Re: OT: Everyone born after a certain date is ignorant and can be dismissed

In article <yaqXxUFagU5EFwkq@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Robert Henderson <philip@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[Coursework] counts for forty per cent of many GCSE exams
It doesn't count for *anything* in GCSE *exams*.
Now I have heard everything. Are you claiming GCSE grades are not partly
determined by coursework?

No. Perhaps you misread "*exams*", even though I supplied the
emphasis especially for your benefit?

It is of course absurd to call GCSEs exams
because of this, but that is how they are commonly described. Rh

They may be so described in the Henderson household, and
perhaps even in the chattering press articles that you read, but
I'm not responsible for your imprecisions.

[...] Some topics can only be assessed
sensibly outside the exam room.
Translation: plagiarism will be allowed to count towards final degrees.

Typically stupid translation. How do you propose to assess a
prospective surgeon's ability? A musician's [or do you belong to the
Ebenezer Prout school of musicology]? A computer programmer's? Do you
suppose we are incapable of detecting plagiarism, given that students
who indulge in it are invariably weak, idle or both?

An exam which is so easy that students who should not get the
highest grade score 100% has been spectacularly badly set.
That is precisely what is happening. 10% of this year's A Level students
achieved three straight As or better. Quite absurd. RH

And how many of them score 100% in even one of their subjects?
More to the point, how many students who deserved only B scored 100%
in every module of their subject?

[...] Those who
might have wanted to leave school and do engineering apprenticeships
are now more likely to go into HE and do media or tourism, again
following the money, the glamour and the role models. Nothing at
all to do with cheating examiners.
Wood is talking about school children in general.

No he wasn't, he was talking about school leavers. In days
gone by, even bright 14/15/16yos might have left school, often "tech"
school, and gone straight to work as apprentices in companies like
his; and as a well-known hi-tech company, his might well have had
the pick of the crop, before or after [eg] attendance at poly. Now
there are no bright 14/15yos doing this, and rather few bright 16yos
doing it, few schools specialising in technology, and declining
numbers of bright 18yos choosing to do so. In fact, this paragraph
is almost exactly what Wood actually said [FT article]:

" Siemens struggled to find well-trained school leavers to work in
" manufacturing and take up apprenticeships ... Naturally the ones
" who achieve greater success tend to go on to tertiary education. "

Elsewhere, the article complains that "teenagers had been put off
science subjects" and that a pharmacy company is "having to retrain
graduates in laboratory skills" [so much for exams ...].

With the 7-8% of school leavers at university when the study was made
all of the students could have had IQs over 110. RH

Only if either (a) the median IQ was considerably over 115
and/or (b) universities were *deliberately* selecting in favour of
low IQ. If the *average* IQ was 115, and universities preferred
bright students, then *at least* 40% must have had IQ below 110;
if the *median* was 115, then [only] at least 25% must have been
below 110. If you Google for "IQ 115" over in "uk.p.m", several
of the top articles are directly relevant, and threads referenced
thereby do some of the maths for you.

Any exam which does not test canddates on the smae standard of question
is fraudulent. RH

Don't be daft. The requirement is that every candidate has
the same opportunity to score marks, not that every part of every
test has to be at the same level. I don't know of any maths exam
at any level from GCSE upwards that has not included some easier
material to give barely-passing students a chance to score a few
marks and some harder material to test the really good students.
That applied to exams from 1900 or 1950 just as much as to today.

--
Andy Walker, School of MathSci., Univ. of Nott'm, UK.
anw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
.

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