Legalising fourth trimester abortion?

Campus Reform have the details, scary they are too.

Bright pupils 'falling two years behind peers in Far East' - Telegraph

'Bright schoolchildren from England are falling two years behind their peers in other countries by the end of secondary school, according to research.

Figures show that the cleverest pupils often match the best performers in leading Far Eastern nations by the age of 10 in mathematics but then start to lose ground.

By the time they reach 16, children are the equivalent of two years behind those in counties such as Hong Kong and Taiwan, it emerged.'

Per http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/9885577/Bright-pupils-falling-two-years-behind-peers-in-Far-East.html

The dumbing down of education in England and Wales is a crime but so long as the Labour party is so intertwined with the teaching unions and the Conservative party is lead by a liberal, matters will not improve.

Where is the BBC coverage of this report?

The one hundred and fifty-seventh weekly "No shit, Sherlock" award

This week's winners are OFQUAL, the exams 'watchdog' for the incredible insight that (as reported by the BBC) 'GCSEs and A-levels in geography and science are easier than they were 10 years ago'

Exams getting easier under last Labour government? "No shit, Sherlock"
 

Dumbing down education in England

This article from yesterday's Telegraph shows so much of what is wrong with the education system in England.

'Mandrake hears that one examination board, Edexcel, has added Britain’s Got Talent to its GCSE syllabus.

“Pupils are expected to study the ITV1 home page of Britain’s Got Talent, an advert for a reality show called Got to Dance and a 2009 cover of Heat magazine,” says Toby Young, the author and Telegraph blogger, who helped set up one of the first free schools last year.

Edexcel says Britain’s Got Talent was included as part of a section testing English Language GCSE students “on their ability to analyse non-fiction, contemporary text from a range of sources”.

Joseph Reynolds, an education campaigner, whose daughter is studying the course, tells me: “This is a prime example of aiming at the lowest common denominator. Britain’s Got Talent has been chosen purely to make it fun. Where is the educational factor?”

 

An Edexcel spokesman says: “This approach gives students an opportunity to demonstrate their ability to analyse the English language in its many forms.”

It insists that all pupils are also required to sit examinations on poets and authors including Shakespeare, Steinbeck and Wordsworth.'

'the English language in its many forms' - So what? Pupils can read Heat and watch crap reality/talent shows in their own time. In English classes they should be made to read and study somewhat more improving books. That line that 'all pupils are also required to sit examinations on poets and authors including Shakespeare, Steinbeck and Wordsworth' is also disingenuous; back in my day we read entire Shakespeare plays, wrote essays on them and could be examined on any part or parts of the plays. Now too many examination boards require that only parts of Shakespeare plays are read and only knowledge of those parts are tested.

English schools have been being dumbed down for years and the last Labour government just sped up the process as it pursued its policy of ending elitism. I have nothing but contempt for those people who have destroyed England's educational standards and the future of many of our young.

Who said educational standards had fallen in the UK?

I read that school pupils could be expected to learn their times tables by the age of nine instead of 11. By the age of nine? I attended primary school in the late 1960s/early 1970s and I am pretty sure that I had learnt my times-tables (1-12) by the age of seven. What has happened to education in this country such that the target age for knowing the times-tables is currently 11 and the aim is to reduce that to just nine?

The dumbing down of education in this country started under the Conservatives but it was under the last Labour government that it accelerated. Standards fell, exams were made easier and all in the name of equality & opportunity and of course so as to show that everything was getting better under Labour.

What idiots really believed that educational standards were rising over the last 30 years? Who really believed that students were so bright that suddenly anything less than an A* was a sign of failure? Who really believed that the average English teenager was more intelligent and better educated than their predecessors from the 1980s?

Of course those of us who pointed out the dumbing down of educational standards were told that we should be celebrating the achievements of pupils & teachers and that we just didn't understand that pupils were working that much harder. The fact that many university students were graduating unable to do mental arithmetic or write a coherent document was irrelevant. The fact that many science and mathematics university entrants needed a term or longer remedial courses to bring them up to the standards of 20 years ago went all but unmentioned. The fact that parts of modern maths A-Levels were on a par with parts of my O-Level maths paper were deemed unsayable. I could go on and on but what's the point?

