Switzerland About To Vote On Minaret Ban

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Grade inflation occurs at the boundaries between grades, not the easiness of exams. This is due to a policy instituted by, er, the Conservative government. And isn't it such a shame that people are allowed to practice essays rather than fail at something which they haven't been taught to do.

A policy persued to extremes by Labour. Also, notice I bolded that part? Look up the difference between formative and Summative assesment. Multiple rewrites of summative essays and exams is THE major form of grade inflation. Also, you're aguing that because the school system is so screwed up that students are not taught essay-writing, they should have more re-writes?

That's a failure of the curriculem, if true.... but it isn't because you're supposed to write essays for the three years before you take your GCSEs.

The next person who says "Exams are getting easier" without having done or taught one for twenty years is going to get a punch in the gob. I'm guessing you did neither.

Besides, that has nothing to do with what I originally said.

I've done both, why the presumption?

That affects stupid rich kids as much as stupid poor kids. Stupid rich kids are much more likely to get a better standard of living though.

Rich Kids are more likely to go to private school, and therefore more likely to do the IntBach, which is about twice as hard as A-Levels.

[Furunculus]

The next person who says "Exams are getting easier" without having done or taught one for twenty years is going to get a punch in the gob. I'm guessing you did neither.

Exams are getting easier, but it was less than twenty years ago since my experience, so you're short of a reason to punch me in the gob.

[Subotan]

A policy persued to extremes by Labour.

So, the mainstream Left's position is the same as the Mainstream Right's one then? Or is the next Conservative government going to reverse their own policy?

Multiple rewrites of summative essays and exams is THE major form of grade inflation.

http://www.economist.com/world/brita...gin_payBarrier

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

ARE ever-rising A-level results evidence of better teaching and harder-working pupils, as Labour education secretaries claim each August? Or are they proof of spoon-feeding syllabuses and easier exams, as the opposition Conservatives say?

This year’s results, published on August 20th, provided another chance for those on both sides to “agree or disagree”. The pass rate rose for the 27th year running, and is now 97.5%, up from 68.2% in 1982. The share of A-grades went up too, by 0.8 percentage points compared with last year, and now stands at 26.7%. The end result of this 27-year bull run is that an eighth of all candidates now get three A grades, more than used to get a single A back then.

On the face of it, this is a success story. But probe the figures and they start to look flakier. School league tables, and the less selective universities, count grades regardless of subject, so an A in photography equals one in physics. But that assumption of parity is inaccurate, according to researchers at Durham University. By comparing results in different subjects awarded to the same candidates, and grades at A-level and GCSE, they have shown that some subjects really are softer (see chart). The idea is that an educational “Gresham’s Law” is at work, with bad qualifications driving out good as schools push pupils towards easier subjects in the hope of rising up the league tables, and pupils scramble after any old As to present to undiscriminating universities.

There is evidence that this happens—but only at the margins. If the Durham team’s figures are used to adjust grades, the real value of newly minted A-levels has fallen a little compared with their face value every year since 2003, as slightly more students choose easier subjects over hard ones than did the year before. During that time a gap of around half a percentage point opened up between the two. The fact that certain subjects are required for many degrees—mathematics for engineering; the sciences for medicine—acts as a countervailing force. So do the selective universities, which generally prefer candidates who take the tougher subjects.

Lacking any such restraint is year-on-year grade inflation across the board. And that, like continental drift, is hard to see in action. One oft-tried way to spot it—looking at old exam papers—is little help, since standards are set more by the marking than the syllabus or test. (“What is love?” is easy if “An emotion” gets full marks; hateful if one must illustrate with sonnets and explain how neurotransmitters function.) But in the long run, it can have a dramatic effect. The Durham team used aptitude tests to show that pupils of a given ability get far higher A-level grades now than they used to 20 years ago. Over the same period an 18-percentage point gap opened up between pass rates in A-levels and the International Baccalaureate.

