of incredible bullshit from the Ofqual explanation of their methodology, which explains the motivation behind this year’s fiasco: ... The maintenance of standards is fundamental to the role of Ofqual, as articulated in our statutory objectives. It is crucial for ensuring fairness to students – both in terms of students taking qualifications with different exam boards in the same year, and students taking the same qualifications over time. This year is no different to any other in this regard...
The idea that, in designing a standardisation algorithm, it should be a priority for this year’s results to be consistent with prior years, is unjustifiable. There was always going to be an asterisk against these results anyway, given that they are estimates. It was pretty obvious that priority ought to have been fairness within the year. The claim that this year “is no different to any other in this regard” is plainly absurd.
And as previously posted, the algorithm has not achieved that -- at least not at the level of individual subjects -- and the aim was chimeric anyway because historically there has long been wide variation.
Of course; it is a flawed measure in any event. But for inter-year fairness to have been prioritised in designing the algorithm, when this year was clearly going to be a historical anomaly, was entirely unnecessary. It introduced an extra set of randomness, not related to any individual student’s performance, without any real justification.
Mmm. Exceptional grade inflation in this exceptional year deemed a greater evil than thousands of (mainly) state school kids receiving grades lower than they could reasonably have hoped for if they had been able to sit the exams. This is the value judgment made and I'm not sure about it at all.
Next year's pupils will be exceptional as well - they've had their education disrupted not just their exams.
So why should they be treated differently to the 2020 pupils ?
If you accept massive grade inflation in 2020 then it has to be accepted for future years as well.
No it doesn't. 2020 is forever asterisked. It's a value judgement and I think I'd make it differently. I'd live with anomalous overall marks for the pandemic year in order to minimize the individual injustices to individual kids in the pandemic year.
The issue is that teachers systematically overestimate results from year to year
They do not over-estimate, they say what they think pupils should get based on the work they have done. Then some pupils do not perform as well as expected.
Statistically the aggregate predictions from teachers have been 10-12% higher than the aggregate results over the last few years.
I’m not assigning blame, simply noting that they over-estimate in the aggregate
The algorithm is the wrong answer to the wrong question, and the Government are rightly being awarded a U.
The point of university offers and A-level results in response to those offers is to appropriately and accurately differentiate between individuals in the cohort. The average ability in the cohort is only relevant as far as the level of the ability in that cohort reads across to the ability to cope with the university work (and the specific individuals difference from that average is also crucial).
The Government have trotted out a system which fails to have any plausibility in accurately differentiating individuals and instead ascribes a guess that the average won’t have appreciably changed and forces an overall result across the cohort to match that. Failing in every respect for the individuals and universities.
And now universities (who cannot offer places to all their offers) are tied in to this failed output, the administration is done, the accommodation is in train, and teenagers who “failed” to get A*AA but got AA*A (different subject order) have lost places due to not getting their exact results in exams they didn’t take and grades that didn’t reflect the results they didn’t get.
What an inextricable and total omnishambles. Utter failure.
Agree with this and add that there are IMO only two reasonable ways out. The first is to cancel the award of synthetic and hypothetical exam results and hold the real exams later. This means delaying the start of the university year and somehow accommodating the extra teaching. Which is probably impractical.
Or aim to ensure that anyone who likely would have got into university does so. If this means a bunch of students getting to a university when normally they wouldn't: we accept they lucked out. The eventual Scottish system. It does depend on extra places being made available.
I think the original mistake of trying to replicate a normal year was in the "seemed like a good idea at the time" category. However Ofqual and the English government compounded the error in three ways: the algorithm that muddied the waters further; attempting to stick to the original principle when it was clear it wouldn't work; making up random policy on the hoof as the horror of the previous mistakes becomes clear.
Is the top banner image different as a result of the hack?
Yes and no. After the hack and repair/rebuild, someone changed the banner to harmlessly prove pb is still vulnerable, and informed everyone by posting here.
Of course, unauthorized access to a computer is an offense regardless of motive. IIRC, it is 2 years in jail or a fine.
Admitting that you hacked the server to the person owning it may not be the wisest move ...
So says Carl Gardner "replying to Carl Gardner". A sad, one-person echo chamber better left in obscurity. You're doing him a disservice by exposing him to daylight on here.
But his personal website is headoflegal.com. He must be at least as important as TSE...
I notice Philip never actually answered why he supports Eton existing, he just went onto deflect.
Why do you support Waitrose or M & S or the Ritz hotel or Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce or Oxford and Cambridge existing either? Because the produce high quality services and products.
Same as an outstanding academy or comprehensive or grammar school compared to an inadequate or requires improvement state school
And if you have money you can avoid all of this and go to a school which will give you connections and a better chance of getting into a good Uni.
The solution to use your analogy, is to ensure that Tesco has products that are as good as those offered at Waitrose, not to ban Waitrose from selling better quality products.
If Tesco produced as good or better products than Waitrose, Waitrose customers would go to Tesco and prices would rise their accordingly and Tesco customers would then go to Waitrose whose prices would fall accordingly.
Basic market economics
If you believe in private education you dont believe in equality of opportunity.
Indisputably a true statement. The supporters of private education who I tip my hat to are those who man up and face this. Who say that, yes, it violates the principle of equal opportunities and, yes, it hampers social mobility, but that in their opinion this is a price worth paying for the things it delivers.
But such people are in my experience few and far between. Far more common is the disingenuous, issue-avoiding platitude: "I'm not a fan of private schools but they only exist because of the failures of the state system. Fix that and the problem goes away." Grrr to this. It's a shallow and/or bad faith argument.
Only the left believe that parents should not be allowed to spend their money in the way they want to. The left want everyone to be equally disadvantaged. its politics to the lowest common denominator.
No, we want a first rate system for everyone, so that everyone can flourish and real talent can rise to the top, instead of a permanent privileged class of well-spoken mediocrities like we have now.
I notice Philip never actually answered why he supports Eton existing, he just went onto deflect.
Why do you support Waitrose or M & S or the Ritz hotel or Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce or Oxford and Cambridge existing either? Because the produce high quality services and products.
Same as an outstanding academy or comprehensive or grammar school compared to an inadequate or requires improvement state school
And if you have money you can avoid all of this and go to a school which will give you connections and a better chance of getting into a good Uni.
The solution to use your analogy, is to ensure that Tesco has products that are as good as those offered at Waitrose, not to ban Waitrose from selling better quality products.
If Tesco produced as good or better products than Waitrose, Waitrose customers would go to Tesco and prices would rise their accordingly and Tesco customers would then go to Waitrose whose prices would fall accordingly.
Basic market economics
If you believe in private education you dont believe in equality of opportunity.
Indisputably a true statement. The supporters of private education who I tip my hat to are those who man up and face this. Who say that, yes, it violates the principle of equal opportunities and, yes, it hampers social mobility, but that in their opinion this is a price worth paying for the things it delivers.
But such people are in my experience few and far between. Far more common is the disingenuous, issue-avoiding platitude: "I'm not a fan of private schools but they only exist because of the failures of the state system. Fix that and the problem goes away." Grrr to this. It's a shallow and/or bad faith argument.
Only the left believe that parents should not be allowed to spend their money in the way they want to. The left want everyone to be equally disadvantaged. its politics to the lowest common denominator.
There are two things in life you should not be allowed better access to just because you can afford it, they are health and education, after that it’s up to the individual. But whilst those that can buy these privileges they will continue to maintain the total farce of claiming freedom of choice, carry on deluding yourselves it helps you sleep at night.
I'm entirely in favour of people educating themselves as much as possible and, in any case, what you desire is not possible. You cannot prevent parents with the means from buying private tuition for the children even were you to ban private schools. Nor could you prevent parents with a university education from helping their children and providing informal private tuition.
The implication of this is that we have to abandon the myth of meritocracy. We should stop pretending that we can have a society with fair competition, where the children with most merit can gain the appropriate qualifications and the well-paid jobs they consequently deserve.
Instead we should admit that society is unfair, that there will always be people at the bottom of the heap, perhaps even those who are smart enough not to deserve to be there, but end up there through no fault of their own. And we should ensure that everyone can live with dignity, with a decent standard of living, free from the fear of poverty. And we should acknowledge that the people at the top of the heap might be there now because of who their parents were than their own merits, and so they don't deserve limitless riches, but owe society a debt of gratitude for their good fortune.
Then, once free of the impossible obsession of creating an equal competition of meritocracy between children from unequal backgrounds, we can concentrate on doing our best to allow everyone to do their best - and if the wealthy buy their children an advantage it matters less because the consequences are less.
I do not want to ban private schools, I want to make state schools a lot better, give them tonnes more funding. That is the right way to solve this problem.
Another piece of incredible bullshit from the Ofqual explanation of their methodology, which explains the motivation behind this year’s fiasco: ... The maintenance of standards is fundamental to the role of Ofqual, as articulated in our statutory objectives. It is crucial for ensuring fairness to students – both in terms of students taking qualifications with different exam boards in the same year, and students taking the same qualifications over time. This year is no different to any other in this regard...
