Firstly,I thought it was time that the now misnomer of 'Plans for Linux distro' came to to stop and was re-named. I don't intend to answer every single point of what Ian says other to say that in general, I agree. I also agree with a lot of what Frank is saying too. What I don't agree with is this harsh way in we are talking about future members of our society. Frank cited his sitting AEB instead of Oxford maths. If if teachers hadn't been wise to this situation, all those years ago, then Frank could then have been condemded to the 'scrap heap' perhaps? There are a lot of new technologies in the world and lots of new study areas these days as a result. We have seemed very polarised in discussions on programming. Should there be RAD or should there not? This seems to the hub of the argument. In my view their should be RAD and the discipline of top down structured programming is too restrictive to creativty and not fast enough for a modern world. We just need RAD that is more robust. There seems to be an obsession with with maths and programming as the only solution to ICT training as well. I have twenty students all wanting to do an A'level in multimedia, web design, Flash, 3d max, cinema and games design. The head is on my back to come up with the goods. Universities are now offering courses in this but I can't find an A'level syllabus because of this obsession. Maths and programming has it's place but computing is about more than just this, these days. About time the GNU site had a graphical revamp too. (IMHO) Bruce Miller. On Mon, Feb 04, 2002 at 10:35:05PM +0000, Ian wrote:

On Monday 04 February 2002 15:13, 'Frank Shute' wrote:

...

On Mon, Feb 04, 2002 at 08:06:28AM +0000, Ian wrote:

...

Yet my understanding is that people doing the hard technical subjects at A level is falling & universities are failing to fill their places for engineering/sciences.

Falling because there is more choice in a whole range of other things. That simply makes it even more competitive for the relatively small number of maths students with straight As.

Fair point.

...

Admissions tutors know that a good pass in any of these subjects (but especially maths) indicates they've got a student who can think logically and is bright.

Yes but there are too few of them to go around. That's my point. So some students who can't hack A level maths to Computer studies, GNVQ ICT etc

and

the universities need to fill places so they take students that they would not have done a few years back.

That's my point too! They're taking students they really shouldn't be taking because a decree has gone out that 50% of people should go to university. So irrespective of the individual merit of an applicant, university's are feeling compelled into dropping standards to fill what is by any stretch of the imagination a bogus quota dreamed up by some think-tank.

...

Computer studies at A level? From the sounds of it, it's a glorified MCSE in a lot of cases without the pupil necessarily having even programmed in a proper language or with an understanding of the basics

of

...

how a microprocessor works.

Whatever, that is not the real point. The thing is that these students get access to the courses otherwise quite a few university lecturers are out of a job.

As I indicated, I don't really care. Why give people jobs if they aren't worthwhile?

OK I agree these courses could be improved but you also need sufficient teachers capable of teaching mathematically more rigorous stuff and they simply don't exist in the numbers required.

Now we are beginning to suffer the consequences of the more choice/falling standards/lack of people doing intellectually rigorous subjects. The few who do go and do maths/engineering at university get immediately cherry-picked by industry for well-paid jobs thus leaving education to pick up the crumbs for maths/sciences teaching. The result is declining teaching standards & even fewer students going on to do maths/science at uni. It's a vicious circle.

...

...

...

Schools are driven by bogus league tables that mean their and their pupil's & staff's success is gauged by exam passes.

If you look at any situations where league tables are introduced, standards rise. Look at Rugby Union.

You're looking at the wrong thing.

No I'm not. If you take the NHS, it is pretty easy to argue that standards might well have fallen further without the league tables since under-funding is the main limiting factor. (Culture is 20 years out of date too but that is just another non-controlled variable)