Alan Smithers, an educationalist at Buckingham University, thinks grades inflate when examiners check scripts that lie on boundaries between grades. Every year some are pushed up but virtually none down, resulting in a subtle year-on-year shift. Wider expectations also seem to be mildly inflationary. He points to 2002, when the cack-handed introduction of a new A-level curriculum led to soaring grades. Exam boards panicked, and shunted grade boundaries to drag them back down. And when results fall, as they did with the English tests taken by 11-year-olds this summer, that provokes outrage too.
The main reform being proposed by Michael Gove, the Tory education spokesman, is for harder subjects like maths to be worth more in school league tables than softer ones like sociology. But since blanket grade inflation rather than a shift to easier ones is the main force at work, this would have little effect. And tackling it would entail limiting the share of candidates allowed to get each grade, as happened until the mid-1980s.

That would be politically tricky, since such limits seem unattractively arbitrary. Moreover, it would mean abandoning any hope of measuring even genuine improvements in educational standards. Whether or not Mr Gove gets the chance to implement his ideas after the next election, the ritual of hurrahs and boos over A-level results seems likely to continue.

It's hardly likely the probable next Tory government is going to say "For a decade and a bit, Middle England, you've had it too easy. In actual fact, all of your kids are stupid" and put grades back to pre-inflationary levels.

Multiple rewrites of summative essays and exams is THE major form of grade inflation.

I'm arguing that it's screwed up that you can expect students to somehow magically know how to get good grades on essays when they aren't taught how to write them.

That's a failure of the curriculem, if true.... but it isn't because you're supposed to write essays for the three years before you take your GCSEs.

It gets more complex every year. Introducing easy essay standards, then increasing those standards in the following year without teaching the students about those increased standards has only one logical outcome; that students who did well last year will not do as well in that year and will have to resit to display their full potential.

I've done both, why the presumption?

Do you think exams are getting easier? The majority of people who say that are generally stuck up journalists who complain when grades go up, down or stay the same.

Rich Kids are more likely to go to private school, and therefore more likely to do the IntBach, which is about twice as hard as A-Levels.

Oh my, how dreadful for Victor. All that better primary and secondary schooling (Because mummy and daddy didn't want him to mix with the louts, and so pretended to be Catholic), better facilities, smaller class sizes, more extra-curricular spending, private tutoring, more stable home environment and reduced chance to fall into crime, all counts for nothing when Victor has to do slightly harder work than Bob on the Moss Side.

[Fragony]

Kinda ironic, as it turns out the one starting the petition is a Turkish muslim

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

So, the mainstream Left's position is the same as the Mainstream Right's one then? Or is the next Conservative government going to reverse their own policy?

Is Labour really left, though? Was Major really Right? Also, how does the current Conservative Party "own" a policy which was implemented before most of the current party members were sitting MP's? This is just a fallacy, the Conservative Party has been out of power for 12 years, they are no longer responsible for the state of the education system; nor are they bound by the decisions of the last Conservative Government and last Cabinet.

http://www.economist.com/world/brita...gin_payBarrier

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

ARE ever-rising A-level results evidence of better teaching and harder-working pupils, as Labour education secretaries claim each August? Or are they proof of spoon-feeding syllabuses and easier exams, as the opposition Conservatives say?

This year’s results, published on August 20th, provided another chance for those on both sides to “agree or disagree”. The pass rate rose for the 27th year running, and is now 97.5%, up from 68.2% in 1982. The share of A-grades went up too, by 0.8 percentage points compared with last year, and now stands at 26.7%. The end result of this 27-year bull run is that an eighth of all candidates now get three A grades, more than used to get a single A back then.

On the face of it, this is a success story. But probe the figures and they start to look flakier. School league tables, and the less selective universities, count grades regardless of subject, so an A in photography equals one in physics. But that assumption of parity is inaccurate, according to researchers at Durham University. By comparing results in different subjects awarded to the same candidates, and grades at A-level and GCSE, they have shown that some subjects really are softer (see chart). The idea is that an educational “Gresham’s Law” is at work, with bad qualifications driving out good as schools push pupils towards easier subjects in the hope of rising up the league tables, and pupils scramble after any old As to present to undiscriminating universities.

There is evidence that this happens—but only at the margins. If the Durham team’s figures are used to adjust grades, the real value of newly minted A-levels has fallen a little compared with their face value every year since 2003, as slightly more students choose easier subjects over hard ones than did the year before. During that time a gap of around half a percentage point opened up between the two. The fact that certain subjects are required for many degrees—mathematics for engineering; the sciences for medicine—acts as a countervailing force. So do the selective universities, which generally prefer candidates who take the tougher subjects.