Educational standards in England were dumbed down so Labour could claim ever rising standards even as the international comparisons showed this to be a lie. This country has suffered for many reasons at the hands of the last Labour government but their alliance with the educational establishment to falsely reward so many of this country's children may be amongst their most heinous of crimes.

Who is Osama Bin Laden?

It seems that a lot of people, especially teenagers did not know who Osama Bin Laden was...

More at Yahoo.

Education, education, education - improvements in standards were not real!

I am not shocked to learn that the latest OECD Economic Survey of the UK is not convinced about the veracity of the UK's alleged incredible rise educational standards under the last Labour government. Here's some of their comments:

'Despite sharply rising school spending per pupil during the last ten years, improvements in schooling outcomes have been limited in the United Kingdom.'

Limited improvements but Labour have boasted for years about how education standards have improved under their increased 'investment'.

That's subjective but exam standards really rose under the Labour government, didn't they:

'Official test scores and grades in England show systematically and significantly better performance than international and independent tests … The measures used by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) … show significant increases in quality over time, while the measures based on cognitive tests not used for grading show declines or minimal improvements.'

How can that be? Surely the last Labour government and the teaching unions would not have conspired to artificially boost exam result, would they?

'The share of A–level entries awarded grade A has risen continuously for 18 years... independent surveys of cognitive skills do not support this development.'

This is shocking news and a damning indictment of the last Labour government, although to be fair the OECD do also say that 'The share of A–level entries awarded grade A has risen continuously for 18 years and has roughly trebled since 1980'

So educational standards have not risen and pupils are not any better taught or more intelligent than they were in the 1980s. So when teachers and government ministers said that any questioning of exam standards was disrespectful to hard working pupils, they were hiding the truth; shocking.

I turned to the BBC, after all they have an education news section on their website expecting to find an angry piece decrying the lies that they and we had been fed by the last Labour government. Imagine my surprise when as at 8pm on Thursday 17 March I can find not a word about the OECD report; are they trying to hide the truth from the British public?

Here are the screen dumps to show that the BBC are not reporting this relevant news story...

Friday afternoon catch-up

Once again I have too many Firefox tabs and not enough time, so here we go:

1) Politics Home reveal why the LibDems control the coalition government.

2) The Telegraph reports that the Crown Prince of Iran is calling for aid for the demonstrators but unlike in Egypt Barack Obama and the western media are just not interested. Why the double standards Barack Obama? It is almost as though you want Islamists to keep and gain power in the Middle East.

3) The Blaze think that they may have video proof that Mexican authorities are operating inside of the USA.

4) Harry Phibbs in The Mail thinks that we should not get rid of the First Past The Post voting system.

5) Devils Kitchen agrees with me that National Insurance is a ponzi scheme and just as out of control as Bernie Madoff's and that the government's response will make us all poorer (except for the unemployed).

6) Gates of Vienna thinks that the BBC has broken its charter and explains at length why - all relating to Geert Wilders and radical Islam.

7)The Mail reports that the Royal Society has realised that 'A'Levels are now not fit for purpose - That's the comprehensive education system and 13 years of a Labour government dumbing down exams for you.

8) OyVaGoy has 10 facts that 'they' don't want you to know about the evil right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

9) CIF Watch have spotted that even The Guardian's travel section is influenced by the newspaper's anti-Israel agenda.

10) Daniel Hannan in The Telegraph thinks that the state can be successfully shrunk and that Ronald Reagan US Presidency should be the model.

11) The BBC report on a rather nasty comment made by one of their heroes - the Irish tax avoider Bono.

12) Harry's Place explains why iEngage should not be allowed to serve as the secretariat to the all party parliamentary group on Islamaphobia. Very sound stuff as always from Harry's Place now one of my favourite blogs.

13) The Mail managed to report the interesting fact that 'Road deaths dropped 14 per cent in three months while speed cameras were being axed or switched off.  Fatalities over a year fell 21 per cent to a record low, Department for Transport figures show.'

14) Finally The Mail reports on the Indian inventor who claims to have invented the flying car - unfortunately its a flying 1980s Maruti.

Why is subject knowledge “elitist”?