The idea that, in designing a standardisation algorithm, it should be a priority for this year’s results to be consistent with prior years, is unjustifiable. There was always going to be an asterisk against these results anyway, given that they are estimates. It was pretty obvious that priority ought to have been fairness within the year. The claim that this year “is no different to any other in this regard” is plainly absurd.
And as previously posted, the algorithm has not achieved that -- at least not at the level of individual subjects -- and the aim was chimeric anyway because historically there has long been wide variation.
Of course; it is a flawed measure in any event. But for inter-year fairness to have been prioritised in designing the algorithm, when this year was clearly going to be a historical anomaly, was entirely unnecessary. It introduced an extra set of randomness, not related to any individual student’s performance, without any real justification.
Mmm. Exceptional grade inflation in this exceptional year deemed a greater evil than thousands of (mainly) state school kids receiving grades lower than they could reasonably have hoped for if they had been able to sit the exams. This is the value judgment made and I'm not sure about it at all.
Next year's pupils will be exceptional as well - they've had their education disrupted not just their exams.
So why should they be treated differently to the 2020 pupils ?
If you accept massive grade inflation in 2020 then it has to be accepted for future years as well.
No it doesn't. 2020 is forever asterisked. It's a value judgement and I think I'd make it differently. I'd live with anomalous overall marks for the pandemic year in order to minimize the individual injustices to individual kids in the pandemic year.
The issue is that teachers systematically overestimate results from year to year
I wouldn't put it that way. They look at each child and estimate the best grade that they can reasonably hope to achieve based on the info and perception they have. Of course in aggregate that will constitute an overestimate as compared to real results in real exams.
As for grade inflation in general, the only way to stop that is to award results in a purely relative way. The top 10% in the country get As, the next 25% Bs etc. I'm quite attracted to that idea myself although I know there are downsides.
I’d give a relative and absolute grade
Eg A72 (72% score top 10%) vs B67% (67% score, 10-20% decile)
Plus of course voluntarily paying for education reduces the drain on the state educational budget.
Private education drains the state educational system of the most valuable resource: Teachers.
Not at all. Supply and demand means that improving demand ultimately improves supply too.
This argument only works if there is a flexible supply and demand system in place. The supply of teachers is not at all a flexible system. Similar with doctors.
Another piece of incredible bullshit from the Ofqual explanation of their methodology, which explains the motivation behind this year’s fiasco: ... The maintenance of standards is fundamental to the role of Ofqual, as articulated in our statutory objectives. It is crucial for ensuring fairness to students – both in terms of students taking qualifications with different exam boards in the same year, and students taking the same qualifications over time. This year is no different to any other in this regard...
The idea that, in designing a standardisation algorithm, it should be a priority for this year’s results to be consistent with prior years, is unjustifiable. There was always going to be an asterisk against these results anyway, given that they are estimates. It was pretty obvious that priority ought to have been fairness within the year. The claim that this year “is no different to any other in this regard” is plainly absurd.
And as previously posted, the algorithm has not achieved that -- at least not at the level of individual subjects -- and the aim was chimeric anyway because historically there has long been wide variation.
Of course; it is a flawed measure in any event. But for inter-year fairness to have been prioritised in designing the algorithm, when this year was clearly going to be a historical anomaly, was entirely unnecessary. It introduced an extra set of randomness, not related to any individual student’s performance, without any real justification.
Mmm. Exceptional grade inflation in this exceptional year deemed a greater evil than thousands of (mainly) state school kids receiving grades lower than they could reasonably have hoped for if they had been able to sit the exams. This is the value judgment made and I'm not sure about it at all.
Next year's pupils will be exceptional as well - they've had their education disrupted not just their exams.
So why should they be treated differently to the 2020 pupils ?
If you accept massive grade inflation in 2020 then it has to be accepted for future years as well.
No it doesn't. 2020 is forever asterisked. It's a value judgement and I think I'd make it differently. I'd live with anomalous overall marks for the pandemic year in order to minimize the individual injustices to individual kids in the pandemic year.
The issue is that teachers systematically overestimate results from year to year
They do not over-estimate, they say what they think pupils should get based on the work they have done. Then some pupils do not perform as well as expected.
Statistically the aggregate predictions from teachers have been 10-12% higher than the aggregate results over the last few years.
I’m not assigning blame, simply noting that they over-estimate in the aggregate
As I noted downthread, if you have 10 exactly equally good A* candidates you would expect one of them to underperform by sheer bad luck, because everybody has bad hair days and it is much rarer to have exceptionally good hair days (and you can't do better than A* anyway). As this is a matter of sheer bad luck the teacher cannot predict who is going to undershoot, and is therefore correct in predicting A* for each of the ten. So if they are doing it right, a 10% overestimate is exactly what you should expect.
I notice Philip never actually answered why he supports Eton existing, he just went onto deflect.
Why do you support Waitrose or M & S or the Ritz hotel or Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce or Oxford and Cambridge existing either? Because the produce high quality services and products.
Same as an outstanding academy or comprehensive or grammar school compared to an inadequate or requires improvement state school
And if you have money you can avoid all of this and go to a school which will give you connections and a better chance of getting into a good Uni.
The solution to use your analogy, is to ensure that Tesco has products that are as good as those offered at Waitrose, not to ban Waitrose from selling better quality products.
If Tesco produced as good or better products than Waitrose, Waitrose customers would go to Tesco and prices would rise their accordingly and Tesco customers would then go to Waitrose whose prices would fall accordingly.
Basic market economics
If you believe in private education you dont believe in equality of opportunity.
Indisputably a true statement. The supporters of private education who I tip my hat to are those who man up and face this. Who say that, yes, it violates the principle of equal opportunities and, yes, it hampers social mobility, but that in their opinion this is a price worth paying for the things it delivers.
But such people are in my experience few and far between. Far more common is the disingenuous, issue-avoiding platitude: "I'm not a fan of private schools but they only exist because of the failures of the state system. Fix that and the problem goes away." Grrr to this. It's a shallow and/or bad faith argument.
Only the left believe that parents should not be allowed to spend their money in the way they want to. The left want everyone to be equally disadvantaged. its politics to the lowest common denominator.
No, we want a first rate system for everyone, so that everyone can flourish and real talent can rise to the top, instead of a permanent privileged class of well-spoken mediocrities like we have now.
The algorithm is the wrong answer to the wrong question, and the Government are rightly being awarded a U.
The point of university offers and A-level results in response to those offers is to appropriately and accurately differentiate between individuals in the cohort. The average ability in the cohort is only relevant as far as the level of the ability in that cohort reads across to the ability to cope with the university work (and the specific individuals difference from that average is also crucial).
The Government have trotted out a system which fails to have any plausibility in accurately differentiating individuals and instead ascribes a guess that the average won’t have appreciably changed and forces an overall result across the cohort to match that. Failing in every respect for the individuals and universities.
And now universities (who cannot offer places to all their offers) are tied in to this failed output, the administration is done, the accommodation is in train, and teenagers who “failed” to get A*AA but got AA*A (different subject order) have lost places due to not getting their exact results in exams they didn’t take and grades that didn’t reflect the results they didn’t get.
What an inextricable and total omnishambles. Utter failure.
How do you accurately differentiate between pupils when they will have had their grade predictions made differently ?
I have no idea. Possibly based on the offers made by the universities (who will have taken into account the school's historical bias and any interviews of the candidate).
However, the principles of science tell us you do not need to know the right answer to be able to identify a wrong answer. The one given was a wrong answer.
There are no right answers.
There are only various types of wrong answer.
That's what can happen when big, bad world acts nasty.
What I would say is important is that nobody is significantly and permanently damaged.
And, despite what some people are thinking, having to resit an exam (or rather sitting an exam) or doing a different uni course will not significantly and permanently damage people.
Big, bad world will have much worse things in store for people during the next fifty years.
I notice Philip never actually answered why he supports Eton existing, he just went onto deflect.
Why do you support Waitrose or M & S or the Ritz hotel or Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce or Oxford and Cambridge existing either? Because the produce high quality services and products.
Same as an outstanding academy or comprehensive or grammar school compared to an inadequate or requires improvement state school
And if you have money you can avoid all of this and go to a school which will give you connections and a better chance of getting into a good Uni.
The solution to use your analogy, is to ensure that Tesco has products that are as good as those offered at Waitrose, not to ban Waitrose from selling better quality products.
If Tesco produced as good or better products than Waitrose, Waitrose customers would go to Tesco and prices would rise their accordingly and Tesco customers would then go to Waitrose whose prices would fall accordingly.
Basic market economics
If you believe in private education you dont believe in equality of opportunity.