Example: A govt edict goes out that hospitals should reduce their waiting lists, the hospital managers pressurise the consultants to sort it out. After much moaning from the consultants the difficult but more severe cases are pushed to the back of the queue & the people with ingrowing toenails, piles etc. are dragged in to be operated on. Result! The govt has turned the health service around & they've got the facts to prove it - waiting lists are coming down and the hospital league tables indicate that less hospitals are `failing' and meeting the Stalinist govt's bogus targets. But there's a price to pay - the patients with the more important problems now have to wait longer to be treated, the consultants are pissed-off because their clinical judgement with regards the urgency of treating patients has been ridden over rough-shod and money and time has been wasted treating elderly patients with ingrowing toenails who if you'd given them a few months would have snuffed it anyway. I can give you any number of examples from the health service because that's one are that I'm familar with. Now repeat ad nauseum for other scenarios and other public services. The fact is that huge amounts are being wasted to meet the bogus targets which do nobody any good except the government because they can then advertise how `successful' they've been & hence get re-elected. They then whinge about `years of under-investment' which people swallow whole & have then got the hide to raise taxes in order to `sort things out'. The newly raised taxes are then spent on building MPs the most expensive office space in the country whilst building hospitals on the never-never.

...

Look at the NHS, standards have fallen. You can't gauge the performance of a public service empirically

You can judge exam performance. If you want exam performance improvements (not necessarily an improvement in the educationservice as that depends on your point of view) you can set targets etc and it will improve - it has! That doesn't necessarily mean anything other than exam technique has

improved

but since so much store is put on exams its still an important indicator.

It's an entirely useless indicator. It indicates precisely nothing. It could be one of many things: * Teachers have got better. - as I've said before I think they're about as good/bad as they always have been with the exception of maths/sciences where there are too few to go around. * Exam technique of students has got better. - Possibly, but then you should make the exams harder in order to get more comparable results year-on-year. * Students IQ has improved. - Although it's said that IQ has improved, I personally think IQ is another entirely bogus statistic & can't be measured satisfactorily. In fact, Darwinism would seem to say that since the brain-dead can live on social security and procreate, people should be getting thicker. * The exams are easier. - Look at papers now & papers 30 yrs ago and judge for yourself. IMO they are a country mile easier.

...

...

The fact is that there are many many more students in the system and in the pre-league tables era, many of these would

never

...

...

have passed a GCSE or an A level let alone gone to Univ.

Yes there are. But what are they studying at uni? And why are more passing? More are passing IMO because the system is such that you can effectively `buy' an A level certificate from an examining board by hunting around and choosing the one with the easiest papers.

Gross exaggeration. Exams might or might not be easier. Independent studies suggest they are different but no easier.

Then the studies suck and are done by people who are far from independent.

But in any case lots more kids go to universities to do a wide variety of things. My youngest son is doing a degree in film making and some of that course was on data storage formats. He is one that did not go through a conventional A level route so in my day he would not have been at uni. I am glad he is and what he is learning seems useful to him in what he wants to do - set up his own business making films for companies.

I'm glad he's enjoying it but IMO he would have been better off doing a more `hands on' subject at a traditional Poly or College like he probably would have done 20 yrs ago. Back then they managed to integrate such a subject well with job experience and such like. There was a more varied education available then: Unis, Polys, Colleges, apprenticeships...and everybody could find their niche. Now the whole damned lot is being dumped into university in order to fulfil a govt's entirely political target.

So should we deny these kids on the grounds they can't pass A level maths?

No, you should deny them on the basis that university isn't the best place for them to learn such a subject. Education needs to be stratified but not just on the grounds of academic ability.

...

...

If we believe getting more students into HE is a good thing the current problems inevitable. OTOH if you believe HE is only suited to a minority, you have a point and we should be requiring A or B grade at A level in say 4 or 5 subjects for anyone to enter any University.

HE per se is a good thing but that doesn't mean that 50% of students (or whatever the govt's 10 yr plan says) should do it. Whilst going to university is equated as being the ultimate in educative success, as determined by the bogus league tables, then the system is skewed into sending people to university whether it's suitable for them or not.

...

Bear in mind this would also mean redundancies in university teaching staff.

So be it, they can always get jobs elsewhere.

Maybe but perhaps its just as easy and cost-effective to change the nature

of

universities to be rather broader in their scope.

...

You're right in that it's symptomatic but not the real pathology of the problem, but ICT in schools as it currently stands is shameful. Yes, there are good schools but is there anything more than guidelines for them to follow? There should be examples of best practice for them to follow rather than the current seemingly ad hoc approach.