The way that the last Labour government failed the youth of this country by dumbing down education and the standard of exams was a disgrace and Tony 'education, education & education' Blair should be ashamed of himself; however he's probbaly too busy counting his money. I was interested to read in The Telegraph the reactions of at least one teaching union:

'They insisted that a renewed focus on detailed subject knowledge was “elitist” and would alienate thousands of children, particularly those from the poorest backgrounds.'

Why is focussing on detailed subject knowledge 'elitist' in a bad way? 'Elitist' in that the better pupils will do better at school, yes, but that is a good thing. 'Elitist' in that only the rich will do well at school, no. Intelligence and hard work is not a class or wealth issue, it is partly genetic, partly environmental and largely application based. The 'all must have prizes' attitude of the left-wing teachers unions, educational establishment and last Labour government has reduced standards in our schools and left many businesses reeling at the lack of knowledge and skills possessed by school leavers. Dumbing down educational standards in an attempt to make the less able feel better about themselves at the expense of the better able is a crime and the current educational system, which prioritises politically correct teaching methods over the accumulation of hard knowledge, is leaving British pupils lagging behind those in other countries and thus damaging this country's prospects.

Degree results have been dumbed down!

'Degree results obtained by The Sunday Telegraph show six out of 10 students were handed either a first or an upper second in 2010, compared with just one in three graduates in 1970. '

The Telegraph seemed shocked. Any intelligent person must surely have realised that with league tables come institutions who want to artificially boosttheir league positions and increasing their degree results is an obvious way. Under the last Labour government 'A' levels were made easier and easier, I hardly know of any child of a friend who has got less than a 'B' in any 'A' level for some years now, and degrees have followed the same path. This country is producing young adults with an exaggerated sense of their intelligence & worth and thus their possible career. It's not good for them and its not good for the Country but it helped Labour get re-elected twice, so I presume Blair, Brown, Blunkett and co thought it worthwhile.

'Gis us a job' - John Redwood and his commenters have some good points about CVs and job seekers

John Redwood and his commenters make some points along the lines that I have made before, most recently here.

Tricky question for a six year old but for a GCSE exam?

Constantly Furious reports that the following was a question on his daughter's GCSE chemistry exam:

'What fluid is used in the home for drinking and washing?

The possible answers - yes, of course this was multiple choice - were as follows:

Water, Copper, Salt or Soap?'

Tricky? Not really, no. Did any candidate get this question wrong? Is this question part if the exam to boost results? Does anyone believe that the last Labour government did not preside over a dumbing down of our education system?

Eduction, eduction, eduction

Is there anything that this Labour government cannot screw up? Take a look at their latest Party Political Broadcast here on the BBC's site. You can either watch it all or skip to 2:31....

"Eductional Maintenance Allowance has helped 2.8 million teenagers"

Well done New Labour, it looks as though your education policies are really having an effect...

Dumbed down US education

UC Berkeley, "for real"?

The fifty-third weekly "No shit, Sherlock" award

This week's award goes to the AQA exam board for this masterpiece of stating the obvious:

"Schools were frequently preoccupied by a focus on performance tables and for a lot of teachers, it was about their own performance review and the targets they had been set for the number of grade Cs they needed to achieve.

In some respects, this could have a detrimental effect on students who were sometimes encouraged to jump through hoops rather than be encouraged to think and apply mathematics."

Quotations from the Daily Mail

Are A-levels getting easier?

I know I have discussed this before but I found an interesting BBC magazine piece that I think bears wider coverage. BBC's John Hand took an A-level in Italian and concludes

"I outperformed my 1989 D grade for English Language Studies, based on a couple of hours of Italian study each week.

If I had the full six hours of classroom time each week, maybe I too would be in possession of an A grade. "

Two hours of study a week and he got a C at A-level, does that not seem a little "dumbed down"?

Somehow I think John Hand feels conflicted by this finding as he is keen to pint out first that:

"as a journalist, I am well versed in the art of gaining short-term knowledge of a subject."

and second that to fit in with "the narrative" on exam results:

"having seen the range of skills needed to gain top marks, it is important to value the efforts of those 18-year-olds who have done well today."