Indisputably a true statement. The supporters of private education who I tip my hat to are those who man up and face this. Who say that, yes, it violates the principle of equal opportunities and, yes, it hampers social mobility, but that in their opinion this is a price worth paying for the things it delivers.
But such people are in my experience few and far between. Far more common is the disingenuous, issue-avoiding platitude: "I'm not a fan of private schools but they only exist because of the failures of the state system. Fix that and the problem goes away." Grrr to this. It's a shallow and/or bad faith argument.
Only the left believe that parents should not be allowed to spend their money in the way they want to. The left want everyone to be equally disadvantaged. its politics to the lowest common denominator.
There are two things in life you should not be allowed better access to just because you can afford it, they are health and education, after that it’s up to the individual. But whilst those that can buy these privileges they will continue to maintain the total farce of claiming freedom of choice, carry on deluding yourselves it helps you sleep at night.
I'm entirely in favour of people educating themselves as much as possible and, in any case, what you desire is not possible. You cannot prevent parents with the means from buying private tuition for the children even were you to ban private schools. Nor could you prevent parents with a university education from helping their children and providing informal private tuition.
The implication of this is that we have to abandon the myth of meritocracy. We should stop pretending that we can have a society with fair competition, where the children with most merit can gain the appropriate qualifications and the well-paid jobs they consequently deserve.
Instead we should admit that society is unfair, that there will always be people at the bottom of the heap, perhaps even those who are smart enough not to deserve to be there, but end up there through no fault of their own. And we should ensure that everyone can live with dignity, with a decent standard of living, free from the fear of poverty. And we should acknowledge that the people at the top of the heap might be there now because of who their parents were than their own merits, and so they don't deserve limitless riches, but owe society a debt of gratitude for their good fortune.
Then, once free of the impossible obsession of creating an equal competition of meritocracy between children from unequal backgrounds, we can concentrate on doing our best to allow everyone to do their best - and if the wealthy buy their children an advantage it matters less because the consequences are less.
It is often forgotten that the term meritocracy was originally coined as a term of abuse.
I notice Philip never actually answered why he supports Eton existing, he just went onto deflect.
Why do you support Waitrose or M & S or the Ritz hotel or Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce or Oxford and Cambridge existing either? Because the produce high quality services and products.
Same as an outstanding academy or comprehensive or grammar school compared to an inadequate or requires improvement state school
And if you have money you can avoid all of this and go to a school which will give you connections and a better chance of getting into a good Uni.
The solution to use your analogy, is to ensure that Tesco has products that are as good as those offered at Waitrose, not to ban Waitrose from selling better quality products.
If Tesco produced as good or better products than Waitrose, Waitrose customers would go to Tesco and prices would rise their accordingly and Tesco customers would then go to Waitrose whose prices would fall accordingly.
Basic market economics
If you believe in private education you dont believe in equality of opportunity.
Indisputably a true statement. The supporters of private education who I tip my hat to are those who man up and face this. Who say that, yes, it violates the principle of equal opportunities and, yes, it hampers social mobility, but that in their opinion this is a price worth paying for the things it delivers.
But such people are in my experience few and far between. Far more common is the disingenuous, issue-avoiding platitude: "I'm not a fan of private schools but they only exist because of the failures of the state system. Fix that and the problem goes away." Grrr to this. It's a shallow and/or bad faith argument.
While on the other hand private schools are loved by many on the left.
It gives them a nice target to focus resentments on and an explanation for the failures of state education.
What people most purport to hate is so often what they are secretly dependent upon.
Oh for heaven's sake. You sound like some miserablist reactionary yogi.
A yogi ?
Wow I've never been promoted to that level
I'll point out that this mindset includes people across all levels of society and all varieties of political thought.
I do not want to ban private schools, I want to make state schools a lot better, give them tonnes more funding. That is the right way to solve this problem.
It will not work.
Teaching, like any profession, has a significant number of dead-beats and knobbers who will happily take any money and continue to be dead-beats and knobbers.
Then there is the "vanity project" issue where significant amounts of money build useless buildings that look impressive. My previous GP got a grant to build a huge atrium and waiting area but lacked treatment rooms.
My old school was rebuilt under Gordon Brown's spending splurge. The staff hate it.
I notice Philip never actually answered why he supports Eton existing, he just went onto deflect.
Why do you support Waitrose or M & S or the Ritz hotel or Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce or Oxford and Cambridge existing either? Because the produce high quality services and products.
Same as an outstanding academy or comprehensive or grammar school compared to an inadequate or requires improvement state school
And if you have money you can avoid all of this and go to a school which will give you connections and a better chance of getting into a good Uni.
The solution to use your analogy, is to ensure that Tesco has products that are as good as those offered at Waitrose, not to ban Waitrose from selling better quality products.
If Tesco produced as good or better products than Waitrose, Waitrose customers would go to Tesco and prices would rise their accordingly and Tesco customers would then go to Waitrose whose prices would fall accordingly.
Basic market economics
If you believe in private education you dont believe in equality of opportunity.
Indisputably a true statement. The supporters of private education who I tip my hat to are those who man up and face this. Who say that, yes, it violates the principle of equal opportunities and, yes, it hampers social mobility, but that in their opinion this is a price worth paying for the things it delivers.
But such people are in my experience few and far between. Far more common is the disingenuous, issue-avoiding platitude: "I'm not a fan of private schools but they only exist because of the failures of the state system. Fix that and the problem goes away." Grrr to this. It's a shallow and/or bad faith argument.
Only the left believe that parents should not be allowed to spend their money in the way they want to. The left want everyone to be equally disadvantaged. its politics to the lowest common denominator.
No, we want a first rate system for everyone, so that everyone can flourish and real talent can rise to the top, instead of a permanent privileged class of well-spoken mediocrities like we have now.
Plus of course voluntarily paying for education reduces the drain on the state educational budget.
Private education drains the state educational system of the most valuable resource: Teachers.
Not at all. Supply and demand means that improving demand ultimately improves supply too.
This argument only works if there is a flexible supply and demand system in place. The supply of teachers is not at all a flexible system. Similar with doctors.
The supply of teachers is highly flexible as huge numbers of us decide to go and do something else instead. Those who go into the independent sector would often decide to do something other than teaching if that option were taken away.
You want more teachers? Up our pay and/or reduce class sizes and contact time.
Plus of course voluntarily paying for education reduces the drain on the state educational budget.
Private education drains the state educational system of the most valuable resource: Teachers.
Not at all. Supply and demand means that improving demand ultimately improves supply too.
This argument only works if there is a flexible supply and demand system in place. The supply of teachers is not at all a flexible system. Similar with doctors.
Yes there is.
There is flexible supply of teachers? Are you a school governer - as in reality it's impossible to recruit people who are good even in the cheap north.
Look at music! And PBers will note history did worse than physics; worse in terms of sudden jumps in performance, that is.
Even beyond the current uproar that just highlights what a ridiculous mess A Level grading has become over the last 30 years. I sat A Levels myself in the early 1970s and was teaching them from the mid-1980s. Nowadays some 98% of pupils sitting the exams manage to pass - ie to obtain at least an E grade. A grades or higher have been awarded to 25% - 27% - a figure likely to have increased significantly this year due to the ongoing fiasco. Until the late 1980s a system of relative marking was used whereby A grades were restricted to the top 10% sitting the exam with a further 15% being awarded a B grade. Therefore, 75% of pupils did no better than a C grade. Moreover, 30% failed to pass the exam and were given an O Level pass - or nothing at all. In other words, 30% of pupils failed to obtain even a grade E pass - compared with just 2% in recent years. It also means that pupils awarded - say - BCC grades prior to the late 80s could not unreasonably expect AAA today!
Your're right, but it's also because A-level teaching has improved significantly since the 1970s. I agree that there has been grade inflation. But the accountability mechanisms now in place (Ofsted, performance tables etc.) have put significant pressure on sixth forms and colleges to improve the rigour and quality of A-level teaching. When I first started teaching, back in the '80s, there was no real comeback if half your students failed or left the course early - as many did.
Is it not also the case that back then the entry requirements were lower?
No.
Somebody mentioned above they'd got into Computer Science at a good uni with much lower grades than any course I applied to.
From memory my offer was BBC.
My offer to do Computer Science BSc was 2 passes. No, it was a Russell Group university.
They brought in the interviewees in groups.
My group, form asking around was predicted all As and Bs (this was the early 90s, where AAA would get you into Oxbridge). Everyone in the group got offers like this.
A friend who was in an interview group with lower predicted grades was given an offer which was in line with what you would expect from that university.
Any idea on why they did the silly low offers thing?
Because they wanted you and thought they might be competing with a 2E offer from Oxford?
I notice Philip never actually answered why he supports Eton existing, he just went onto deflect.
Why do you support Waitrose or M & S or the Ritz hotel or Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce or Oxford and Cambridge existing either? Because the produce high quality services and products.
Same as an outstanding academy or comprehensive or grammar school compared to an inadequate or requires improvement state school
And if you have money you can avoid all of this and go to a school which will give you connections and a better chance of getting into a good Uni.