Lacking any such restraint is year-on-year grade inflation across the board. And that, like continental drift, is hard to see in action. One oft-tried way to spot it—looking at old exam papers—is little help, since standards are set more by the marking than the syllabus or test. (“What is love?” is easy if “An emotion” gets full marks; hateful if one must illustrate with sonnets and explain how neurotransmitters function.) But in the long run, it can have a dramatic effect. The Durham team used aptitude tests to show that pupils of a given ability get far higher A-level grades now than they used to 20 years ago. Over the same period an 18-percentage point gap opened up between pass rates in A-levels and the International Baccalaureate.

Alan Smithers, an educationalist at Buckingham University, thinks grades inflate when examiners check scripts that lie on boundaries between grades. Every year some are pushed up but virtually none down, resulting in a subtle year-on-year shift. Wider expectations also seem to be mildly inflationary. He points to 2002, when the cack-handed introduction of a new A-level curriculum led to soaring grades. Exam boards panicked, and shunted grade boundaries to drag them back down. And when results fall, as they did with the English tests taken by 11-year-olds this summer, that provokes outrage too.
The main reform being proposed by Michael Gove, the Tory education spokesman, is for harder subjects like maths to be worth more in school league tables than softer ones like sociology. But since blanket grade inflation rather than a shift to easier ones is the main force at work, this would have little effect. And tackling it would entail limiting the share of candidates allowed to get each grade, as happened until the mid-1980s.

That would be politically tricky, since such limits seem unattractively arbitrary. Moreover, it would mean abandoning any hope of measuring even genuine improvements in educational standards. Whether or not Mr Gove gets the chance to implement his ideas after the next election, the ritual of hurrahs and boos over A-level results seems likely to continue.

You've completely avoided the point about rewiting summative assessments.

It's hardly likely the probable next Tory government is going to say "For a decade and a bit, Middle England, you've had it too easy. In actual fact, all of your kids are stupid" and put grades back to pre-inflationary levels.

On the other hand, they can't continue to allow people with C's in English to remain functionally illiterate, as was found recently.

I'm arguing that it's screwed up that you can expect students to somehow magically know how to get good grades on essays when they aren't taught how to write them.

Failure of teaching, lack of formative assesment. Neither are an excuse to repeat summative assessment ad nauseum.

It gets more complex every year. Introducing easy essay standards, then increasing those standards in the following year without teaching the students about those increased standards has only one logical outcome; that students who did well last year will not do as well in that year and will have to resit to display their full potential.

Oh woe! It's the same at degree level, it get's harder every year. Either you shape up, or you crash and burn. Still, this is no excuse to repeat summative assessments. Summative assessments should reflect the student's ability, formative assesments are used to test whether the student is learning.

Do you think exams are getting easier? The majority of people who say that are generally stuck up journalists who complain when grades go up, down or stay the same.

I think that in the four years between myself and my sister there has been a softening of subjects, especially in areas such as biology where more subjective "ethical" questions are asked; pointless at GCSE level. There are also more "open book" exams than there used to be, or questions that are confined to a particular portion of a text, with that text provided. English exams are particularly bad, while Welsh ones are much harder. I know someone who passed Italian GSCE basically without a teacher.

Oh my, how dreadful for Victor. All that better primary and secondary schooling (Because mummy and daddy didn't want him to mix with the louts, and so pretended to be Catholic), better facilities, smaller class sizes, more extra-curricular spending, private tutoring, more stable home environment and reduced chance to fall into crime, all counts for nothing when Victor has to do slightly harder work than Bob on the Moss Side.

Not really, as Victor (who calls their child Victor?, how about Peter?) will come out with qualifications valued more by British and foriegn universities. Bob will just have three or four fairly worthless A-Levels. I will be sending my children to a Public School for all the reasons listed above. I went through State education, and I want to give my children the opertunities I was denied.

[Beskar]

II know someone who passed Italian GSCE basically without a teacher.

I know plently like that, even though who did the GCSE's in year 9. Want to know their secret? It was their native language.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

I know plently like that, even though who did the GCSE's in year 9. Want to know their secret? It was their native language.