It's 'A' Level results day

'A' level results day and I cannot bear to listen to the radio. I know what I would hear if I did: "we should celebrate the good results", "hard working students", "people shouldn't diminish what our students have achieved", "unfair to teachers and students to criticise the exams", "the exams are no easier than they have ever been", etc. etc. etc.

The rubbish spouted about the 'A' level exams not being any easier than they were 20, 30, 40 years ago really annoys me, when they so blatantly are easier. Maybe the Conservatives idea of putting all exam papers online would illustrate this point.

However the other factor that annoys me even more is the way this deceitful Labour government found another way to fiddle the statistics. They made some practical qualifications "equivalent" to all or part of an 'A' level so studies in cake decoration, pottery, flower arranging and tanning treatments are being given equivalent value to all or part of traditional 'A' levels.

This Labour government had dumbed down the UK's education system at almost every level. 'A' levels are no longer the "gold standard" of education, degrees are easier than they have ever been, GCSEs get easier year by year etc.

The trouble is that any criticism of the exam is deliberately taken by the education establishment, the Labour government, the teaching unions and the BBC as an attack on students, thus nicely blocking such criticism.

How dare people say that Labour have dumbed down education

"Using Public Transport (Unit 1)

In completing the unit the student has demonstrated the ability to:

1. Walk to the local bus stop.

2. Stand or sit at the bus stop and wait for the arrival of a public bus.

3. Enter the bus in a calm and safe manner.

4. Be directed to a downstairs seat by a member of staff

5. Sit on the bus and observe through the windows.

6. Wait until the bus has stopped, stand on request and exit the bus. "

etc.
Manage that and you get an AQA. How dare people say that education has been dumbed down in this country by Labour's "and all shall have prizes" mentality?

Google top search terms for children

According to Symantec's OnlineFamily.Norton, a web-monitoring service for parents, the top 10 search terms for children whose parents use the service between February 2008 and July 2009 are:

1. YouTube
2. Google
3. Facebook
4. Sex
5. MySpace
6. Porn
7. Yahoo
8. Michael Jackson
9. Fred (YouTube star)
10. eBay

That's around 3.5 million searches.

Two thoughts:
1. Who on earth searches for "Google" or "Yahoo"; search engines?
2. How dumb do you have to be not to know or have saved as a favourite: Facebook, MySpace or eBay?
The dumbing down of Britain seems to be continuing apace!

Dumbing down the English education system - the fightback

It is common knowledge that this most disingenuous Labour government has conspired to "improve" exam results as a way of showing that education standards are improving, when they are not. Anybody who has had the misfortune to interview a school-leaver who has 8, 9, 10 or more top grade GCSEs and 3, 4 or more really excellent A'levels will know the problem. The results speak of the person being a genius or at least an excellently educated individual but you discover they have no mathematical aptitude, can hardly string a sentence together and have little idea of the practicalities of work. The school leaver with their fantastic grades this decade seem to be educationally about the level of a poor A'level student 20+ years ago.

So it was with some interest that I learned that the Conservatives plan to put a range of GCSE and A-level exam papers online, so that standards can be tracked over time. A great idea and one that would show how seriously devalued GCSE and A'levels have become.

Have a look at newspaper articles relating to the dumbing down of GCSEs and A'levels, especially those for mathematics and science, and wonder how anyone could think otherwise. You might also wonder what has happened to Lord Drayson and his personal review of GCSE and A-level science exam papers to satisfy himself they are not being "dumbed down". In December 2008 he said that:

"In coming into this job one of the things I asked my private office to do was to get me a set of last year's GCSE papers. They are also in the process of getting last year's A-level papers."

He had also "dusted down" the A-level and O-level papers that he took in the 1970s.

He said it was important to "make absolutely sure that the educational process to develop the brightest and the best... provides them with what they need too.

"As a science minister I'm determined to make sure that happens."

He added: "No dumbing down on my watch."

How did the review go then Lord Drayson?

Gordon Brown, Tony Blair before him, and other Labour ministers are fond of telling us how the UK's future is as a knowledge based economy. Well we have highly qualified students, but their qualifications are all but worthless.


I challenge you to look at a 1970s or early 1980s O'Level maths paper and a Physics or Chemistry A'level paper from the same period and tell me that standards have not dropped. You may carry out the exercise for English or History instead if you wish.