The solution to use your analogy, is to ensure that Tesco has products that are as good as those offered at Waitrose, not to ban Waitrose from selling better quality products.
If Tesco produced as good or better products than Waitrose, Waitrose customers would go to Tesco and prices would rise their accordingly and Tesco customers would then go to Waitrose whose prices would fall accordingly.
Basic market economics
If you believe in private education you dont believe in equality of opportunity.
Indisputably a true statement. The supporters of private education who I tip my hat to are those who man up and face this. Who say that, yes, it violates the principle of equal opportunities and, yes, it hampers social mobility, but that in their opinion this is a price worth paying for the things it delivers.
But such people are in my experience few and far between. Far more common is the disingenuous, issue-avoiding platitude: "I'm not a fan of private schools but they only exist because of the failures of the state system. Fix that and the problem goes away." Grrr to this. It's a shallow and/or bad faith argument.
Only the left believe that parents should not be allowed to spend their money in the way they want to. The left want everyone to be equally disadvantaged. its politics to the lowest common denominator.
There are two things in life you should not be allowed better access to just because you can afford it, they are health and education, after that it’s up to the individual. But whilst those that can buy these privileges they will continue to maintain the total farce of claiming freedom of choice, carry on deluding yourselves it helps you sleep at night.
I'm entirely in favour of people educating themselves as much as possible and, in any case, what you desire is not possible. You cannot prevent parents with the means from buying private tuition for the children even were you to ban private schools. Nor could you prevent parents with a university education from helping their children and providing informal private tuition.
The implication of this is that we have to abandon the myth of meritocracy. We should stop pretending that we can have a society with fair competition, where the children with most merit can gain the appropriate qualifications and the well-paid jobs they consequently deserve.
Instead we should admit that society is unfair, that there will always be people at the bottom of the heap, perhaps even those who are smart enough not to deserve to be there, but end up there through no fault of their own. And we should ensure that everyone can live with dignity, with a decent standard of living, free from the fear of poverty. And we should acknowledge that the people at the top of the heap might be there now because of who their parents were than their own merits, and so they don't deserve limitless riches, but owe society a debt of gratitude for their good fortune.
Then, once free of the impossible obsession of creating an equal competition of meritocracy between children from unequal backgrounds, we can concentrate on doing our best to allow everyone to do their best - and if the wealthy buy their children an advantage it matters less because the consequences are less.
It is often forgotten that the term meritocracy was originally coined as a term of abuse.
Thanks, I wasnt aware of its etymological origins so was simply ignorant of it rather than having forgotten it! Very surprised the word meritocratic is only 62 years old. The concept was certainly debated in ancient Greece and China though.
I notice Philip never actually answered why he supports Eton existing, he just went onto deflect.
“State schools are a necessary evil, and we should work towards a society that has no need of them”
Discuss...
What is the implication of this, we all pay?
I am not suggesting we tomorrow get rid of Eton at all, I am just saying that in principle I oppose its existence, as I do all private schools.
The solution though - unlike the cultists on Twitter - is to make state schools better, not pull private schools down.
There are many things in life we expect people to pay for unless they really can’t afford it; basic things like food, shelter, clothing and so on.
Health costs we agree to fund centrally as a type of insurance given that the needs vary so wildly (and those with the greatest need are often those with the least ability to pay. Education is a known and predictable cost, so why is it not treated like the others? Therefore state schools ought to be abolished.
It’s not a very good argument (I’m sure you can see several holes in it) but it is no worse than the argument that we should somehow try to stop people using their resources to improve the chances of their offspring, an attempt which runs counter to millions if not billions of years of evolutionary instinct.
The counter argument is that education has very high positive externalities and therefore generates a strong return to society as a whole. Consequently the private sector will tend to under invest in education vs the optimal amount.
A-levels -- what is the kremlinology of the downgrading fiasco?
Good for Cummings and bad for the Blob, or bad for Cummings as the leading advocate of blind faith in weirdos and their algorithms?
Bad for Cummings. He claims to be largely responsible for the current incarnation of OFQUAL and the DfE (although that isn’t strictly true) and it’s the botching of his reforms that are partly to blame for the current shambles (although not wholly - cf the devolved regions).
Ultimately the blame for this fiasco will devolve on the government. They panicked and called off exams too early, then put in place a flawed replacement process, lied about what would happen, rejected expert advice warning them it wouldn’t work, failed to properly investigate their concerns instead working with an algorithm that when fed real data gave the wrong results, panicked and u-turned willy nilly when it became obvious nobody was buying their lies, and now appear to not even understand their own processes.
Meanwhile, schools did what they were told. Hard to see how that can be held against them except insofar as the orders were dumb - but many of us were pointing that out at the time.
I do not see how the exam regulators survive this. Teachers have known for years they were useless, but now everyone else knows it too. Their job is too maintain public confidence in assessments,’ and nobody with a brain has confidence in them to do that now.
Why does everyone assume the exams situation is a fiasco or a mistake? The Tories have favoured their own people (private school pupils) while fucking over their enemies (state school pupils who want to go to university - surely the group least likely to be Tories), while their new supporters in the red wall (people who think university is for pinkos) don't care. I'm sure that Cummings views it as job done. If you don't understand that the Tories' entire raison d'etre is to halt social mobility, you're just not paying attention.
Your prejudice is showing
(The Tories are pro social mobility - co-opting the most talented and driven preserves the current structure.)
It's not prejudice, it's just good to understand what I'm up against. The Tory strategy has always been to allow just enough mobility to prevent any more.
Tories support equality of opportunity not equality of outcome. Social mobility is the sine qua non of that philosophy.
It was certainly a core part of Thatcherism, probably its best part imo, but to be honest really don't see it in the modern day Tory party.
If it is a genuine priority for the Tories then they are failing as their own reports show increasing divides and declining social mobility over the last decade.
The Conservatives morphed into a party of smug haves under Cameron though there has always been that element in the party along with the social mobility supporters.
Agree it predates the Johnson era, it probably reflects modern society and the economy. Society has moved the job of parents of teenagers and young adults from equipping them for independent life, to protecting and managing them. On the economy the declining GDP growth rates mean we are more preoccupied by who gets what share of the pie, and protecting our own interests, than by growing the pie, which allows for more relative redistribution.
Latest figures show the UK is more equal than Sweden as more people in the UK own their own homes and UK homes are worth more on average
I notice Philip never actually answered why he supports Eton existing, he just went onto deflect.
Why do you support Waitrose or M & S or the Ritz hotel or Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce or Oxford and Cambridge existing either? Because the produce high quality services and products.
Same as an outstanding academy or comprehensive or grammar school compared to an inadequate or requires improvement state school
And if you have money you can avoid all of this and go to a school which will give you connections and a better chance of getting into a good Uni.
The solution to use your analogy, is to ensure that Tesco has products that are as good as those offered at Waitrose, not to ban Waitrose from selling better quality products.
If Tesco produced as good or better products than Waitrose, Waitrose customers would go to Tesco and prices would rise their accordingly and Tesco customers would then go to Waitrose whose prices would fall accordingly.
Basic market economics
If you believe in private education you dont believe in equality of opportunity.
If you believe in socialism you don't believe in private education or really the private sector full stop.
Private schools offer scholarships and most outstanding education
A token gesture to the plebs, paid for by a small portion of the tax they don't pay.
Look at music! And PBers will note history did worse than physics; worse in terms of sudden jumps in performance, that is.
Even beyond the current uproar that just highlights what a ridiculous mess A Level grading has become over the last 30 years. I sat A Levels myself in the early 1970s and was teaching them from the mid-1980s. Nowadays some 98% of pupils sitting the exams manage to pass - ie to obtain at least an E grade. A grades or higher have been awarded to 25% - 27% - a figure likely to have increased significantly this year due to the ongoing fiasco. Until the late 1980s a system of relative marking was used whereby A grades were restricted to the top 10% sitting the exam with a further 15% being awarded a B grade. Therefore, 75% of pupils did no better than a C grade. Moreover, 30% failed to pass the exam and were given an O Level pass - or nothing at all. In other words, 30% of pupils failed to obtain even a grade E pass - compared with just 2% in recent years. It also means that pupils awarded - say - BCC grades prior to the late 80s could not unreasonably expect AAA today!
Your're right, but it's also because A-level teaching has improved significantly since the 1970s. I agree that there has been grade inflation. But the accountability mechanisms now in place (Ofsted, performance tables etc.) have put significant pressure on sixth forms and colleges to improve the rigour and quality of A-level teaching. When I first started teaching, back in the '80s, there was no real comeback if half your students failed or left the course early - as many did.
Is it not also the case that back then the entry requirements were lower?
No.
Somebody mentioned above they'd got into Computer Science at a good uni with much lower grades than any course I applied to.
From memory my offer was BBC.