Really? This person's native language was Welsh.

Your point?

[Subotan]

Is Labour really left, though? Was Major really Right? =

Which is exactly my point though, about the "Mainstream Left".

Also, how does the current Conservative Party "own" a policy which was implemented before most of the current party members were sitting MP's? This is just a fallacy, the Conservative Party has been out of power for 12 years, they are no longer responsible for the state of the education system; nor are they bound by the decisions of the last Conservative Government and last Cabinet.

I was pointing out that it wasn't a "Mainstream Left" policy, and that there would be quite the political kerfuffle if the Conservatives did totally reform the education system.

You've completely avoided the point about rewiting summative assessments.

I've never heard of anything of the sort.
(Besides, you totally avoided the point I made in that spoiler box)

On the other hand, they can't continue to allow people with C's in English to remain functionally illiterate, as was found recently.

True.

Failure of teaching, lack of formative assesment. Neither are an excuse to repeat summative assessment ad nauseum.
.

How are children supposed to learn how to write essays if you won't let them practice them?

Summative assessments should reflect the student's ability, formative assesments are used to test whether the student is learning.

Can you give me an example of both, as I'm not particularly clear on the differences.

I think that in the four years between myself and my sister there has been a softening of subjects, especially in areas such as biology where more subjective "ethical" questions are asked; pointless at GCSE level.

Why are they pointless at GCSE level?

There are also more "open book" exams than there used to be, or questions that are confined to a particular portion of a text, with that text provided. English exams are particularly bad, while Welsh ones are much harder. I know someone who passed Italian GSCE basically without a teacher.

So you woud rather have a situtation where students base their academic ability on their ability to memorise sections of text?

I know someone who passed Italian GSCE basically without a teacher.

I did German GSCE. I needed a teacher to do so.

Not really, as Victor will come out with qualifications valued more by British and foriegn universities.

If that was the case to such a degree as you claim, then nobody would do A Levels.

(who calls their child Victor?, how about Peter?)

Bob will just have three or four fairly worthless A-Levels.

If he has studied Dance, PE, Health and Social Care and Food Tech, then yes, they're worthless. But not all A Levels are worthless.

I will be sending my children to a Public School for all the reasons listed above. I went through State education, and I want to give my children the opertunities I was denied.

I've been through state education all my life (Voiluntarily; my parents gave me a choice), and I don't think I've been denied any opportunities. I'd send my children to state school, and if they're stupid, they'll fail, and if they're not, they'll succeed. I don't like the idea of them getting a better education than another student because I bought it.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Which is exactly my point though, about the "Mainstream Left".

Ok, but that causes a problem if the "mainstream Left" has moved away from the Centre Left, either towards the Right, or towards the Far-Left. Labour seems to have done both.

I was pointing out that it wasn't a "Mainstream Left" policy, and that there would be quite the political kerfuffle if the Conservatives did totally reform the education system.

Perhaps, but that's not because the current policy is Conservative, more that changing the status-quo is always difficult.

I've never heard of anything of the sort.
(Besides, you totally avoided the point I made in that spoiler box)

I dissagree that boundaries are important to grade inflation, when compared to the ability to retake and improve scores.

How are children supposed to learn how to write essays if you won't let them practice them?

Can you give me an example of both, as I'm not particularly clear on the differences.

Formative assessment is used to assess learning, but doesn't usually contribute to the final grade, Summative assess attainment and does contribute towards grade.

[Beskar]

If you set the same test for ten years, all other variables aside, and on average people scored better each year, is the test getting easier or are the students just better?

If improved teaching methods and skills increases performance of the students, is it the fault of the students that they are scoring well? Are the tests getting 'easier' ? (answer to both of these are no)

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

If you set the same test for ten years, all other variables aside, and on average people scored better each year, is the test getting easier or are the students just better?

If improved teaching methods and skills increases performance of the students, is it the fault of the students that they are scoring well? Are the tests getting 'easier' ? (answer to both of these are no)

Today people can get C grades at GCSE and be functionally illiterate.

The tests are getting easier.

[Beskar]

Today people can get C grades at GCSE and be functionally illiterate.

No they cannot.

[Furunculus]

interesting perspective on Islam in europe:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/...668750,00.html