68% of the public don't consider people getting a result worse than they should have got as worse than people getting a result better than they should have?
alex_ said: Williamson; "problems only became apparent at the weekend".
You what???
Williamson "hopes BTECs will be Teacher assessed too".
Well why don't you ask you useless piece of Turd? These are BTECs that are now 4 days late in being released...
Some have been released - my son got worse results than predicted. I guess they're more difficult as they are continuous assessment rather than examined at the end. However, all pupils no matter which course will have been affected by the Covid-19 disruption. If 'A' and 'O' Level students are to be assessed by teachers why should BTECs be different?
In all of this government, opposition, the papers, whoever really don't have much of a guide to good policy or otherwise.
Personally I think the government is doing ok. 50/100. I think Starmer is doing ok too - in fact I'll give him some slight bonus points for not being an arse in this, but some slight negative points for his revisions of his own history. 55/100
Williamson seems to buck that trend. He's not doing ok.
68% of the public don't consider people getting a result worse than they should have got as worse than people getting a result better than they should have?
68% of the public don't consider people getting a result worse than they should have got as worse than people getting a result better than they should have?
68% of the public don't consider people getting a result worse than they should have got as worse than people getting a result better than they should have?
Makes me worry for the British public.
Well,yes they keep voting tory
New labour wouldn’t be any better.
New Labour hasn't been on offer for a while, and Labour (Old Labour) would be much worse.
68% of the public don't consider people getting a result worse than they should have got as worse than people getting a result better than they should have?
Makes me worry for the British public.
I think we'll survive this bit of softness. Both injustices are equally bad objectively IMHO, but how many people can you expect to be so single eyed? To reply to a silly question in a way which prefers a favour to descend on some young person rather than an undeserved piece of misfortune to descend on them is the kinder approach. Maybe young people deserve all the good fortune they can get at the moment.
68% of the public don't consider people getting a result worse than they should have got as worse than people getting a result better than they should have?
Makes me worry for the British public.
Well,yes they keep voting tory
New labour wouldn’t be any better.
New Labour hasn't been on offer for a while, and Labour (Old Labour) would be much worse.
Starmer is very much going down the new labour path
68% of the public don't consider people getting a result worse than they should have got as worse than people getting a result better than they should have?
Makes me worry for the British public.
Well,yes they keep voting tory
New labour wouldn’t be any better.
New Labour hasn't been on offer for a while, and Labour (Old Labour) would be much worse.
Starmer is very much going down the new labour path
Tony Blair is the only Labour leader to have won a working majority since 1966, and a majority of any type since 1974.
The government will be given a lot of slack as it is dealing with a pandemic. However if it seems that they are not in control of their core functions.Sentiments could soon change.
The government will be given a lot of slack as it is dealing with a pandemic. However if it seems that they are not in control of their core functions.Sentiments could soon change.
It comes down to the economy and keeping control of covid, and currently both seem in a better place
Seeing as its education, shouldnt the govt be learning some lessons from the mess first?
In the future after the pandemic, avoid cancelling exams.
Not sure how useful that lesson is?
Btecs, GCSEs, degree results, integrating young people into the workplace and further education , plans for next years exams, performance of key people in the process, not leaving things to the last minute, trusting more people in the process all seem relevant, and probably plenty more.
"A MAN who constantly posts his opinions on the internet does not seem to realise his spelling undermines his credibility.
Roy Hobbs thinks he is a serious commentator on issues of the day, despite using horrible misspellings like ‘probebly’, ‘interlectuals’ and ‘definately’.
Friend Emma Bradford said: “Roy hasn’t grasped that if he thinks ‘restoraunt’ is spelt like that people might realise he’s not an expert on politics, economics or any other subject."
68% of the public don't consider people getting a result worse than they should have got as worse than people getting a result better than they should have?
Makes me worry for the British public.
Well,yes they keep voting tory
New labour wouldn’t be any better.
New Labour hasn't been on offer for a while, and Labour (Old Labour) would be much worse.
Starmer is very much going down the new labour path
I don't see that he is. I think he's trying to build on the good ideas that Labour have had over the last century and gently discard the bad ideas. Mostly that's throw everything out and start again, although he'll not say that.
There had better be a good idea there somewhere. Otherwise the total wrecking of the Empire that Labour have caused would seem like a bad thing.
68% of the public don't consider people getting a result worse than they should have got as worse than people getting a result better than they should have?
Makes me worry for the British public.
Well a worry shared is a worry halved - so I'm pleased to hear it.
68% of the public don't consider people getting a result worse than they should have got as worse than people getting a result better than they should have?
Makes me worry for the British public.
Well,yes they keep voting tory
New labour wouldn’t be any better.
New Labour hasn't been on offer for a while, and Labour (Old Labour) would be much worse.
Starmer is very much going down the new labour path
Tony Blair is the only Labour leader to have won a working majority since 1966, and a majority of any type since 1974.
He had a catastrophically unpopular Conservative government to run against. Had John Smith or some other old Labour figure been the candidate in '97, he might well have won a working majority, without whoring away so many of Old Labour's principles, though we'll never know.
We broke cover this morning for a trip to Howarth. Not especially busy but the cafes were doing good trade. Half price Rishi Dishes pulling in the punters.
We were able to nab an outdoor table for tea and scones. If there had only been indoor space we would have skipped it.
68% of the public don't consider people getting a result worse than they should have got as worse than people getting a result better than they should have?
Makes me worry for the British public.
There's a sense of fair play issue for all other year groups either side of this cohort. The government has royally fucked it up, there is no doubt but this solution is also not very good.
What I don't understand is how there wasn't a school/DfE/OFQUAL feedback loop so double and triple grade reductions were reviewed well before being finalised. That's where the largest sense of injustice comes from. People getting downgraded from a B prediction to an E despite never having gotten an E before in their educational careers. We had the yearly update from my old school, usually it's about how well they have done and highlighting those who did exceptionally well and giving the old boys network an update on who will be joining the ranks. This year it was the headmaster laying into the process and how they intended to take whatever necessary measures to have the downgrades overturned (my school is in a very low income area despite being selective) because the school has, err, mechanisms in place to prevent students from scoring lower than a B which means it a few C's sneak through every year.
68% of the public don't consider people getting a result worse than they should have got as worse than people getting a result better than they should have?
Makes me worry for the British public.
Well,yes they keep voting tory
New labour wouldn’t be any better.
Labour might have been better; it might have spotted the political problem. There are two reasons to say this. First, it had better links to the teaching unions.
Exhibit B is the omnishambles budget. George Osborne made a number of minor, almost insignificant changes to remove anomalies in the tax system -- pasties, churches, other stuff I can't remember -- and got slaughtered by his own side. It later transpired these were all things on the Treasury wishlist that Labour had rejected as being politically toxic for no real gain.