I agree with this for the most part but until you have 10s of thousands of good IT graduates coming into teaching and some of the so-called IT expert decision makers at the top who actually know something about technology

Broader scope means less real choice as to what sort of education you get - universities are just becoming higher education comprehensives and IMO comprehensives are good for no one except the politically correct. that

is going to be very difficult to change. Let's fight battles we can win.

...

...

...

Too right. Linux and open source software needs to be seen in the wider perspective of what IMHO is a failing education system & it's political context.

The education system has been failing for years, in fact ever since I can remember but in reality for the most part, my observations show better teaching than when I was at school. That doesn't mean everything in

It is going to be difficult to change, but the way I see it the IT in schools agenda is still very much up for grabs. the

...

...

garden is rosey but neither is it all doom and gloom.

My guess is that teachers are about as good/bad as they've always been it's the system that they work under (performance tables etc) that means that the students they are pushing out are quite frankly not up to very much in my experience.

Some are. I taught a kid who won the British Physics Olympiad and he was quite bright ;-). He went to a bog standard comp too. The students will seem weaker if you come across more who are below the 10 percent or so that used to get to uni. You don't suddenly change IQ by that many percentage points across the population even with vg teaching.

That's right, it's no longer the top 10% who go to university it's the top 30% and that's not because all of a sudden 30% of the populace have got an IQ of >x rather than 10% a few years back. BTW, my understanding of IQ is that you can't change it by teaching full stop. It's whole premise is that a bright Aboriginal with no education whatsoever can have an equivalent IQ of an Oxford don.

...

...

...

To kick off with, league tables should be binned along with the present exam boards.

You forgot IMHO :-)

And what are you going to put in their place? OK ban league tables but with the wonders of modern technology the Daily Mail will do

unofficial

...

...

ones.

Ban the Daily Mail & do us all a favour? ;)

...

Ban exams boards and replace them with what? No exams?

Get rid of the current exam boards & replace them with a not for profit organisation which isn't subject to political interference - a tall order I know when we've got Joe Stalin's clone in no.10

Not convinced that this would change that much. I remember the exam boards pre- all this and they made mistakes too. Also I swapped to AEB from Oxford for my kids back in the80s because the questions were easier. Things haven't changed that much.

I did all my O's with Oxford bar maths! I was in the bottom stream of maths at school so they decided to go with AEB because the paper was supposedly a piece of piss - it was too, as evidenced by my getting an A grade and guys in the higher streams who were much better than me had to sit the Oxford paper ... and some failed! But in those days, 1977, all the boards papers were considered roughly equivalent except Oxford and AEB - Oxford the standard being higher and AEB lower. Now they're all jostling at the low-end of the market and they know that the lower the standard the more revenue for the company be it Edexcel or whatever.

...

...

I have some sympathy with getting rid of GCSE if most people stay on to 18 but ingeneral you need some measurement of performance and progress otherwise how do you decide who goes on which university course who who is qualified to do what job?

ATM, the exams are not really indicative of performance. Clueless bozos and brilliant students alike can get grade A's in most subjects.

Again not true. If it was as random as this employers and HE would just choose students at random. Some people who get As have no other personal skills and some people with Cs are very effective in some other fields.

But

the IQ/EQ argument is another thread :-)

The exams are easier to pass, there's no question of this - the results prove it. Hence, there has to be a wider gap between the ability of those who scrape a certain grade & those at the top-end of that grade. A distribution diagram will prove this point.

...

Too much store is currently put towards not letting students suffer failure & making them feeling worthwhile at all costs.

Again its a matter of balance so I would say yes and no!

...

Let them fail and experience what life's like - it's not only success but bitter failure too. Then they'll be better prepared for the outside world.

A lot do fail. The key is to try and get everyone sufficient success to

see

their failures from a position of strength and then admit them sufficiently to improve. At all levels this is a very difficult issue in management.

Give them a good kicking for being thick, stand them in the corner with a dunces hat on and they'll soon buck up their ideas. (Just kidding ;) -- Frank *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Boroughbridge. Tel: 01423 323019 --------- PGP keyID: 0xC0B341A3 *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* http://www.esperance-linux.co.uk/ The shortest distance between two points is under construction. -- Noelie Alito -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: suse-linux-uk-schools-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands, e-mail: suse-linux-uk-schools-help@suse.com