On Tue, Feb 05, 2002 at 09:30:19PM +0000, Ian wrote:
On Tuesday 05 February 2002 00:57, 'Frank Shute' wrote:
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.
Not s much a decree as a comparison with other countries and the view that keeping more people educated for longer is what makes for economic prosperity.
I'm sorry Ian but I have to disagree with you, it's a decree or target or whatever you like to call it but it's a figure that's been set in stone. It's not a comparison with other countries. I agree with you that they want to educate people further and longer, and we'd all probably agree that that is a `good thing'. But you don't do that by setting entirely arbitrary targets. You encourage people to get themselves educated, you don't force them into it which is what the target essentially does. It forces people to meet those targets irrespective of the worth of sending 50% of people to university. I still reckon that most of this 50% would probably have better, more fulfilling lives outside of a university. It's implicit nowadays that if you don't go to university that educationally you have failed, your teachers have failed and the schools have failed. How do you encourage people to go to university & meet the targets? Of course, you scrap the grant and ask students to incur huge debts....ah yes, the wonders of the `third way' and `joined up government'.
So irrespective of the individual merit of an applicant, university's are feeling compelled into dropping standards
Another way of looking at it is that teaching in unis has to improve because there are higher expectations of what they should be able to get from students of lower ability.
But it can't happen. Teaching can only improve marginally, sure there are some lecturers who are duff but most do their damndest for stuff all pay and ever dwindling resources as a result of the increased student numbers.
That is exactly what is happening in primary and secondary education. You can argue that its inappropriate for unis and there should be some other institution but that is probably just like the differentiation between grammar and secondary mods which is all but gone.
But by producing the league tables you're essentially saying: `see those schools at the top of the tables, they're the grammars and the ones at the other end are the comprehensives' so really it still exists.
what is by any stretch of the imagination a bogus quota dreamed up by some think-tank
Not really, its just a matter of getting more people through HE. Its debateable about whether it should be 30,40 50 or 60%
You don't address inadequate numbers of people in higher education by introducing a quota, no more than you address racism in certain jobs by introducing quotas it's patronising tosh & everybody ends up hating you both black & white.
In the end it has to be done incrementally for the system to cope but if its good for some why not all? OK courses might have to be changed and additional qualifications but there are HNC etc as well as degrees.
But it's not being done incrementally, in the last 20 yrs undergraduate numbers have snowballed & there's less choice for what form your tertiary education takes. Less choice is bad; it doesn't matter whether it's choosing a computer OS or type of education.
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.
But they are worthwhile to those students and as an employer I would rather take on someone who has been to university even if they were not in the top 20% of students.
I think you misunderstood me, I was talking about the lecturers being out of a job. As for choosing an employee it depends on the job, but I'd be keener to employ somebody nowadays with a less traditional qualification than a degree then I would say twenty years ago - largely because it would show an independence of thought and I just don't think that a degree has the same amount of credibility nowadays.
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
Actually that isn't true either. There are plenty of people with pure maths and science degrees who then find it difficult to get into the jobs they want and things like engineering are often not well paid. Education has always had a problem competing with industry in the jobs market.
If there are people coming out of universities with maths/engineering degrees and not getting jobs then something is very wrong indeed. Don't ask me what - it could be any number of things but that's really worrying.
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.
Equally examples can be found of management being more focussed and so on.
The managers are clueless government place-men. It's well known that health authority jobs and hence managers jobs are given as an act of political patronage by the government. These people haven't got a clue about management which is another reason why the health service is a disaster zone.
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.
Except they haven't and because the figures are available they are a lot more accountable.
The true measure of these managers and this governments usefulness is that despite their best efforts at cooking the figures they even managed to fail to cook them enough. Accountable to whom? They are all in it up to their necks in a wilful act of treason, corruption and public betrayal.
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:
But I used to inspect schools for a living and the rigour in the teaching that you so want definitely improved with more focus on these output measures. They can actually tell you a lot.