So it is quite possible Labour would itself have spotted the problem of algorithmically downgrading or outright failing (by changing grades to U) students, and also they'd have been more responsive to teachers' concerns or at least sought their reactions, increasing the number of eyeballs on the proposals.
68% of the public don't consider people getting a result worse than they should have got as worse than people getting a result better than they should have?
Makes me worry for the British public.
Well,yes they keep voting tory
New labour wouldn’t be any better.
Labour might have been better; it might have spotted the political problem. There are two reasons to say this. First, it had better links to the teaching unions.
Exhibit B is the omnishambles budget. George Osborne made a number of minor, almost insignificant changes to remove anomalies in the tax system -- pasties, churches, other stuff I can't remember -- and got slaughtered by his own side. It later transpired these were all things on the Treasury wishlist that Labour had rejected as being politically toxic for no real gain.
So it is quite possible Labour would itself have spotted the problem of algorithmically downgrading or outright failing (by changing grades to U) students, and also they'd have been more responsive to teachers' concerns or at least sought their reactions, increasing the number of eyeballs on the proposals.
Considering Labour are in government [in Wales] why didn't they spot it then?
Labour aren't just a party of opposition they're also a party of government and they let this happen too.
68% of the public don't consider people getting a result worse than they should have got as worse than people getting a result better than they should have?
Makes me worry for the British public.
Well,yes they keep voting tory
New labour wouldn’t be any better.
New Labour hasn't been on offer for a while, and Labour (Old Labour) would be much worse.
Starmer is very much going down the new labour path
Tony Blair is the only Labour leader to have won a working majority since 1966, and a majority of any type since 1974.
New Labour seemed competent during 97 to 01, even during the fuel protests and foot and mouth in comparison to the opposition of the time. On reflection the voting public thought the conservatives were wrong in supporting farmers hauliers nearly bringing the country to a standstill, and voted accordingly in 01.
Interesting to note that our gym just ticked back up above the number of members we had in March pre-Corona - having fallen by about 20% during lockdown.
Smallish Crossfit Gym in a big facility, and I think the thing that did it was the excellent communication from coaches during lockdown plus a very careful build back with careful rules.
I think that big membership gyms will suffer because they may lose a lot of their zombie members.
Great news. This is the sort of thing that really needs to be dealt with. I live on a road with no driveway and no reserved spaces and the car is parked kerbside. Without a kerbside solution getting an electric car really isn't viable.
68% of the public don't consider people getting a result worse than they should have got as worse than people getting a result better than they should have?
Makes me worry for the British public.
There's a sense of fair play issue for all other year groups either side of this cohort. The government has royally fucked it up, there is no doubt but this solution is also not very good.
What I don't understand is how there wasn't a school/DfE/OFQUAL feedback loop so double and triple grade reductions were reviewed well before being finalised. That's where the largest sense of injustice comes from. People getting downgraded from a B prediction to an E despite never having gotten an E before in their educational careers. We had the yearly update from my old school, usually it's about how well they have done and highlighting those who did exceptionally well and giving the old boys network an update on who will be joining the ranks. This year it was the headmaster laying into the process and how they intended to take whatever necessary measures to have the downgrades overturned (my school is in a very low income area despite being selective) because the school has, err, mechanisms in place to prevent students from scoring lower than a B which means it a few C's sneak through every year.
I don't know, but the fact that the government's organising intelligence is someone who thinks that AI-driven data-based decision making is brilliant, and human decisions (especially if taken by ordinaries) are rubbish, might have something to do with it.
We broke cover this morning for a trip to Howarth. Not especially busy but the cafes were doing good trade. Half price Rishi Dishes pulling in the punters.
We were able to nab an outdoor table for tea and scones. If there had only been indoor space we would have skipped it.
I’ve been eating out happily for weeks. It’s really not a military sortie, although your choice of language conveys that effect.
Bits and pieces of polling across the Pond this evening. The CNN poll showing Biden leading 50-46 is a poll with an explicit over-sample in 15 battleground states (comprising 305 out of 1108 people surveyed).
The ABC News/Washington Post poll has Biden up 54-44 among likely voters and 53-41 among registered voters, a marginal narrowing of the gap from last month:
There's a Texas State poll putting Trump up by seven (47.5-40.5) among all voters but among the most likely voters Trump is up 49.5-44. Last time Trump won Texas by 10 points so a slight move to Biden but not suggesting he will take the state (which he doesn't need of course).
68% of the public don't consider people getting a result worse than they should have got as worse than people getting a result better than they should have?
Makes me worry for the British public.
Well,yes they keep voting tory
New labour wouldn’t be any better.
Labour might have been better; it might have spotted the political problem. There are two reasons to say this. First, it had better links to the teaching unions.
Exhibit B is the omnishambles budget. George Osborne made a number of minor, almost insignificant changes to remove anomalies in the tax system -- pasties, churches, other stuff I can't remember -- and got slaughtered by his own side. It later transpired these were all things on the Treasury wishlist that Labour had rejected as being politically toxic for no real gain.
So it is quite possible Labour would itself have spotted the problem of algorithmically downgrading or outright failing (by changing grades to U) students, and also they'd have been more responsive to teachers' concerns or at least sought their reactions, increasing the number of eyeballs on the proposals.
Considering Labour are in government [in Wales] why didn't they spot it then?
Labour aren't just a party of opposition they're also a party of government and they let this happen too.
No idea what happened in Wales except that Wales had AS level data, and also made the latest change before England did (or at least Wales announced it first).
Yeah because Captain Hindsight's party came up with an alternative solution it was proposing in advance and did something differently in Wales where its in government didn't it?
Oh wait, what's that . . . Captain Hindsight had squat to say this until in hindsight? Oh well, there's a shock.
Keep tuned at the same bat time, on the same bat channel for the next thrilling adventure of Captain Hindsight in which we will see Captain Hindsight address the issues of . . . well we don't know right now, it hasn't happened yet.
Sensible of the government to finally abandon the absurd algorithms for teachers predictions, the sooner we get back to proper exams the better.
If Swinney survived in Scotland I suspect Williamson will also ride it out
Belated congratulations on your engagement, sir.
As an aside, were you in America and eligible to vote, would you support Biden/Harris or Trump/Pence?
Thankyou.
I have said before I would vote for Biden (though I would not have voted for Sanders) but as I would have voted for Hillary in 2016 and am not American that does not mean much.
The last Republican I would have voted for President was George W Bush over Al Gore in 2000
Great news. This is the sort of thing that really needs to be dealt with. I live on a road with no driveway and no reserved spaces and the car is parked kerbside. Without a kerbside solution getting an electric car really isn't viable.