My offer to do Computer Science BSc was 2 passes. No, it was a Russell Group university.
They brought in the interviewees in groups.
My group, form asking around was predicted all As and Bs (this was the early 90s, where AAA would get you into Oxbridge). Everyone in the group got offers like this.
A friend who was in an interview group with lower predicted grades was given an offer which was in line with what you would expect from that university.
Any idea on why they did the silly low offers thing?
Because they wanted you and thought they might be competing with a 2E offer from Oxford?
Perhaps - but the whole thing seemed a bit childish. Also somewhat insulting to those who were given higher offers.
I notice Philip never actually answered why he supports Eton existing, he just went onto deflect.
Why do you support Waitrose or M & S or the Ritz hotel or Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce or Oxford and Cambridge existing either? Because the produce high quality services and products.
Same as an outstanding academy or comprehensive or grammar school compared to an inadequate or requires improvement state school
And if you have money you can avoid all of this and go to a school which will give you connections and a better chance of getting into a good Uni.
The solution to use your analogy, is to ensure that Tesco has products that are as good as those offered at Waitrose, not to ban Waitrose from selling better quality products.
If Tesco produced as good or better products than Waitrose, Waitrose customers would go to Tesco and prices would rise their accordingly and Tesco customers would then go to Waitrose whose prices would fall accordingly.
Basic market economics
If you believe in private education you dont believe in equality of opportunity.
That doesn’t follow.
Private education is a mode of delivery. Liberty demands that people should have the right to educate their kids how they like.
Believing in equality of opportunity means that I want state funded schools to be so good that no one chooses to educate their children privately
Another piece of incredible bullshit from the Ofqual explanation of their methodology, which explains the motivation behind this year’s fiasco: ... The maintenance of standards is fundamental to the role of Ofqual, as articulated in our statutory objectives. It is crucial for ensuring fairness to students – both in terms of students taking qualifications with different exam boards in the same year, and students taking the same qualifications over time. This year is no different to any other in this regard...
The idea that, in designing a standardisation algorithm, it should be a priority for this year’s results to be consistent with prior years, is unjustifiable. There was always going to be an asterisk against these results anyway, given that they are estimates. It was pretty obvious that priority ought to have been fairness within the year. The claim that this year “is no different to any other in this regard” is plainly absurd.
And as previously posted, the algorithm has not achieved that -- at least not at the level of individual subjects -- and the aim was chimeric anyway because historically there has long been wide variation.
Of course; it is a flawed measure in any event. But for inter-year fairness to have been prioritised in designing the algorithm, when this year was clearly going to be a historical anomaly, was entirely unnecessary. It introduced an extra set of randomness, not related to any individual student’s performance, without any real justification.
Mmm. Exceptional grade inflation in this exceptional year deemed a greater evil than thousands of (mainly) state school kids receiving grades lower than they could reasonably have hoped for if they had been able to sit the exams. This is the value judgment made and I'm not sure about it at all.
Next year's pupils will be exceptional as well - they've had their education disrupted not just their exams.
So why should they be treated differently to the 2020 pupils ?
If you accept massive grade inflation in 2020 then it has to be accepted for future years as well.
No it doesn't. 2020 is forever asterisked. It's a value judgement and I think I'd make it differently. I'd live with anomalous overall marks for the pandemic year in order to minimize the individual injustices to individual kids in the pandemic year.
The issue is that teachers systematically overestimate results from year to year
They do not over-estimate, they say what they think pupils should get based on the work they have done. Then some pupils do not perform as well as expected.
Statistically the aggregate predictions from teachers have been 10-12% higher than the aggregate results over the last few years.
I’m not assigning blame, simply noting that they over-estimate in the aggregate
I think most are aware and agree they over predict. But if they are overpredicting because the cohort have more downside risk from their expected result than upside risk then their individual expected levels could still be right.
A teacher predicting 10 students to get Bs might find its 9Bs and 1C due to illness. Which of the students getting the C is completely unknown to the teacher, even if they know that on average, one of the students will underperform.
In such a scenario, it seems fairer to award 10Bs than penalise the weakest of the B students with a grade below that which they were strong odds on to get.
I notice Philip never actually answered why he supports Eton existing, he just went onto deflect.
Why do you support Waitrose or M & S or the Ritz hotel or Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce or Oxford and Cambridge existing either? Because the produce high quality services and products.
Same as an outstanding academy or comprehensive or grammar school compared to an inadequate or requires improvement state school
And if you have money you can avoid all of this and go to a school which will give you connections and a better chance of getting into a good Uni.
The solution to use your analogy, is to ensure that Tesco has products that are as good as those offered at Waitrose, not to ban Waitrose from selling better quality products.
If Tesco produced as good or better products than Waitrose, Waitrose customers would go to Tesco and prices would rise their accordingly and Tesco customers would then go to Waitrose whose prices would fall accordingly.
Basic market economics
If you believe in private education you dont believe in equality of opportunity.
Indisputably a true statement. The supporters of private education who I tip my hat to are those who man up and face this. Who say that, yes, it violates the principle of equal opportunities and, yes, it hampers social mobility, but that in their opinion this is a price worth paying for the things it delivers.
But such people are in my experience few and far between. Far more common is the disingenuous, issue-avoiding platitude: "I'm not a fan of private schools but they only exist because of the failures of the state system. Fix that and the problem goes away." Grrr to this. It's a shallow and/or bad faith argument.
Only the left believe that parents should not be allowed to spend their money in the way they want to. The left want everyone to be equally disadvantaged. its politics to the lowest common denominator.
No, we want a first rate system for everyone, so that everyone can flourish and real talent can rise to the top, instead of a permanent privileged class of well-spoken mediocrities like we have now.
And everyone to earn at least the average income.
Which Secretary of State for Health announced that all hospitals were to have above average performance within five years?
I remember it was New Labour, but I can’t remember if it was Milburn, Reid or Hewitt. I’ve got a feeling it was Reid.
Another piece of incredible bullshit from the Ofqual explanation of their methodology, which explains the motivation behind this year’s fiasco: ... The maintenance of standards is fundamental to the role of Ofqual, as articulated in our statutory objectives. It is crucial for ensuring fairness to students – both in terms of students taking qualifications with different exam boards in the same year, and students taking the same qualifications over time. This year is no different to any other in this regard...
The idea that, in designing a standardisation algorithm, it should be a priority for this year’s results to be consistent with prior years, is unjustifiable. There was always going to be an asterisk against these results anyway, given that they are estimates. It was pretty obvious that priority ought to have been fairness within the year. The claim that this year “is no different to any other in this regard” is plainly absurd.
And as previously posted, the algorithm has not achieved that -- at least not at the level of individual subjects -- and the aim was chimeric anyway because historically there has long been wide variation.
Of course; it is a flawed measure in any event. But for inter-year fairness to have been prioritised in designing the algorithm, when this year was clearly going to be a historical anomaly, was entirely unnecessary. It introduced an extra set of randomness, not related to any individual student’s performance, without any real justification.
Mmm. Exceptional grade inflation in this exceptional year deemed a greater evil than thousands of (mainly) state school kids receiving grades lower than they could reasonably have hoped for if they had been able to sit the exams. This is the value judgment made and I'm not sure about it at all.
Next year's pupils will be exceptional as well - they've had their education disrupted not just their exams.
So why should they be treated differently to the 2020 pupils ?
If you accept massive grade inflation in 2020 then it has to be accepted for future years as well.
No it doesn't. 2020 is forever asterisked. It's a value judgement and I think I'd make it differently. I'd live with anomalous overall marks for the pandemic year in order to minimize the individual injustices to individual kids in the pandemic year.
The issue is that teachers systematically overestimate results from year to year
They do not over-estimate, they say what they think pupils should get based on the work they have done. Then some pupils do not perform as well as expected.
Statistically the aggregate predictions from teachers have been 10-12% higher than the aggregate results over the last few years.
I’m not assigning blame, simply noting that they over-estimate in the aggregate
As I noted downthread, if you have 10 exactly equally good A* candidates you would expect one of them to underperform by sheer bad luck, because everybody has bad hair days and it is much rarer to have exceptionally good hair days (and you can't do better than A* anyway). As this is a matter of sheer bad luck the teacher cannot predict who is going to undershoot, and is therefore correct in predicting A* for each of the ten. So if they are doing it right, a 10% overestimate is exactly what you should expect.
Except that government did not, I think, accept the possibility of equally good ? I believe they asked for teachers to provide rank orders without the possibility of ranking two or more students as equal.
Plus of course voluntarily paying for education reduces the drain on the state educational budget.
Private education drains the state educational system of the most valuable resource: Teachers.
Not at all. Supply and demand means that improving demand ultimately improves supply too.
This argument only works if there is a flexible supply and demand system in place. The supply of teachers is not at all a flexible system. Similar with doctors.
Yes there is.
There is flexible supply of teachers? Are you a school governer - as in reality it's impossible to recruit people who are good even in the cheap north.