I'd quote Churchill to you about statistics but I'll make do with Vic Reeves instead: `87% of statistics are made up on the spot' To actually believe the statistics is an act of naivity on your part equivalent to little short of a belief in astrology.
OK care has to be exercised and probably things have gone too far but it certainly made a much needed difference in the focus of many people. For example, statistically my youngest son would almost certainly have got a C in maths at GCSE not a D if he had attended a different school. Its easy to see it just by looking at the stats.
I mentioned my experience in another post. My grade A at O level maths was a truly worthless crumb of comfort when I realised it meant precisely nothing - just another cooked up statistic.
- Look at papers now & papers 30 yrs ago and judge for yourself. IMO they are a country mile easier.
There is a lot more on them now. All the independent studies seem to come to no conclusion on this. I did my GCEs 30 years ago and I know they were different not necessarily harder. Even if they are a bit easier does it really matter? Just take A/A* grades if you think C is too easy.
But what's the equivalent to an A grade in O level maths in terms of GCSE maths nowadays? An exam board examiner spilled the beans and said that only 19% of people with GCSE A/A* would have *passed* O level maths - this was widely reported quite recently.
Then the studies suck and are done by people who are far from independent.
Again, not true. Radio 4 (nothing to do with exam boards AFAIK) got a reporter to do a GCSE in geography (he got an A GCE) and a GCSE student who got an A* to do the GCE. Conclusion from an examiner was the the reporter was good on factual knowledge but weak on analysis compared to the student.
But how much revision had he done?
Ever watched University Challenge recently? Some very bright young people *and* these days they have to answer science and maths questions ;-)
A trained monkey can answer general knowledge questions, doesn't mean they're bright.
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.
It is hands on. He uses cameras etc, he has done practical electronics, practical programming, business studies, maths etc. Why do you think things in the past were always better?
Because instead of bundling the `hands-on' students with the `academic' students, they had their differing needs catered for by differing establishments with differing strengths.
Back then they managed to integrate such a subject well with job experience and such like.
What makes you think that they don't now?
The colleges or polys where students like your son would have gone 20 odd years ago were specifically designed to deal with students like your son. Why then convert them all & paint them the same colour? It means a lack of specialisation.
He has had commercial jobs to do as work experience. He was commended by a BBC cameraman for a piece he did when he was doing a BTEC in media studies (another maligned subject based largely on ignorance - Chris Woodhead for one)
The less said about that bozo/child molester the better.
There was a more varied education available then: Unis, Polys, Colleges, apprenticeships...
No, ther ewas greater variety in the institutions which is a very inefficient and devisive means of delivery. Everyone can still find their niche. Unis are just different types of place and they have to change like everyone else.
But it used to be that you did a subject like film and you immediately narrowed the field down by saying `poly or college'. You then narrowed the field down further by saying `which ones do film'. Now every university in the land probably does film. Inefficient or what?
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.
They don't . In the case of my son the maths component is a small part of the course and its not at A level but it does actually bring him up in the areas needed. Stafford Uni seem quite capable of doing this. My other son graduated with a 2.1 in CAD from UCE but his main strength was using CAD software not maths. Does it matter?
Yes. Because he's then unable to make full use of the CAD software, certainly in any meaningful engineering design respect. Things like FEA and 2nd moments of area would be meaningles concepts to him. BTW, I don't mean to demean your son's achievement in any way, it's just that without the maths his use of the software is limited.
He works for his mother's computer company and is mainly involved in buying hardware and music technology. What matters is that he has had the opportunity to mature and develop in a technological environment the precise nature of it is not that important.
Sure and I guess he had a good time doing it but in my day CAD meant that you were a pretty useful design engineer or architect - I guess things change. Glad to hear he's got a job though.
Education needs to be stratified but not just on the grounds of academic ability.
Seems to me that stratifying on the grounds of ability is exactly what you want. Education needs to differentiate on the grounds of ability but it also needs to be flexible and streamlined. The old system was anything but.