That's where hydrogen cars become an option. Fill up as you do now.
I have said before I would vote for Biden (though I would not have voted for Sanders) but as I would have voted for Hillary in 2016 and am not American that does not mean much.
The last Republican I would have voted for President was George W Bush over Al Gore in 2000
Forgive me, I thought you had some reservations about Warren on the ticket but I presume you think Harris is a sensible if perhaps unimaginative selection.
Bits and pieces of polling across the Pond this evening. The CNN poll showing Biden leading 50-46 is a poll with an explicit over-sample in 15 battleground states (comprising 305 out of 1108 people surveyed).
The ABC News/Washington Post poll has Biden up 54-44 among likely voters and 53-41 among registered voters, a marginal narrowing of the gap from last month:
There's a Texas State poll putting Trump up by seven (47.5-40.5) among all voters but among the most likely voters Trump is up 49.5-44. Last time Trump won Texas by 10 points so a slight move to Biden but not suggesting he will take the state (which he doesn't need of course).
DNC starts today (probably livestreamed if anyone cares) and RNC next week. Let's see how things settle down afterwards.
68% of the public don't consider people getting a result worse than they should have got as worse than people getting a result better than they should have?
Makes me worry for the British public.
There's a sense of fair play issue for all other year groups either side of this cohort. The government has royally fucked it up, there is no doubt but this solution is also not very good.
What I don't understand is how there wasn't a school/DfE/OFQUAL feedback loop so double and triple grade reductions were reviewed well before being finalised. That's where the largest sense of injustice comes from. People getting downgraded from a B prediction to an E despite never having gotten an E before in their educational careers. We had the yearly update from my old school, usually it's about how well they have done and highlighting those who did exceptionally well and giving the old boys network an update on who will be joining the ranks. This year it was the headmaster laying into the process and how they intended to take whatever necessary measures to have the downgrades overturned (my school is in a very low income area despite being selective) because the school has, err, mechanisms in place to prevent students from scoring lower than a B which means it a few C's sneak through every year.
I don't know, but the fact that the government's organising intelligence is someone who thinks that AI-driven data-based decision making is brilliant, and human decisions (especially if taken by ordinaries) are rubbish, might have something to do with it.
As someone who has written and trained ML models I can tell you that grade prediction would be a very good use of the technology. However the inputs required are many and the outputs need to be tested against live data before it can be used. I don't think this was ML though, they would have needed for previous years to be funneled into the model to train it and increased the number of inputs instead of just predicted grades, class rank and past school performance and "trustworthiness" of the teachers at said school. You'd need to stick in way more individual past performance data in specific subjects and related ones. If someone was studying history then you'd want to factor in their English Lit results at GCSE and stick a weight on that etc...
Honestly it would be an incredibly interesting project to work on, but I'm almost certain the cretins at the DfE didn't do anything like that and Dominic Cummings has no more than a passing understanding of where, how and why ML can be used in a given situation. You can't just throw it at anything without a second thought.
Yeah because Captain Hindsight's party came up with an alternative solution it was proposing in advance and did something differently in Wales where its in government didn't it?
Oh wait, what's that . . . Captain Hindsight had squat to say this until in hindsight? Oh well, there's a shock.
Keep tuned at the same bat time, on the same bat channel for the next thrilling adventure of Captain Hindsight in which we will see Captain Hindsight address the issues of . . . well we don't know right now, it hasn't happened yet.
Yes, that is Starmer's problem and it's why Labour are still behind in the polls. If Starmer had been warning about this in April and saying "we should keep schools and sixth form colleges open for A-Levels" then he'd be 5 points up and Boris would be in big trouble. But he didn't have the balls to face down the teachers union.
"The corollary is that a setup by which governments only consult [epidemiological] insiders has proved woefully inefficient because it is trapped by the prior assumptions and restricted data and analyses within a small group."
Gordon Hughes, a Professor of Economics at Edinburgh University.
Yeah because Captain Hindsight's party came up with an alternative solution it was proposing in advance and did something differently in Wales where its in government didn't it?
Oh wait, what's that . . . Captain Hindsight had squat to say this until in hindsight? Oh well, there's a shock.
Keep tuned at the same bat time, on the same bat channel for the next thrilling adventure of Captain Hindsight in which we will see Captain Hindsight address the issues of . . . well we don't know right now, it hasn't happened yet.
Yes, that is Starmer's problem and it's why Labour are still behind in the polls. If Starmer had been warning about this in April and saying "we should keep schools and sixth form colleges open for A-Levels" then he'd be 5 points up and Boris would be in big trouble. But he didn't have the balls to face down the teachers union.
Once again you are looking at the past with current knowledge - we couldn't open schools in April as we didn't know enough.
68% of the public don't consider people getting a result worse than they should have got as worse than people getting a result better than they should have?
Makes me worry for the British public.
There's a sense of fair play issue for all other year groups either side of this cohort. The government has royally fucked it up, there is no doubt but this solution is also not very good.
What I don't understand is how there wasn't a school/DfE/OFQUAL feedback loop so double and triple grade reductions were reviewed well before being finalised. That's where the largest sense of injustice comes from. People getting downgraded from a B prediction to an E despite never having gotten an E before in their educational careers. We had the yearly update from my old school, usually it's about how well they have done and highlighting those who did exceptionally well and giving the old boys network an update on who will be joining the ranks. This year it was the headmaster laying into the process and how they intended to take whatever necessary measures to have the downgrades overturned (my school is in a very low income area despite being selective) because the school has, err, mechanisms in place to prevent students from scoring lower than a B which means it a few C's sneak through every year.
I don't know, but the fact that the government's organising intelligence is someone who thinks that AI-driven data-based decision making is brilliant, and human decisions (especially if taken by ordinaries) are rubbish, might have something to do with it.
As someone who has written and trained ML models I can tell you that grade prediction would be a very good use of the technology. However the inputs required are many and the outputs need to be tested against live data before it can be used. I don't think this was ML though, they would have needed for previous years to be funneled into the model to train it and increased the number of inputs instead of just predicted grades, class rank and past school performance and "trustworthiness" of the teachers at said school. You'd need to stick in way more individual past performance data in specific subjects and related ones. If someone was studying history then you'd want to factor in their English Lit results at GCSE and stick a weight on that etc...
Honestly it would be an incredibly interesting project to work on, but I'm almost certain the cretins at the DfE didn't do anything like that and Dominic Cummings has no more than a passing understanding of where, how and why ML can be used in a given situation. You can't just throw it at anything without a second thought.