It is flexible, but on the down side: teachers can (and all too often do) decide to go off and do something else.
I notice Philip never actually answered why he supports Eton existing, he just went onto deflect.
Why do you support Waitrose or M & S or the Ritz hotel or Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce or Oxford and Cambridge existing either? Because the produce high quality services and products.
Same as an outstanding academy or comprehensive or grammar school compared to an inadequate or requires improvement state school
And if you have money you can avoid all of this and go to a school which will give you connections and a better chance of getting into a good Uni.
The solution to use your analogy, is to ensure that Tesco has products that are as good as those offered at Waitrose, not to ban Waitrose from selling better quality products.
If Tesco produced as good or better products than Waitrose, Waitrose customers would go to Tesco and prices would rise their accordingly and Tesco customers would then go to Waitrose whose prices would fall accordingly.
Basic market economics
If you believe in private education you dont believe in equality of opportunity.
That doesn’t follow.
Private education is a mode of delivery. Liberty demands that people should have the right to educate their kids how they like.
Believing in equality of opportunity means that I want state funded schools to be so good that no one chooses to educate their children privately
Do you want it enough to propose raising taxes to equalise per pupil funding in the state and private sector?
I do not want to ban private schools, I want to make state schools a lot better, give them tonnes more funding. That is the right way to solve this problem.
It will not work.
Teaching, like any profession, has a significant number of dead-beats and knobbers who will happily take any money and continue to be dead-beats and knobbers.
Then there is the "vanity project" issue where significant amounts of money build useless buildings that look impressive. My previous GP got a grant to build a huge atrium and waiting area but lacked treatment rooms.
My old school was rebuilt under Gordon Brown's spending splurge. The staff hate it.
There was a rumour for many years that one school in Gloucestershire had been rebuilt with L-shaped classrooms.
My niece now goes there and confirms that the classrooms are rectangular.
But given all the other massive cockups under BSF everyone believed it.
I notice Philip never actually answered why he supports Eton existing, he just went onto deflect.
Why do you support Waitrose or M & S or the Ritz hotel or Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce or Oxford and Cambridge existing either? Because the produce high quality services and products.
Same as an outstanding academy or comprehensive or grammar school compared to an inadequate or requires improvement state school
And if you have money you can avoid all of this and go to a school which will give you connections and a better chance of getting into a good Uni.
The solution to use your analogy, is to ensure that Tesco has products that are as good as those offered at Waitrose, not to ban Waitrose from selling better quality products.
If Tesco produced as good or better products than Waitrose, Waitrose customers would go to Tesco and prices would rise their accordingly and Tesco customers would then go to Waitrose whose prices would fall accordingly.
Basic market economics
If you believe in private education you dont believe in equality of opportunity.
Indisputably a true statement. The supporters of private education who I tip my hat to are those who man up and face this. Who say that, yes, it violates the principle of equal opportunities and, yes, it hampers social mobility, but that in their opinion this is a price worth paying for the things it delivers.
But such people are in my experience few and far between. Far more common is the disingenuous, issue-avoiding platitude: "I'm not a fan of private schools but they only exist because of the failures of the state system. Fix that and the problem goes away." Grrr to this. It's a shallow and/or bad faith argument.
While on the other hand private schools are loved by many on the left.
It gives them a nice target to focus resentments on and an explanation for the failures of state education.
What people most purport to hate is so often what they are secretly dependent upon.
Oh for heaven's sake. You sound like some miserablist reactionary yogi.
Though it does raise the question of what he thinks himself dependent upon.
I notice Philip never actually answered why he supports Eton existing, he just went onto deflect.
Why do you support Waitrose or M & S or the Ritz hotel or Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce or Oxford and Cambridge existing either? Because the produce high quality services and products.
Same as an outstanding academy or comprehensive or grammar school compared to an inadequate or requires improvement state school
And if you have money you can avoid all of this and go to a school which will give you connections and a better chance of getting into a good Uni.
The solution to use your analogy, is to ensure that Tesco has products that are as good as those offered at Waitrose, not to ban Waitrose from selling better quality products.
If Tesco produced as good or better products than Waitrose, Waitrose customers would go to Tesco and prices would rise their accordingly and Tesco customers would then go to Waitrose whose prices would fall accordingly.
Basic market economics
If you believe in private education you dont believe in equality of opportunity.
Indisputably a true statement. The supporters of private education who I tip my hat to are those who man up and face this. Who say that, yes, it violates the principle of equal opportunities and, yes, it hampers social mobility, but that in their opinion this is a price worth paying for the things it delivers.
But such people are in my experience few and far between. Far more common is the disingenuous, issue-avoiding platitude: "I'm not a fan of private schools but they only exist because of the failures of the state system. Fix that and the problem goes away." Grrr to this. It's a shallow and/or bad faith argument.
Only the left believe that parents should not be allowed to spend their money in the way they want to. The left want everyone to be equally disadvantaged. its politics to the lowest common denominator.
No, we want a first rate system for everyone, so that everyone can flourish and real talent can rise to the top, instead of a permanent privileged class of well-spoken mediocrities like we have now.
And everyone to earn at least the average income.
That would be a really clever comment if I had said everyone should get above average grades at school. Since I didn't, it just looks like an ill-informed non-sequitur. Still, the usual PB Tory fanboys have given you a couple of likes, it's amazing how you people have an instinct for the mutual protection of your privileges.
Trouble is, if he goes for presiding over a sh*tshow, it rather exposes most of the others.
Exactly.
If a Cabinet Minister can get the sack, where will it end?
Even SPADs might be considered expendable...
Isabel Hardman in today’s Guardian/Observer - worth a read about the growing realisation among Tories that their government is f***ing this up bigtime.
Plus of course voluntarily paying for education reduces the drain on the state educational budget.
Private education drains the state educational system of the most valuable resource: Teachers.
Not at all. Supply and demand means that improving demand ultimately improves supply too.
This argument only works if there is a flexible supply and demand system in place. The supply of teachers is not at all a flexible system. Similar with doctors.
Yes there is.
There is flexible supply of teachers? Are you a school governer - as in reality it's impossible to recruit people who are good even in the cheap north.
It is flexible, but on the down side: teachers can (and all too often do) decide to go off and do something else.
Philip believes the supply of teachers is a perfect market, there are endless Pro le queuing up to do the job.
That just isn't y he case, as with Politics there are far easier ways to earn the same money.
Isabel Hardman in today’s Guardian/Observer - worth a read about the growing realisation among Tories that their government is f***ing this up bigtime.
I don't think that was ever in doubt.
The question remains whether Cummings will accept any hint of a climbdown.
I notice Philip never actually answered why he supports Eton existing, he just went onto deflect.
Why do you support Waitrose or M & S or the Ritz hotel or Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce or Oxford and Cambridge existing either? Because the produce high quality services and products.
Same as an outstanding academy or comprehensive or grammar school compared to an inadequate or requires improvement state school
And if you have money you can avoid all of this and go to a school which will give you connections and a better chance of getting into a good Uni.
The solution to use your analogy, is to ensure that Tesco has products that are as good as those offered at Waitrose, not to ban Waitrose from selling better quality products.
If Tesco produced as good or better products than Waitrose, Waitrose customers would go to Tesco and prices would rise their accordingly and Tesco customers would then go to Waitrose whose prices would fall accordingly.
Basic market economics
If you believe in private education you dont believe in equality of opportunity.
Indisputably a true statement. The supporters of private education who I tip my hat to are those who man up and face this. Who say that, yes, it violates the principle of equal opportunities and, yes, it hampers social mobility, but that in their opinion this is a price worth paying for the things it delivers.
But such people are in my experience few and far between. Far more common is the disingenuous, issue-avoiding platitude: "I'm not a fan of private schools but they only exist because of the failures of the state system. Fix that and the problem goes away." Grrr to this. It's a shallow and/or bad faith argument.
Only the left believe that parents should not be allowed to spend their money in the way they want to. The left want everyone to be equally disadvantaged. its politics to the lowest common denominator.
No, we want a first rate system for everyone, so that everyone can flourish and real talent can rise to the top, instead of a permanent privileged class of well-spoken mediocrities like we have now.
And everyone to earn at least the average income.
Which Secretary of State for Health announced that all hospitals were to have above average performance within five years?
I remember it was New Labour, but I can’t remember if it was Milburn, Reid or Hewitt. I’ve got a feeling it was Reid.
Trouble is, if he goes for presiding over a sh*tshow, it rather exposes most of the others.
Exactly.
If a Cabinet Minister can get the sack, where will it end?
Even SPADs might be considered expendable...
Isabel Hardman in today’s Guardian/Observer - worth a read about the growing realisation among Tories that their government is f***ing this up bigtime.
My occasional reminder that I predict this government will be plumbing the depths in polling by next summer.
I notice Philip never actually answered why he supports Eton existing, he just went onto deflect.
