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1/35ish) My first ever mega thread. An American friend asked if I could explain the grades chaos. #examshambles This is what I came up with. It happened a) because the system was already an unfair mess and had been for some time, and b) because this government thrives on chaos,
2/35 and doesn't care about anything. Exams are unreliable, whatever any right winger tells you. What they test primarily is how good people are at taking exams, and how much preparation they've had.
3/35) And since Tony Blair, results have gone on getting better every year, which education secretaries have put down to their success at driving change and delivering a national curriculum, aka nailing children down in rows and terrifying the life out of them.
4/35) Evidence for that, fortuitously, appears today: UK children are the unhappiest in Europe: "'Fear of failure' giving UK children lowest happiness levels in Europe" https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/aug/28/fear-of-failure-giving-uk-children-lowest-happiness-levels-in-europe
5/35) There is another system called Centre Assessed Grades (CAGs). Teachers suggest what grades they think children are going to get. This enables universities to make offers prior to exams happening. CAGs are often higher than exam results.
5a/35 We never talk about the possibility that CAGs might actually reflect children's abilities better than exams do. That's not allowed.
6/35) Some authorities have developed systems to make any set of results more "consistent". Whether these are better is one of the great unanswered questions of the day. (Yeah right: the answer's NO! but moderating grades better fits the aim of turning out compliant workers.)
7/35) Modern systems involve algorithms, which are supposedly error proof. Actually, that's only supposed by people who don't understand a) people b) maths. Algorithms are made by people and therefore have people's biases and blindness built in.
8/35) Algorithms are always unambiguous, which people mistake for being right. People actually treat algorithms the same way they treat people. If you say something confidently, people believe you, even if you're blitheringly wrong.
8a/35 And algorithms, like Eton schoolboys, are always confident. Note the similarity between the word "confident" and the phrase "confidence trickster".
9/35) The English (and to an extent Scottish, Welsh and Irish) system uses schools as a key indicator as well as other metrics. So, if a school's results this year are much higher than last year's the algorithm tends to moderate them down.
9a/35 State schools tend to get moderated down more than private schools, and often northern schools compared to southern schools. Usually nobody notices.
10/35) This year no exams because of covid. Inequities in the education system have become even more apparent than usual, with better off and on the whole more southerly children getting much better online teaching than worse off and on the whole northern children.
11/35) So, how to give a fair grade to children who haven't been able to sit exams and get the usual unfair grade that way?
12/35) It's all right, said the government, the algorithm will do it. They said this back in March. Everybody else said, Er, minister, there may be some problems here.
13/35) But the education minister, one Gavin Williamson, was preoccupied with far more important things than education, like how to feed his pet tarantula when its daily supply of tasty morsels from Taiwan was cut off by Covid. (I may be exaggerating slightly there.
13a/35 But he does have a pet tarantula. And a whip. He fancies himself as some kind of hard man. If he ever came up against someone like, say, Vinny Jones, he'd wet himself.)
14/35) So we move on to results day - A-levels first, then a week later GCSEs and BTEC. According to the papers, on results day, nobody ever takes exams except white, female, blond pretty people. Who can jump up in the air more or less in unison.
14a/35 This year was the same. Except many of the white, female, blond, pretty people were crying.
15/35) There were protests. The protests got into the papers because so many of the protesters were young female blond, you get the picture. And people actually noticed, for once, that state schools results got moderated down more than private schools.
16/35) So the government u-turned and said they'd accept predicted grades if they were higher, so those people who the algorithm had said couldn't go to university could go to university. Problem solved. But...
1/35ish) My first ever mega thread. An American friend asked if I could explain the grades chaos. #examshambles This is what I came up with. It happened a) because the system was already an unfair mess and had been for some time, and b) because this government thrives on chaos,
2/35 and doesn't care about anything. Exams are unreliable, whatever any right winger tells you. What they test primarily is how good people are at taking exams, and how much preparation they've had.
3/35) And since Tony Blair, results have gone on getting better every year, which education secretaries have put down to their success at driving change and delivering a national curriculum, aka nailing children down in rows and terrifying the life out of them.
4/35) Evidence for that, fortuitously, appears today: UK children are the unhappiest in Europe: "'Fear of failure' giving UK children lowest happiness levels in Europe" https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/aug/28/fear-of-failure-giving-uk-children-lowest-happiness-levels-in-europe
5/35) There is another system called Centre Assessed Grades (CAGs). Teachers suggest what grades they think children are going to get. This enables universities to make offers prior to exams happening. CAGs are often higher than exam results.
5a/35 We never talk about the possibility that CAGs might actually reflect children's abilities better than exams do. That's not allowed.
6/35) Some authorities have developed systems to make any set of results more "consistent". Whether these are better is one of the great unanswered questions of the day. (Yeah right: the answer's NO! but moderating grades better fits the aim of turning out compliant workers.)
7/35) Modern systems involve algorithms, which are supposedly error proof. Actually, that's only supposed by people who don't understand a) people b) maths. Algorithms are made by people and therefore have people's biases and blindness built in.
8/35) Algorithms are always unambiguous, which people mistake for being right. People actually treat algorithms the same way they treat people. If you say something confidently, people believe you, even if you're blitheringly wrong.
8a/35 And algorithms, like Eton schoolboys, are always confident. Note the similarity between the word "confident" and the phrase "confidence trickster".
9/35) The English (and to an extent Scottish, Welsh and Irish) system uses schools as a key indicator as well as other metrics. So, if a school's results this year are much higher than last year's the algorithm tends to moderate them down.