Actually they did do something. Back in 2016/17 they stopped asking for centre /school predictions as they no longer wanted it.
Yes, that is Starmer's problem and it's why Labour are still behind in the polls. If Starmer had been warning about this in April and saying "we should keep schools and sixth form colleges open for A-Levels" then he'd be 5 points up and Boris would be in big trouble. But he didn't have the balls to face down the teachers union.
In all fairness, there was a lot else going on in April so that's not a fair criticism.
Once the exams were cancelled, it's probably fair to say there were going to be "issues" as I believe some courses are largely graded on exams.
There's a side argument as to whether exams could or should have taken place - given the nature of exam halls (certainly when I sat them in the later Medieval period) social distancing isn't an issue.
Clearly, arrangements would have had to be made for any student suffering from Covid-19 or living with "at risk" family members and that's a conundrum but not beyond resolution with some thought.
I don't quite get the routine anti-Union jibe to be honest.
If you want a group who have suffered, try exam invigilators - often pensioners who do the work for a bit of extra cash.
Dido Harding. They're not even trying not to be brazen are they
Harding is the living embodiment of everything that's wrong with how this country is run. Daughter of a hereditary peer, private school, Oxford PPE, McKinsey, knows the right people, has fucked up everything she has run and keeps failing upwards. And then people wonder why the British machinery of government makes Czarist Russia look like a model of efficiency.* (* Currently reading the Guns of August, interesting to look at another country run by an imbecilic aristocratic elite where who you know is the only thing worth knowing).
68% of the public don't consider people getting a result worse than they should have got as worse than people getting a result better than they should have?
Makes me worry for the British public.
There's a sense of fair play issue for all other year groups either side of this cohort. The government has royally fucked it up, there is no doubt but this solution is also not very good.
What I don't understand is how there wasn't a school/DfE/OFQUAL feedback loop so double and triple grade reductions were reviewed well before being finalised. That's where the largest sense of injustice comes from. People getting downgraded from a B prediction to an E despite never having gotten an E before in their educational careers. We had the yearly update from my old school, usually it's about how well they have done and highlighting those who did exceptionally well and giving the old boys network an update on who will be joining the ranks. This year it was the headmaster laying into the process and how they intended to take whatever necessary measures to have the downgrades overturned (my school is in a very low income area despite being selective) because the school has, err, mechanisms in place to prevent students from scoring lower than a B which means it a few C's sneak through every year.
I don't know, but the fact that the government's organising intelligence is someone who thinks that AI-driven data-based decision making is brilliant, and human decisions (especially if taken by ordinaries) are rubbish, might have something to do with it.
As someone who has written and trained ML models I can tell you that grade prediction would be a very good use of the technology. However the inputs required are many and the outputs need to be tested against live data before it can be used. I don't think this was ML though, they would have needed for previous years to be funneled into the model to train it and increased the number of inputs instead of just predicted grades, class rank and past school performance and "trustworthiness" of the teachers at said school. You'd need to stick in way more individual past performance data in specific subjects and related ones. If someone was studying history then you'd want to factor in their English Lit results at GCSE and stick a weight on that etc...
Honestly it would be an incredibly interesting project to work on, but I'm almost certain the cretins at the DfE didn't do anything like that and Dominic Cummings has no more than a passing understanding of where, how and why ML can be used in a given situation. You can't just throw it at anything without a second thought.
Actually they did do something. Back in 2016/17 they stopped asking for centre /school predictions as they no longer wanted it.
So there was no dataset to work from....
Conceivably you could do it without that and work from historical data alone and use individual performance inputs from before sixth form and train train a model to give predicted A-Level grades, you don't specifically need to use predicted grades as a control because you can train it on data from previous years.
68% of the public don't consider people getting a result worse than they should have got as worse than people getting a result better than they should have?
Makes me worry for the British public.
There's a sense of fair play issue for all other year groups either side of this cohort. The government has royally fucked it up, there is no doubt but this solution is also not very good.
What I don't understand is how there wasn't a school/DfE/OFQUAL feedback loop so double and triple grade reductions were reviewed well before being finalised. That's where the largest sense of injustice comes from. People getting downgraded from a B prediction to an E despite never having gotten an E before in their educational careers. We had the yearly update from my old school, usually it's about how well they have done and highlighting those who did exceptionally well and giving the old boys network an update on who will be joining the ranks. This year it was the headmaster laying into the process and how they intended to take whatever necessary measures to have the downgrades overturned (my school is in a very low income area despite being selective) because the school has, err, mechanisms in place to prevent students from scoring lower than a B which means it a few C's sneak through every year.
I don't know, but the fact that the government's organising intelligence is someone who thinks that AI-driven data-based decision making is brilliant, and human decisions (especially if taken by ordinaries) are rubbish, might have something to do with it.
As someone who has written and trained ML models I can tell you that grade prediction would be a very good use of the technology. However the inputs required are many and the outputs need to be tested against live data before it can be used. I don't think this was ML though, they would have needed for previous years to be funneled into the model to train it and increased the number of inputs instead of just predicted grades, class rank and past school performance and "trustworthiness" of the teachers at said school. You'd need to stick in way more individual past performance data in specific subjects and related ones. If someone was studying history then you'd want to factor in their English Lit results at GCSE and stick a weight on that etc...
Honestly it would be an incredibly interesting project to work on, but I'm almost certain the cretins at the DfE didn't do anything like that and Dominic Cummings has no more than a passing understanding of where, how and why ML can be used in a given situation. You can't just throw it at anything without a second thought.
Actually they did do something. Back in 2016/17 they stopped asking for centre /school predictions as they no longer wanted it.
So there was no dataset to work from....
Conceivably you could do it without that and work from historical data alone and use individual performance inputs from before sixth form and train train a model to give predicted A-Level grades, you don't specifically need to use predicted grades as a control because you can train it on data from previous years.
I doubt it as I can't think of any data that wouldn't be screwed by the fundamental changes that Cummings and Gove implemented that then hit over 2017-20...
Remember this years A level lot are the GCSE guinea pigs and I think they were didn't get KS2 tests either.
Yeah because Captain Hindsight's party came up with an alternative solution it was proposing in advance and did something differently in Wales where its in government didn't it?
Oh wait, what's that . . . Captain Hindsight had squat to say this until in hindsight? Oh well, there's a shock.
Keep tuned at the same bat time, on the same bat channel for the next thrilling adventure of Captain Hindsight in which we will see Captain Hindsight address the issues of . . . well we don't know right now, it hasn't happened yet.
Yes, that is Starmer's problem and it's why Labour are still behind in the polls. If Starmer had been warning about this in April and saying "we should keep schools and sixth form colleges open for A-Levels" then he'd be 5 points up and Boris would be in big trouble. But he didn't have the balls to face down the teachers union.