Why do you support Waitrose or M & S or the Ritz hotel or Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce or Oxford and Cambridge existing either? Because the produce high quality services and products.
Same as an outstanding academy or comprehensive or grammar school compared to an inadequate or requires improvement state school
And if you have money you can avoid all of this and go to a school which will give you connections and a better chance of getting into a good Uni.
The solution to use your analogy, is to ensure that Tesco has products that are as good as those offered at Waitrose, not to ban Waitrose from selling better quality products.
If Tesco produced as good or better products than Waitrose, Waitrose customers would go to Tesco and prices would rise their accordingly and Tesco customers would then go to Waitrose whose prices would fall accordingly.
Basic market economics
If you believe in private education you dont believe in equality of opportunity.
Indisputably a true statement. The supporters of private education who I tip my hat to are those who man up and face this. Who say that, yes, it violates the principle of equal opportunities and, yes, it hampers social mobility, but that in their opinion this is a price worth paying for the things it delivers.
But such people are in my experience few and far between. Far more common is the disingenuous, issue-avoiding platitude: "I'm not a fan of private schools but they only exist because of the failures of the state system. Fix that and the problem goes away." Grrr to this. It's a shallow and/or bad faith argument.
Only the left believe that parents should not be allowed to spend their money in the way they want to. The left want everyone to be equally disadvantaged. its politics to the lowest common denominator.
No, we want a first rate system for everyone, so that everyone can flourish and real talent can rise to the top, instead of a permanent privileged class of well-spoken mediocrities like we have now.
And everyone to earn at least the average income.
Which Secretary of State for Health announced that all hospitals were to have above average performance within five years?
I remember it was New Labour, but I can’t remember if it was Milburn, Reid or Hewitt. I’ve got a feeling it was Reid.
I notice Philip never actually answered why he supports Eton existing, he just went onto deflect.
Why do you support Waitrose or M & S or the Ritz hotel or Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce or Oxford and Cambridge existing either? Because the produce high quality services and products.
Same as an outstanding academy or comprehensive or grammar school compared to an inadequate or requires improvement state school
And if you have money you can avoid all of this and go to a school which will give you connections and a better chance of getting into a good Uni.
The solution to use your analogy, is to ensure that Tesco has products that are as good as those offered at Waitrose, not to ban Waitrose from selling better quality products.
If Tesco produced as good or better products than Waitrose, Waitrose customers would go to Tesco and prices would rise their accordingly and Tesco customers would then go to Waitrose whose prices would fall accordingly.
Basic market economics
If you believe in private education you dont believe in equality of opportunity.
That doesn’t follow.
Private education is a mode of delivery. Liberty demands that people should have the right to educate their kids how they like.
Believing in equality of opportunity means that I want state funded schools to be so good that no one chooses to educate their children privately
But what are you willing to do about it, many years as a school governor we’re spent trying each year to cope with the resources allocated very often under funded. This was 80s through to 95 so no idea what it’s like these days. All we seem to get is the reannouncement of the same £50 (For example) million extra money Time after time just repackaged. As for the farce of exam results and probably schools reopening, how long have they had to sort it? The planning should have started when they realized what was going to happen given there were no contingency plans.
Look at music! And PBers will note history did worse than physics; worse in terms of sudden jumps in performance, that is.
Even beyond the current uproar that just highlights what a ridiculous mess A Level grading has become over the last 30 years. I sat A Levels myself in the early 1970s and was teaching them from the mid-1980s. Nowadays some 98% of pupils sitting the exams manage to pass - ie to obtain at least an E grade. A grades or higher have been awarded to 25% - 27% - a figure likely to have increased significantly this year due to the ongoing fiasco. Until the late 1980s a system of relative marking was used whereby A grades were restricted to the top 10% sitting the exam with a further 15% being awarded a B grade. Therefore, 75% of pupils did no better than a C grade. Moreover, 30% failed to pass the exam and were given an O Level pass - or nothing at all. In other words, 30% of pupils failed to obtain even a grade E pass - compared with just 2% in recent years. It also means that pupils awarded - say - BCC grades prior to the late 80s could not unreasonably expect AAA today!
Your're right, but it's also because A-level teaching has improved significantly since the 1970s. I agree that there has been grade inflation. But the accountability mechanisms now in place (Ofsted, performance tables etc.) have put significant pressure on sixth forms and colleges to improve the rigour and quality of A-level teaching. When I first started teaching, back in the '80s, there was no real comeback if half your students failed or left the course early - as many did.
Is it not also the case that back then the entry requirements were lower?
No.
Somebody mentioned above they'd got into Computer Science at a good uni with much lower grades than any course I applied to.
From memory my offer was BBC.
My offer to do Computer Science BSc was 2 passes. No, it was a Russell Group university.
They brought in the interviewees in groups.
My group, form asking around was predicted all As and Bs (this was the early 90s, where AAA would get you into Oxbridge). Everyone in the group got offers like this.
A friend who was in an interview group with lower predicted grades was given an offer which was in line with what you would expect from that university.
Any idea on why they did the silly low offers thing?
Because they wanted you and thought they might be competing with a 2E offer from Oxford?
Perhaps - but the whole thing seemed a bit childish. Also somewhat insulting to those who were given higher offers.
It’s about making sure that the ones you want put you down as first choice and having as accurate as possible a picture of how many candidates you will accept.
Switching to a post-A-level method for applying to university would eliminate much of this type of behaviour.
Trouble is, if he goes for presiding over a sh*tshow, it rather exposes most of the others.
Exactly.
If a Cabinet Minister can get the sack, where will it end?
Even SPADs might be considered expendable...
Isabel Hardman in today’s Guardian/Observer - worth a read about the growing realisation among Tories that their government is f***ing this up bigtime.
My occasional reminder that I predict this government will be plumbing the depths in polling by next summer.
Trouble is, if he goes for presiding over a sh*tshow, it rather exposes most of the others.
Exactly.
If a Cabinet Minister can get the sack, where will it end?
Even SPADs might be considered expendable...
Isabel Hardman in today’s Guardian/Observer - worth a read about the growing realisation among Tories that their government is f***ing this up bigtime.
My occasional reminder that I predict this government will be plumbing the depths in polling by next summer.
But why not now.
It amazes me that HMG polling has not collapsed
Though on exams the Scottish Government have debased their whole system for popularity but both the English and Welsh governments are in chaos not knowing how to find a fair and sensible way through and definitely not helped by the ridiculous Gavin Williamson
I notice Philip never actually answered why he supports Eton existing, he just went onto deflect.
Why do you support Waitrose or M & S or the Ritz hotel or Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce or Oxford and Cambridge existing either? Because the produce high quality services and products.
Same as an outstanding academy or comprehensive or grammar school compared to an inadequate or requires improvement state school
And if you have money you can avoid all of this and go to a school which will give you connections and a better chance of getting into a good Uni.
The solution to use your analogy, is to ensure that Tesco has products that are as good as those offered at Waitrose, not to ban Waitrose from selling better quality products.
If Tesco produced as good or better products than Waitrose, Waitrose customers would go to Tesco and prices would rise their accordingly and Tesco customers would then go to Waitrose whose prices would fall accordingly.
Basic market economics
If you believe in private education you dont believe in equality of opportunity.
Indisputably a true statement. The supporters of private education who I tip my hat to are those who man up and face this. Who say that, yes, it violates the principle of equal opportunities and, yes, it hampers social mobility, but that in their opinion this is a price worth paying for the things it delivers.
But such people are in my experience few and far between. Far more common is the disingenuous, issue-avoiding platitude: "I'm not a fan of private schools but they only exist because of the failures of the state system. Fix that and the problem goes away." Grrr to this. It's a shallow and/or bad faith argument.
Only the left believe that parents should not be allowed to spend their money in the way they want to. The left want everyone to be equally disadvantaged. its politics to the lowest common denominator.
No, we want a first rate system for everyone, so that everyone can flourish and real talent can rise to the top, instead of a permanent privileged class of well-spoken mediocrities like we have now.
And everyone to earn at least the average income.
Which Secretary of State for Health announced that all hospitals were to have above average performance within five years?
I remember it was New Labour, but I can’t remember if it was Milburn, Reid or Hewitt. I’ve got a feeling it was Reid.
Trouble is, if he goes for presiding over a sh*tshow, it rather exposes most of the others.
Exactly.
If a Cabinet Minister can get the sack, where will it end?
Even SPADs might be considered expendable...
Isabel Hardman in today’s Guardian/Observer - worth a read about the growing realisation among Tories that their government is f***ing this up bigtime.
My occasional reminder that I predict this government will be plumbing the depths in polling by next summer.
But why not now.