9a/35 State schools tend to get moderated down more than private schools, and often northern schools compared to southern schools. Usually nobody notices.
10/35) This year no exams because of covid. Inequities in the education system have become even more apparent than usual, with better off and on the whole more southerly children getting much better online teaching than worse off and on the whole northern children.
11/35) So, how to give a fair grade to children who haven't been able to sit exams and get the usual unfair grade that way?
12/35) It's all right, said the government, the algorithm will do it. They said this back in March. Everybody else said, Er, minister, there may be some problems here.
13/35) But the education minister, one Gavin Williamson, was preoccupied with far more important things than education, like how to feed his pet tarantula when its daily supply of tasty morsels from Taiwan was cut off by Covid. (I may be exaggerating slightly there.
13a/35 But he does have a pet tarantula. And a whip. He fancies himself as some kind of hard man. If he ever came up against someone like, say, Vinny Jones, he'd wet himself.)
14/35) So we move on to results day - A-levels first, then a week later GCSEs and BTEC. According to the papers, on results day, nobody ever takes exams except white, female, blond pretty people. Who can jump up in the air more or less in unison.
14a/35 This year was the same. Except many of the white, female, blond, pretty people were crying.
15/35) There were protests. The protests got into the papers because so many of the protesters were young female blond, you get the picture. And people actually noticed, for once, that state schools results got moderated down more than private schools.
16/35) So the government u-turned and said they'd accept predicted grades if they were higher, so those people who the algorithm had said couldn't go to university could go to university. Problem solved. But...
17/35) Some time ago the government capped the number of students each university could accept. This was to stop UK universities competing for British students to make up the shortfall of foreign students due to covid. All of a sudden competition is a Bad Thing. Who knew?
18/35) So the universities had already filled up many of their courses, and had no spare capacity for the students who were able to use their predicted grades. This one will run and run.
19/35) Then out came the GCSE results. But not the BTEC results. They were held back. The government didn't say why but it's clearly because their algorithm was even worse.
20/35) There's even more unfairness in the system for some people. Home schooled students, for instance, don't have a predicted grade. To get one, they were told to go to their local school.
20a/35 Some local schools were not keen on this idea, because if the home schooled pupil did well, the algorithm might downgrade one of the school's own pupils.
21/35) That's the way the algorithm works. It determines that a school should get 2 As in subject x. If the school gets 3 As, one of them is marked down. It doesn't matter how good those 3 students are, one of them gets randomly marked for downgrading.
22/35) And then the algorithm, as if determined to prove that it could not be relied on, pulled a particular corker. GCSEs are graded 1-9. If you take what is called a foundation course, only grades 1-5 are available. The algorithm can mark people up as well as down.
22a/35 The algorithm started upgrading some Foundation examinees to grade 6. Oops.
23/35) Meanwhile the government was busy blaming someone else. The head of OFSTED (education body that does the government's bidding but at arms' length, therefore safe), resigned. Education department permanent secretary resigned. Gavin Williamson and his tarantula are safe.
24/35) For the moment, everybody says. Everybody, that is, who still thinks of this as a normal government.
25/35) But this government is not normal. They don't care. They literally don't care. Bloviated egocentric Johnson was elected for one reason, to Get Brexit Done. He appointed his cabinet on one criterion, whether they supported him.
26/35) The charge of incompetence is being levelled and some expect that Williamson will eventually go because he has to, it's just a matter of choosing the least embarrassing time for Johnson. He won't go, because the government don't care about competence.
27/35) They are safe in that, because a large part of the electorate - enough to make them safe - has already factored in the incompetence. As well as the lies. Williamson said last week he wasn't told the problems with the algorithm.
27a/35 In the face of documentary evidence that he was told repeatedly from March onwards. Not when he was listening, obviously.
28/35) They don't care how many u-turns they do. They thrive on chaos. If there is any calculating going on, they calculate that keeping us all in this tizzy will prevent anyone landing any blows on them. So far they're right, it's working.
9/35) But there must be a purpose, some people say. No, there isn't. Johnson always wanted power but not responsibility. He doesn't want to *do* anything, he just wants to be there. His cabinet lackeys are the same, or they've figured out how to climb the greasy pole.
30/35) Cummings does want to do something. He wants to move fast and break things. That was OK in Silicon Valley in the 90s. If you came a cropper all that happened was some venture capitalist lost some of their money. When you do it in govt, people suffer. Cummings doesn't care.
30a/35) He is doing that to the civil service - not quite sure why they've upset him so much, but he wants to destroy it. He has no idea how he wants to replace it though. So people will suffer, many people in all sorts of ways. But, like I said above, Cummings doesn't care.
31/35) In a way, he's right about the civil service. It is in desperate need of reform. Just not the reform he has in mind. For more on this, see https://acomfortableplace.blogspot.com/2012/01/independence-of-civil-service-where-did.html
32/35) So the short answer to the initial question is when this government came to power, they expected to enjoy the trappings of power and to throw their weight around a bit. They did not expect to have to actually govern.
32a/35 Now they do have to govern and they can't hack it. They don't care. And a large proportion of the UK voting population don't care either.
33/35) All you need to understand the way this government is going about things is to realise that they don't care. About anything.
34/35) Side note. Ken Robinson died this week. He was an educational theorist born in the UK settled in the States. He came to prominence with TED talks in which he stated his main belief that children's creativity is stifled by current schooling systems.
35/35) He developed a witty but devastating Ritalin map of the USA. See, for instance, https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=zDZFcDGpL4U&feature=emb_logo Children wriggle, mentally as well as physically. You need to chemically hammer children into straight rows so that you can nail them down (see 3 above).