Indeed he's been leader of the Labour Party since April and he's had zero to say on this subject until it already blew up. The leader of the oppositions job isn't to point at something already happening and say "oh that's bad, you should have done that differently" its to oppose as you go along. This scheme was announced by OFQUAL months ago, it was adopted by all 4 countries and the Leader of the Opposition had nothing to say about it until just now.
When will Keir Starmer stop being Captain Hindsight and start being an actual Opposition leader? I won't be holding my breath.
Dido Harding. They're not even trying not to be brazen are they
Harding is the living embodiment of everything that's wrong with how this country is run. Daughter of a hereditary peer, private school, Oxford PPE, McKinsey, knows the right people, has fucked up everything she has run and keeps failing upwards. And then people wonder why the British machinery of government makes Czarist Russia look like a model of efficiency.* (* Currently reading the Guns of August, interesting to look at another country run by an imbecilic aristocratic elite where who you know is the only thing worth knowing).
We even have a Rasputin. A mad "priest" who has the answer to everything and is the most important person the Tsar needs around him at all times.
68% of the public don't consider people getting a result worse than they should have got as worse than people getting a result better than they should have?
Makes me worry for the British public.
There's a sense of fair play issue for all other year groups either side of this cohort. The government has royally fucked it up, there is no doubt but this solution is also not very good.
What I don't understand is how there wasn't a school/DfE/OFQUAL feedback loop so double and triple grade reductions were reviewed well before being finalised. That's where the largest sense of injustice comes from. People getting downgraded from a B prediction to an E despite never having gotten an E before in their educational careers. We had the yearly update from my old school, usually it's about how well they have done and highlighting those who did exceptionally well and giving the old boys network an update on who will be joining the ranks. This year it was the headmaster laying into the process and how they intended to take whatever necessary measures to have the downgrades overturned (my school is in a very low income area despite being selective) because the school has, err, mechanisms in place to prevent students from scoring lower than a B which means it a few C's sneak through every year.
I don't know, but the fact that the government's organising intelligence is someone who thinks that AI-driven data-based decision making is brilliant, and human decisions (especially if taken by ordinaries) are rubbish, might have something to do with it.
As someone who has written and trained ML models I can tell you that grade prediction would be a very good use of the technology. However the inputs required are many and the outputs need to be tested against live data before it can be used. I don't think this was ML though, they would have needed for previous years to be funneled into the model to train it and increased the number of inputs instead of just predicted grades, class rank and past school performance and "trustworthiness" of the teachers at said school. You'd need to stick in way more individual past performance data in specific subjects and related ones. If someone was studying history then you'd want to factor in their English Lit results at GCSE and stick a weight on that etc...
Honestly it would be an incredibly interesting project to work on, but I'm almost certain the cretins at the DfE didn't do anything like that and Dominic Cummings has no more than a passing understanding of where, how and why ML can be used in a given situation. You can't just throw it at anything without a second thought.
Actually they did do something. Back in 2016/17 they stopped asking for centre /school predictions as they no longer wanted it.
So there was no dataset to work from....
Conceivably you could do it without that and work from historical data alone and use individual performance inputs from before sixth form and train train a model to give predicted A-Level grades, you don't specifically need to use predicted grades as a control because you can train it on data from previous years.
I doubt it as I can't think of any data that wouldn't be screwed by the fundamental changes that Cummings and Gove implemented that then hit over 2017-20...
Remember this years A level lot are the GCSE guinea pigs and I think they were didn't get KS2 tests either.
Ah I didn't realise that, then yes it would be very difficult to train a model that would be applicable to the current cohort. Though I think it would still have been better than the current attempt.
Yeah because Captain Hindsight's party came up with an alternative solution it was proposing in advance and did something differently in Wales where its in government didn't it?
Oh wait, what's that . . . Captain Hindsight had squat to say this until in hindsight? Oh well, there's a shock.
Keep tuned at the same bat time, on the same bat channel for the next thrilling adventure of Captain Hindsight in which we will see Captain Hindsight address the issues of . . . well we don't know right now, it hasn't happened yet.
Yes, that is Starmer's problem and it's why Labour are still behind in the polls. If Starmer had been warning about this in April and saying "we should keep schools and sixth form colleges open for A-Levels" then he'd be 5 points up and Boris would be in big trouble. But he didn't have the balls to face down the teachers union.
Not sure, YouGov suggests this particular issue is a bubble issue
Yes, that is Starmer's problem and it's why Labour are still behind in the polls. If Starmer had been warning about this in April and saying "we should keep schools and sixth form colleges open for A-Levels" then he'd be 5 points up and Boris would be in big trouble. But he didn't have the balls to face down the teachers union.
In all fairness, there was a lot else going on in April so that's not a fair criticism.
Once the exams were cancelled, it's probably fair to say there were going to be "issues" as I believe some courses are largely graded on exams.
There's a side argument as to whether exams could or should have taken place - given the nature of exam halls (certainly when I sat them in the later Medieval period) social distancing isn't an issue.
Clearly, arrangements would have had to be made for any student suffering from Covid-19 or living with "at risk" family members and that's a conundrum but not beyond resolution with some thought.
I don't quite get the routine anti-Union jibe to be honest.
If you want a group who have suffered, try exam invigilators - often pensioners who do the work for a bit of extra cash.
The teaching unions agreed with OFQUAL that this was a good idea. The NEU etc endosed this scheme.
Fair enough, a lot of people fell for it including the Labour in Cardiff, the Tories in Westminster, the SNP in Holyrood, the DUP and Sinn Fein in Stormont etc . . . but for Captain Hindsight to be all knowing after the fact, its a joke. He's living up yet again to his Captain Hindsight nickname.
Interesting to note that our gym just ticked back up above the number of members we had in March pre-Corona - having fallen by about 20% during lockdown.
Smallish Crossfit Gym in a big facility, and I think the thing that did it was the excellent communication from coaches during lockdown plus a very careful build back with careful rules.
I think that big membership gyms will suffer because they may lose a lot of their zombie members.
Ours is open, but a lot emptier than it used to be because social distancing.
Thing is, I actually quite like the limited time slots and constrained numbers. You have to pick and choose what you do rather than spending too much time there and overtraining, and you're not tripping over other bloody people the whole damned time. It's a positive improvement.
God alone knows how much money they're losing, mind you. I have no trouble booking to go when I like, which suggests that a lot of members have probably jacked it in for various reasons (money/job worries, found they can do without it, too frightened to go back, and so on.) It's local authority owned, and in a district that's comparatively well-off and not, insofar as I'm aware, in severe financial difficulty, so I don't expect it to end up closing unless the Government starts shutting stuff down again, but all the same.