It amazes me that HMG polling has not collapsed
Though on exams the Scottish Government have debased their whole system for popularity but both the English and Welsh governments are in chaos not knowing how to find a fair and sensible way through and definitely not helped by the ridiculous Gavin Williamson
I think you`re missing the pulse of the public on this. You are hearing the cries of those affected but I`d wager that the majority are on the side of maintaining consistent standards across years (i.e. avoiding grade inflation). This populist government knows this and while I think a U Turn is possible I haven`t quite got to the point that I think it`s likely.
I notice Philip never actually answered why he supports Eton existing, he just went onto deflect.
Why do you support Waitrose or M & S or the Ritz hotel or Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce or Oxford and Cambridge existing either? Because the produce high quality services and products.
Same as an outstanding academy or comprehensive or grammar school compared to an inadequate or requires improvement state school
And if you have money you can avoid all of this and go to a school which will give you connections and a better chance of getting into a good Uni.
The solution to use your analogy, is to ensure that Tesco has products that are as good as those offered at Waitrose, not to ban Waitrose from selling better quality products.
If Tesco produced as good or better products than Waitrose, Waitrose customers would go to Tesco and prices would rise their accordingly and Tesco customers would then go to Waitrose whose prices would fall accordingly.
Basic market economics
If you believe in private education you dont believe in equality of opportunity.
Indisputably a true statement. The supporters of private education who I tip my hat to are those who man up and face this. Who say that, yes, it violates the principle of equal opportunities and, yes, it hampers social mobility, but that in their opinion this is a price worth paying for the things it delivers.
But such people are in my experience few and far between. Far more common is the disingenuous, issue-avoiding platitude: "I'm not a fan of private schools but they only exist because of the failures of the state system. Fix that and the problem goes away." Grrr to this. It's a shallow and/or bad faith argument.
Only the left believe that parents should not be allowed to spend their money in the way they want to. The left want everyone to be equally disadvantaged. its politics to the lowest common denominator.
No, we want a first rate system for everyone, so that everyone can flourish and real talent can rise to the top, instead of a permanent privileged class of well-spoken mediocrities like we have now.
And everyone to earn at least the average income.
Which Secretary of State for Health announced that all hospitals were to have above average performance within five years?
I remember it was New Labour, but I can’t remember if it was Milburn, Reid or Hewitt. I’ve got a feeling it was Reid.
That will be because five or less pupils in a subject cohort = centre assessed grades (i.e. the inflated ones).
Well, quite. Ofqual acknowledged their algorithm would be even more shit if applied to small cohorts, so didn’t use it, but was quite happy with the blatant inconsistency, as it didn’t eff up the overall figures too much.
Trouble is, if he goes for presiding over a sh*tshow, it rather exposes most of the others.
Exactly.
If a Cabinet Minister can get the sack, where will it end?
Even SPADs might be considered expendable...
Isabel Hardman in today’s Guardian/Observer - worth a read about the growing realisation among Tories that their government is f***ing this up bigtime.
My occasional reminder that I predict this government will be plumbing the depths in polling by next summer.
But why not now.
It amazes me that HMG polling has not collapsed
Though on exams the Scottish Government have debased their whole system for popularity but both the English and Welsh governments are in chaos not knowing how to find a fair and sensible way through and definitely not helped by the ridiculous Gavin Williamson
I think your missing the pulse of the public on this. You are hearing the cries of those affected but I`d wager that the majority are on the side of maintaining consistent standards across years (i.e. avoiding grade inflation). This populist government knows this and while I think a U Turn is possible I haven`t quite got to the point that I think it`s likely.
You may well be right
I just do not see how Starmer calling to debase the system, as in Scotland, is responsible
I would say it will not be forgotten that 2020 exam results were in the pandemic when students did not take actual exams, and that this must not be allowed ever to happen again
Comments
The spend per pupil, once you drop the olympic size swimming pools etc is surprisingly low on the actual education bit, relative to state spend.
The success of some of the Free Schools, with quite "bog standard" intake is further evidence.
Many are open-source.
It gives them a nice target to focus resentments on and an explanation for the failures of state education.
What people most purport to hate is so often what they are secretly dependent upon.
However, the principles of science tell us you do not need to know the right answer to be able to identify a wrong answer. The one given was a wrong answer.
These are what you want -
https://www.ons.gov.uk/visualisations/dvc942/prevalence/index.html
https://www.ons.gov.uk/visualisations/dvc942/region/index.html
I’m not assigning blame, simply noting that they over-estimate in the aggregate
Or aim to ensure that anyone who likely would have got into university does so. If this means a bunch of students getting to a university when normally they wouldn't: we accept they lucked out. The eventual Scottish system. It does depend on extra places being made available.
I think the original mistake of trying to replicate a normal year was in the "seemed like a good idea at the time" category. However Ofqual and the English government compounded the error in three ways: the algorithm that muddied the waters further; attempting to stick to the original principle when it was clear it wouldn't work; making up random policy on the hoof as the horror of the previous mistakes becomes clear.
Admitting that you hacked the server to the person owning it may not be the wisest move ...
The implication of this is that we have to abandon the myth of meritocracy. We should stop pretending that we can have a society with fair competition, where the children with most merit can gain the appropriate qualifications and the well-paid jobs they consequently deserve.
Instead we should admit that society is unfair, that there will always be people at the bottom of the heap, perhaps even those who are smart enough not to deserve to be there, but end up there through no fault of their own. And we should ensure that everyone can live with dignity, with a decent standard of living, free from the fear of poverty. And we should acknowledge that the people at the top of the heap might be there now because of who their parents were than their own merits, and so they don't deserve limitless riches, but owe society a debt of gratitude for their good fortune.
Then, once free of the impossible obsession of creating an equal competition of meritocracy between children from unequal backgrounds, we can concentrate on doing our best to allow everyone to do their best - and if the wealthy buy their children an advantage it matters less because the consequences are less.
Eg A72 (72% score top 10%) vs B67% (67% score, 10-20% decile)
There are only various types of wrong answer.
That's what can happen when big, bad world acts nasty.
What I would say is important is that nobody is significantly and permanently damaged.
And, despite what some people are thinking, having to resit an exam (or rather sitting an exam) or doing a different uni course will not significantly and permanently damage people.
Big, bad world will have much worse things in store for people during the next fifty years.
https://twitter.com/franakviacorka/status/1294974663697870849
Wow I've never been promoted to that level
I'll point out that this mindset includes people across all levels of society and all varieties of political thought.
Teaching, like any profession, has a significant number of dead-beats and knobbers who will happily take any money and continue to be dead-beats and knobbers.
Then there is the "vanity project" issue where significant amounts of money build useless buildings that look impressive. My previous GP got a grant to build a huge atrium and waiting area but lacked treatment rooms.
My old school was rebuilt under Gordon Brown's spending splurge. The staff hate it.
If a Cabinet Minister can get the sack, where will it end?
Even SPADs might be considered expendable...
You want more teachers? Up our pay and/or reduce class sizes and contact time.
Private education is a mode of delivery. Liberty demands that people should have the right to educate their kids how they like.
Believing in equality of opportunity means that I want state funded schools to be so good that no one chooses to educate their children privately
A teacher predicting 10 students to get Bs might find its 9Bs and 1C due to illness. Which of the students getting the C is completely unknown to the teacher, even if they know that on average, one of the students will underperform.
In such a scenario, it seems fairer to award 10Bs than penalise the weakest of the B students with a grade below that which they were strong odds on to get.
I remember it was New Labour, but I can’t remember if it was Milburn, Reid or Hewitt. I’ve got a feeling it was Reid.
I believe they asked for teachers to provide rank orders without the possibility of ranking two or more students as equal.
My niece now goes there and confirms that the classrooms are rectangular.
But given all the other massive cockups under BSF everyone believed it.
https://twitter.com/rcolvile/status/1294966172312645632
That just isn't y he case, as with Politics there are far easier ways to earn the same money.
You could just about make an argument for an L-shaped classroom, as long as the teacher was at the apex.
They could see the whole class. The whole class could see them. Potentially the students would have less opportunity to be distracted by each other...
The question remains whether Cummings will accept any hint of a climbdown.
History suggests not.
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmeduc/uc1786-i/uc178601.htm
But we don’t.
That might be what I was thinking of, but I’m fairly sure there was a NuLab one on hospitals too.
Switching to a post-A-level method for applying to university would eliminate much of this type of behaviour.
It amazes me that HMG polling has not collapsed
Though on exams the Scottish Government have debased their whole system for popularity but both the English and Welsh governments are in chaos not knowing how to find a fair and sensible way through and definitely not helped by the ridiculous Gavin Williamson
ps who's Keir Starmer ?
We all want to show off our results book with all the nice scores and comments in it.
Ofqual acknowledged their algorithm would be even more shit if applied to small cohorts, so didn’t use it, but was quite happy with the blatant inconsistency, as it didn’t eff up the overall figures too much.
I just do not see how Starmer calling to debase the system, as in Scotland, is responsible
I would say it will not be forgotten that 2020 exam results were in the pandemic when students did not take actual exams, and that this must not be allowed ever to happen again