It's inflexible in that there is now less real choice IMO. `Streamlined' is just a synonym for `less choice'.
Maybe but perhaps its just as easy and cost-effective to change the nature of universities to be rather broader in their scope.
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.
Well I have to disagree with that. On the whole comprehensive schools provide scope for movement as well as differentiation. I do a lot of work In Kent LEA the last bastion of the grammar school and I see the damage done to the minority.
What damage?
You seem to have a strange mixture of politics. Pro-selection, anti-league tables, pro-elitism anti the Daily Mail ;-).
I don't know if it's that strange, I don't toe anybody's line & there's plenty of people like me who feel disenfranchised and disgusted by politics. I'd go and burn down MacDonald's if I had any energy left after writing monster screeds to mailing lists ;)
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.
Its ICT :-). ICT is not up for grabs, its politically symbolic and has been hi-jacked by the likes of BECTa who get funded to the tune of about £12m a year to further their agenda under the guise of being official advisors to the DfEE. The only real way to counter this is to set fires burning at grass roots level that will eventually roast the quangos and LEA bureaucracy into action.
`fires burning'....parliament, DfEE, Buck House, the Vatican ....now you're talking;)
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.
Question is why set the cut off level at an arbitrary 10 or 30 %? That is like grammar schools at an arbitrary 25% or 30% if they are struggling for admission numbers ;-)
That's my whole point about the entirely arbitrary nature of these figures/targets.
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.
Its just a short hand way of saying innate ability. You can make a difference to cognitive ability but that's traditionally been less emphasised than knowledge in exams because of the simple cost of examining.
That's interesting.
I doubt you can actually get a cultural, learning non-influenced IQ test.
That's what I've always felt.
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!
So things are not any different. I did Cambridge and I seem to be older than you :-)
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.
QCA is the governement regulating body its predecessor SCAA. There has always been a regulating body for the exams so exams have to get past this body to go through. If you are saying QCA is politically corrupt, then the nature of the exam boards, whether public or privately owned or a charity is really irrelevant. other fields.
If they're public companies then it's a very different thing in my book - after all a public company's whole purpose is to maximise profit for shareholders irrespective of pretty much anything. This immediately jeapordises the integrity of any exam knocked up by them.
But the IQ/EQ argument is another thread :-)
The exams are easier to pass, there's no question of this - the results prove it.
No they don't, it might just be that the students are better prepared.
The exams are easier to pass - whether that's due to students being better prepared is debatable. IMO it's not.
Its interesting that the ones who have a vested interest in proving they are cleverer because they passed the exams when they were harder are us oldies. Bit insulting to some of the youngsters who work particularly hard.
THEN INSULT THEM! It's an important point `are exams easier than they once where?' and I'm damned if I'm going to be hushed up by some stupid bloody Education Secretary saying that `I'm insulting the hard working kids of today'. I'm surprised you've fallen for that `politically correct' claptrap. If they're so bloody clever then they can stand up for themselves can't they?
I have taught plenty of kids who were not as bright as me at their age but worked far harder and some who were simply a lot clever than me. Independent studies do not bear out your conclusions. Personally, I don't see it matters anyway. All you need is to provide routes for progression and ways for employers to make decisions and I see no evidence that either of these is compromised.
Employers can't make informed decisions, when they say they want a graduate for a post they'll now get 50% of the country turning up on their doorstep rather than the single digit figure it once was.
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 ;)
But all the evidence suggests that nothing could be further from the truth.
In my personal experience there's a lot to be said for it.
At the opposite end of the spectrum telling them they are wonderful no matter what is equally as ineffective.
It's worse IMO. They just end up thick, self-satisfied and smug...look around you, parliament's crawling with them.
The devil is in the detail.
True, so why the hell is the govt not looking at the detail?
regards,
Regards, -- Frank *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Boroughbridge. Tel: 01423 323019 --------- PGP keyID: 0xC0B341A3 *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* http://www.esperance-linux.co.uk/ You have an unusual understanding of the problems of human relationships.