68% of the public don't consider people getting a result worse than they should have got as worse than people getting a result better than they should have?
Makes me worry for the British public.
There's a sense of fair play issue for all other year groups either side of this cohort. The government has royally fucked it up, there is no doubt but this solution is also not very good.
What I don't understand is how there wasn't a school/DfE/OFQUAL feedback loop so double and triple grade reductions were reviewed well before being finalised. That's where the largest sense of injustice comes from. People getting downgraded from a B prediction to an E despite never having gotten an E before in their educational careers. We had the yearly update from my old school, usually it's about how well they have done and highlighting those who did exceptionally well and giving the old boys network an update on who will be joining the ranks. This year it was the headmaster laying into the process and how they intended to take whatever necessary measures to have the downgrades overturned (my school is in a very low income area despite being selective) because the school has, err, mechanisms in place to prevent students from scoring lower than a B which means it a few C's sneak through every year.
I don't know, but the fact that the government's organising intelligence is someone who thinks that AI-driven data-based decision making is brilliant, and human decisions (especially if taken by ordinaries) are rubbish, might have something to do with it.
As someone who has written and trained ML models I can tell you that grade prediction would be a very good use of the technology. However the inputs required are many and the outputs need to be tested against live data before it can be used. I don't think this was ML though, they would have needed for previous years to be funneled into the model to train it and increased the number of inputs instead of just predicted grades, class rank and past school performance and "trustworthiness" of the teachers at said school. You'd need to stick in way more individual past performance data in specific subjects and related ones. If someone was studying history then you'd want to factor in their English Lit results at GCSE and stick a weight on that etc...
Honestly it would be an incredibly interesting project to work on, but I'm almost certain the cretins at the DfE didn't do anything like that and Dominic Cummings has no more than a passing understanding of where, how and why ML can be used in a given situation. You can't just throw it at anything without a second thought.
Actually they did do something. Back in 2016/17 they stopped asking for centre /school predictions as they no longer wanted it.
So there was no dataset to work from....
Conceivably you could do it without that and work from historical data alone and use individual performance inputs from before sixth form and train train a model to give predicted A-Level grades, you don't specifically need to use predicted grades as a control because you can train it on data from previous years.
Three things struck me, reading their methodology note. First, their overall approach was largely reasonable, if you thought that they should be doing it at all. Second, the boost given to private schools by the special treatment of small subject groups should not have been allowed, and it is highly revealing that they thought it was ok. Third and most important, their own backtesting showed that even with the best algorithm their actual ability to predict grades sucked. The level of accuracy was simply not good enough for something so important to the people affected. Having realised this, they should have sought an alternative route (more intense dialogue with schools, more recourse to coursework, delayed exams) rather than ploughing on with something insufficiently accurate to obtain political buy-in. In my view this is a classic technocrats' error, but the ultimate failure was of the political leadership, who were better placed to see the big picture.
I can totally understand why they have appointed Dido. No Angel was a great album and totally forgives her utter disaster not running track and trace. She is absolutely the right person with whom to entrust public health at this time.
Indeed he's been leader of the Labour Party since April and he's had zero to say on this subject until it already blew up. The leader of the oppositions job isn't to point at something already happening and say "oh that's bad, you should have done that differently" its to oppose as you go along. This scheme was announced by OFQUAL months ago, it was adopted by all 4 countries and the Leader of the Opposition had nothing to say about it until just now.
When will Keir Starmer stop being Captain Hindsight and start being an actual Opposition leader? I won't be holding my breath.
Why didn't the Government realise the OFQUAL scheme was going to cause problems as it was announced "months ago"?
Instead, the whole thing blows up and Williamson is forced to eat crow with a side order of humble pie and instead of blaming the Government for not anticipating the problems, it's apparently all Starmer's fault.
Dido Harding. They're not even trying not to be brazen are they
Harding is the living embodiment of everything that's wrong with how this country is run. Daughter of a hereditary peer, private school, Oxford PPE, McKinsey, knows the right people, has fucked up everything she has run and keeps failing upwards. And then people wonder why the British machinery of government makes Czarist Russia look like a model of efficiency.* (* Currently reading the Guns of August, interesting to look at another country run by an imbecilic aristocratic elite where who you know is the only thing worth knowing).
We even have a Rasputin. A mad "priest" who has the answer to everything and is the most important person the Tsar needs around him at all times.
Ha ha, good point. Does that make Cummings Britain's greatest love machine, though? 🤮
I can totally understand why they have appointed Dido. No Angel was a great album and totally forgives her utter disaster not running track and trace. She is absolutely the right person with whom to entrust public health at this time.
It was, plus her collaboration with Eminem was impressive too so she can work well with others.
Great news. This is the sort of thing that really needs to be dealt with. I live on a road with no driveway and no reserved spaces and the car is parked kerbside. Without a kerbside solution getting an electric car really isn't viable.
That's where hydrogen cars become an option. Fill up as you do now.
Kerbside solutions can be available.
They can lay an electric supply to your house, so I see no reason why you can't lay an electric supply to a charging point.
Great news. This is the sort of thing that really needs to be dealt with. I live on a road with no driveway and no reserved spaces and the car is parked kerbside. Without a kerbside solution getting an electric car really isn't viable.
That's where hydrogen cars become an option. Fill up as you do now.
Before long an electric car will be fillupable in a similar way.
Indeed he's been leader of the Labour Party since April and he's had zero to say on this subject until it already blew up. The leader of the oppositions job isn't to point at something already happening and say "oh that's bad, you should have done that differently" its to oppose as you go along. This scheme was announced by OFQUAL months ago, it was adopted by all 4 countries and the Leader of the Opposition had nothing to say about it until just now.
When will Keir Starmer stop being Captain Hindsight and start being an actual Opposition leader? I won't be holding my breath.
Why didn't the Government realise the OFQUAL scheme was going to cause problems as it was announced "months ago"?
Instead, the whole thing blows up and Williamson is forced to eat crow with a side order of humble pie and instead of blaming the Government for not anticipating the problems, it's apparently all Starmer's fault.
Desperate, desperate stuff.
Its nobodies fault. OFQUAL tried a solution, everyone bought into it. It failed. It was reversed and the right thing has been done.
To anyone sane that should be enough, but no Captain Hindsight is still saying the government should have done differently despite having literally ZERO opposition to this beforehand and the Labour government in Wales still standing by this system but saying they're reversing because the English have. 🤦🏻♂️
Just accept the u-turn, get your outriders to laugh at it. Instead Starmer is turning himself into a joke. This is what you have attack dogs for you don't act stupid yourself.
Dido Harding. They're not even trying not to be brazen are they
Harding is the living embodiment of everything that's wrong with how this country is run. Daughter of a hereditary peer, private school, Oxford PPE, McKinsey, knows the right people, has fucked up everything she has run and keeps failing upwards. And then people wonder why the British machinery of government makes Czarist Russia look like a model of efficiency.* (* Currently reading the Guns of August, interesting to look at another country run by an imbecilic aristocratic elite where who you know is the only thing worth knowing).
We even have a Rasputin. A mad "priest" who has the answer to everything and is the most important person the Tsar needs around him at all times.
Ha ha, good point. Does that make Cummings Britain's greatest love machine, though? 🤮
Can any Tory seriously defend Dido being appointed?
Clearly you weren't here last time I went around in circles with a few of our more establishment types. She almost bankrupted TalkTalk and she gets rewarded with plum jobs by the government. It seems as though they look at Chris Grayling and think that he's a great model to follow.
68% of the public don't consider people getting a result worse than they should have got as worse than people getting a result better than they should have?
Makes me worry for the British public.
There's a sense of fair play issue for all other year groups either side of this cohort. The government has royally fucked it up, there is no doubt but this solution is also not very good.
What I don't understand is how there wasn't a school/DfE/OFQUAL feedback loop so double and triple grade reductions were reviewed well before being finalised. That's where the largest sense of injustice comes from. People getting downgraded from a B prediction to an E despite never having gotten an E before in their educational careers. We had the yearly update from my old school, usually it's about how well they have done and highlighting those who did exceptionally well and giving the old boys network an update on who will be joining the ranks. This year it was the headmaster laying into the process and how they intended to take whatever necessary measures to have the downgrades overturned (my school is in a very low income area despite being selective) because the school has, err, mechanisms in place to prevent students from scoring lower than a B which means it a few C's sneak through every year.
I don't know, but the fact that the government's organising intelligence is someone who thinks that AI-driven data-based decision making is brilliant, and human decisions (especially if taken by ordinaries) are rubbish, might have something to do with it.
As someone who has written and trained ML models I can tell you that grade prediction would be a very good use of the technology. However the inputs required are many and the outputs need to be tested against live data before it can be used. I don't think this was ML though, they would have needed for previous years to be funneled into the model to train it and increased the number of inputs instead of just predicted grades, class rank and past school performance and "trustworthiness" of the teachers at said school. You'd need to stick in way more individual past performance data in specific subjects and related ones. If someone was studying history then you'd want to factor in their English Lit results at GCSE and stick a weight on that etc...
Honestly it would be an incredibly interesting project to work on, but I'm almost certain the cretins at the DfE didn't do anything like that and Dominic Cummings has no more than a passing understanding of where, how and why ML can be used in a given situation. You can't just throw it at anything without a second thought.
As you might expect quite a bit of work has been done in this field. As a teacher I am judged on the value-added I provide, in other words the difference between the grades my pupils get and the grades predicted for them at the beginning of the year (actually it makes little difference to me as I hit the top of the pay scale about a decade ago, but for others it can affect how quickly they advance).
Here is a link to the type of organisation that produces such baseline data: https://www.cem.org/alis (Other data sets are available.)
To be honest I find them pretty crude. The one we use for GCSE in particular has great difficulty with separate sciences for example, producing expected grades much higher than for any other subject. They are also an estimate of potential rather than predictions as such.
Can any Tory seriously defend Dido being appointed?
Clearly you weren't here last time I went around in circles with a few of our more establishment types. She almost bankrupted TalkTalk and she gets rewarded with plum jobs by the government. It seems as though they look at Chris Grayling and think that he's a great model to follow.
Can any Tory seriously defend Dido being appointed?
Clearly you weren't here last time I went around in circles with a few of our more establishment types. She almost bankrupted TalkTalk and she gets rewarded with plum jobs by the government. It seems as though they look at Chris Grayling and think that he's a great model to follow.
No doubt there will be a vacancy at the top of the OFQUAL replacement shortly. Tossup between Dido and Grayling ?
Comments
The u-turn was the right thing to do.
Time to move on now.
Not a massive surprise, but of all the days... this seems like a strange time to do it?
Makes me worry for the British public.
alex_ said:
Williamson; "problems only became apparent at the weekend".
You what???
Williamson "hopes BTECs will be Teacher assessed too".
Well why don't you ask you useless piece of Turd? These are BTECs that are now 4 days late in being released...
Some have been released - my son got worse results than predicted.
I guess they're more difficult as they are continuous assessment rather than examined at the end.
However, all pupils no matter which course will have been affected by the Covid-19 disruption. If 'A' and 'O' Level students are to be assessed by teachers why should BTECs be different?
Personally I think the government is doing ok. 50/100. I think Starmer is doing ok too - in fact I'll give him some slight bonus points for not being an arse in this, but some slight negative points for his revisions of his own history. 55/100
Williamson seems to buck that trend. He's not doing ok.
If Gav can become a cabinet minister as a member of the stupid party...
Not sure how useful that lesson is?
However if it seems that they are not in control of their core functions.Sentiments could soon change.
Roy Hobbs thinks he is a serious commentator on issues of the day, despite using horrible misspellings like ‘probebly’, ‘interlectuals’ and ‘definately’.
Friend Emma Bradford said: “Roy hasn’t grasped that if he thinks ‘restoraunt’ is spelt like that people might realise he’s not an expert on politics, economics or any other subject."
https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/man-who-cant-spell-basic-words-demands-you-take-his-opinions-seriously-20180122142873
There had better be a good idea there somewhere. Otherwise the total wrecking of the Empire that Labour have caused would seem like a bad thing.
We were able to nab an outdoor table for tea and scones. If there had only been indoor space we would have skipped it.
What I don't understand is how there wasn't a school/DfE/OFQUAL feedback loop so double and triple grade reductions were reviewed well before being finalised. That's where the largest sense of injustice comes from. People getting downgraded from a B prediction to an E despite never having gotten an E before in their educational careers. We had the yearly update from my old school, usually it's about how well they have done and highlighting those who did exceptionally well and giving the old boys network an update on who will be joining the ranks. This year it was the headmaster laying into the process and how they intended to take whatever necessary measures to have the downgrades overturned (my school is in a very low income area despite being selective) because the school has, err, mechanisms in place to prevent students from scoring lower than a B which means it a few C's sneak through every year.
Exhibit B is the omnishambles budget. George Osborne made a number of minor, almost insignificant changes to remove anomalies in the tax system -- pasties, churches, other stuff I can't remember -- and got slaughtered by his own side. It later transpired these were all things on the Treasury wishlist that Labour had rejected as being politically toxic for no real gain.
So it is quite possible Labour would itself have spotted the problem of algorithmically downgrading or outright failing (by changing grades to U) students, and also they'd have been more responsive to teachers' concerns or at least sought their reactions, increasing the number of eyeballs on the proposals.
(Just had my Maths A-Level downgraded)
Labour aren't just a party of opposition they're also a party of government and they let this happen too.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/smart-meter-electric-vehicle-charging-competition-winning-projects/beyond-off-street-smart-meter-electric-vehicle-charging-competition-winning-projects
On reflection the voting public thought the conservatives were wrong in supporting farmers hauliers nearly bringing the country to a standstill, and voted accordingly in 01.
Smallish Crossfit Gym in a big facility, and I think the thing that did it was the excellent communication from coaches during lockdown plus a very careful build back with careful rules.
I think that big membership gyms will suffer because they may lose a lot of their zombie members.
Gonna knock you right on the head"
https://twitter.com/imjustbait/status/1295032715021111297?s=20
https://twitter.com/imjustbait/status/1295031138839404544?s=20
Bits and pieces of polling across the Pond this evening. The CNN poll showing Biden leading 50-46 is a poll with an explicit over-sample in 15 battleground states (comprising 305 out of 1108 people surveyed).
https://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2020/images/08/16/rel8a.-.2020.pdf
The ABC News/Washington Post poll has Biden up 54-44 among likely voters and 53-41 among registered voters, a marginal narrowing of the gap from last month:
https://www.langerresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/1215a2The2020Election.pdf
There's a Texas State poll putting Trump up by seven (47.5-40.5) among all voters but among the most likely voters Trump is up 49.5-44. Last time Trump won Texas by 10 points so a slight move to Biden but not suggesting he will take the state (which he doesn't need of course).
https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1295429503595024386
If Swinney survived in Scotland I suspect Williamson will also ride it out
Yes a bit of a mess but all resolved by Captain Fantastic Boris!
Meanwhile Captain Hindsight wrings his hands, offers no new insight and will probably write a letter to the Guardian!!
As an aside, were you in America and eligible to vote, would you support Biden/Harris or Trump/Pence?
Oh wait, what's that . . . Captain Hindsight had squat to say this until in hindsight? Oh well, there's a shock.
Keep tuned at the same bat time, on the same bat channel for the next thrilling adventure of Captain Hindsight in which we will see Captain Hindsight address the issues of . . . well we don't know right now, it hasn't happened yet.
I have said before I would vote for Biden (though I would not have voted for Sanders) but as I would have voted for Hillary in 2016 and am not American that does not mean much.
The last Republican I would have voted for President was George W Bush over Al Gore in 2000
Honestly it would be an incredibly interesting project to work on, but I'm almost certain the cretins at the DfE didn't do anything like that and Dominic Cummings has no more than a passing understanding of where, how and why ML can be used in a given situation. You can't just throw it at anything without a second thought.
Gordon Hughes, a Professor of Economics at Edinburgh University.
https://lockdownsceptics.org/
So there was no dataset to work from....
Dido Bloody Harding.
Jesus Christ
Once the exams were cancelled, it's probably fair to say there were going to be "issues" as I believe some courses are largely graded on exams.
There's a side argument as to whether exams could or should have taken place - given the nature of exam halls (certainly when I sat them in the later Medieval period) social distancing isn't an issue.
Clearly, arrangements would have had to be made for any student suffering from Covid-19 or living with "at risk" family members and that's a conundrum but not beyond resolution with some thought.
I don't quite get the routine anti-Union jibe to be honest.
If you want a group who have suffered, try exam invigilators - often pensioners who do the work for a bit of extra cash.
(* Currently reading the Guns of August, interesting to look at another country run by an imbecilic aristocratic elite where who you know is the only thing worth knowing).
Remember this years A level lot are the GCSE guinea pigs and I think they were didn't get KS2 tests either.
She did such a terrible job at TalkTalk, that should have excluded her from running anything ever again.
Starmer will be way ahead by next summer and the Tory panic will begin.
When will Keir Starmer stop being Captain Hindsight and start being an actual Opposition leader? I won't be holding my breath.
Fair enough, a lot of people fell for it including the Labour in Cardiff, the Tories in Westminster, the SNP in Holyrood, the DUP and Sinn Fein in Stormont etc . . . but for Captain Hindsight to be all knowing after the fact, its a joke. He's living up yet again to his Captain Hindsight nickname.
Thing is, I actually quite like the limited time slots and constrained numbers. You have to pick and choose what you do rather than spending too much time there and overtraining, and you're not tripping over other bloody people the whole damned time. It's a positive improvement.
God alone knows how much money they're losing, mind you. I have no trouble booking to go when I like, which suggests that a lot of members have probably jacked it in for various reasons (money/job worries, found they can do without it, too frightened to go back, and so on.) It's local authority owned, and in a district that's comparatively well-off and not, insofar as I'm aware, in severe financial difficulty, so I don't expect it to end up closing unless the Government starts shutting stuff down again, but all the same.
First, their overall approach was largely reasonable, if you thought that they should be doing it at all.
Second, the boost given to private schools by the special treatment of small subject groups should not have been allowed, and it is highly revealing that they thought it was ok.
Third and most important, their own backtesting showed that even with the best algorithm their actual ability to predict grades sucked. The level of accuracy was simply not good enough for something so important to the people affected. Having realised this, they should have sought an alternative route (more intense dialogue with schools, more recourse to coursework, delayed exams) rather than ploughing on with something insufficiently accurate to obtain political buy-in. In my view this is a classic technocrats' error, but the ultimate failure was of the political leadership, who were better placed to see the big picture.
Instead, the whole thing blows up and Williamson is forced to eat crow with a side order of humble pie and instead of blaming the Government for not anticipating the problems, it's apparently all Starmer's fault.
Desperate, desperate stuff.
They can lay an electric supply to your house, so I see no reason why you can't lay an electric supply to a charging point.
To anyone sane that should be enough, but no Captain Hindsight is still saying the government should have done differently despite having literally ZERO opposition to this beforehand and the Labour government in Wales still standing by this system but saying they're reversing because the English have. 🤦🏻♂️
Just accept the u-turn, get your outriders to laugh at it. Instead Starmer is turning himself into a joke. This is what you have attack dogs for you don't act stupid yourself.
Though it is a shame how he carried on.
Here is a link to the type of organisation that produces such baseline data:
https://www.cem.org/alis
(Other data sets are available.)
To be honest I find them pretty crude. The one we use for GCSE in particular has great difficulty with separate sciences for example, producing expected grades much higher than for any other subject.
They are also an estimate of potential rather than predictions as such.