UK Politics & Brexit Discussion

[Bluewolf]

Did Johnson really say it was our 'Moral' duty to get kids back to school??? It was his moral duty to suspend the MP currently under investigation and it was also his moral duty to sack Cummings for tearing the Lockdown to shreds but I didn't see any of that moral responsibility on show for any of that... fuck off Johnson you scruffy two faced cunt.. 

[Stan]

2 hours ago, RandoEFC said:

Reminder that the Conservative party is supposed to be the party of Christian values. What a horrible, xenophobic country the UK really is.

'all lives matter' 

[Dr. Gonzo]

3 hours ago, RandoEFC said:

Reminder that the Conservative party is supposed to be the party of Christian values. What a horrible, xenophobic country the UK really is.

Is anyone seriously surprised by that info though?

[RandoEFC+]

This is one of the funniest parody accounts on Twitter.

Just kidding, this is an actual Member of Parliament. A Conservative MP.

It's also from two days ago and you can bet that you'd have seen it by now if it was posted by a Labour or SNP member.

Oh also this man has been knighted so presumably he's supposed to be a shining example of a British citizen serving the country.

It just keeps coming and coming.

[RandoEFC+]

And today I'm absolutely disgusted at the handling of the A level results. I'm on my phone so I might have more of a rant later but as a teacher I have no idea how some of the grades had been determined. We had a lesser achieving group go through this year so what we predicted them is slightly lower than what we get as a school in a normal year. 40% of them knocked down by a grade, one of them down to a U and another one costing him his place at his preferred university. Hopefully he gets in on appeal but still.

It's a good job we've got Nick Gibb, who I'd never heard of until this week when he graded the government handling of this factor of the crisis as an A- to sort this out. Oh and Gavin Williamson, the former fireplace salesman who got sacked from government 18 months ago for leaking stories to the press, the man who took two months of insisting that primary schools had to full reopen without lifting the 15 per class rule which would have meant doubling the number of classrooms and teachers available nationwide in the middle of the pandemic while his pals in number ten got on the phone to their media stooges and told them to start bashing teaching unions so the government could save face. Yeah, this guy that obviously wasn't taught the definition of irony in school said this morning that he didn't want A Level grades to be inflated above the usual standard in case these students end up in jobs off the back of those results that they're not really qualified for. Best look a bit closer to home mate.

Fuck these absolutely shambolic cunts. Our 18 year old maths students would form a better cabinet than this lot. Absolute incompetent morons.

[Stan]

Wtf 

Is this how it normally is?! @RandoEFC

 

[RandoEFC+]

2 minutes ago, Stan said:

Wtf 

Is this how it normally is?! @RandoEFC

 

No I've just seen that and it's messed up as fuck.

They're complaining that the results would have been a record high by 14% if they'd let all the teacher grades stand. Well boo fucking hoo. The grades are higher because we've put in what those students are capable of and it isn't the place of me, my headteacher, the exam board or the government to decide which 14% of those kids wouldn't have got that actual result in the exam because that's usually around how many don't hit maximum performance on the day.

14% really isn't that bad. I know it might cause some complications with universities being oversubscribed but theres also a much higher proportion than normal that are understandably deferring because they don't want to have to do their freshers year in the midst of social distancing and possibly video lectures when they're paying £9000 a year for it.

They're acting like it would be the worst thing ever for the results to be higher than usual. I get that it would mean some kids (a minority) this year get a better grade than they would have which arguably gives them an undeserved advantage over kids who sat their real exams in other years. I think if you can't give them the benefit of the doubt this year and sacrifice a little bit of the integrity of the exam grading system due to exceptional circumstances, then you need to have a rethink about your priorities.

[Honey Honey]

2 hours ago, RandoEFC said:

No I've just seen that and it's messed up as fuck.

They're complaining that the results would have been a record high by 14% if they'd let all the teacher grades stand. Well boo fucking hoo. The grades are higher because we've put in what those students are capable of and it isn't the place of me, my headteacher, the exam board or the government to decide which 14% of those kids wouldn't have got that actual result in the exam because that's usually around how many don't hit maximum performance on the day.

14% really isn't that bad. I know it might cause some complications with universities being oversubscribed but theres also a much higher proportion than normal that are understandably deferring because they don't want to have to do their freshers year in the midst of social distancing and possibly video lectures when they're paying £9000 a year for it.

They're acting like it would be the worst thing ever for the results to be higher than usual. I get that it would mean some kids (a minority) this year get a better grade than they would have which arguably gives them an undeserved advantage over kids who sat their real exams in other years. I think if you can't give them the benefit of the doubt this year and sacrifice a little bit of the integrity of the exam grading system due to exceptional circumstances, then you need to have a rethink about your priorities.

Thought it was 36% of grades downgraded which is massive. Are those 36% spread across 14% of kids?

I don't envy those who have to make the decision because there's no method that works. Maybe the better thing was to have everyone get what they wanted and a cultural and CV write off of that year with employers and universities doing their own weighting.

The lesser evil being everyone's grades are treat as a joke rather than some people feeling massively wronged.

[RandoEFC+]

1 hour ago, Harvsky said:

Thought it was 36% of grades downgraded which is massive. Are those 36% spread across 14% of kids?

I don't envy those who have to make the decision because there's no method that works. Maybe the better thing was to have everyone get what they wanted and a cultural and CV write off of that year with employers and universities doing their own weighting.

The lesser evil being everyone's grades are treat as a joke rather than some people feeling massively wronged.

I don't know the exact distributions, it could be what you said as a lot of people seem to have had multiple grades nerfed. 

The idea behind what they have tried to do was possibly the best way but why they have had to make a top secret 150 page algorithm is beyond me.

I'm no expert on university admissions but it looks like the teacher assessed grades weren't taking the piss. It's not like schools have tried to take advantage by handing out full classes of As as 96% of them have either stayed the same or gone down by one. With the number of students deferring and the likelihood of lectures being delivered remotely at many universities over the next year, it seems to me that the lesser of two evils would have been to let the results stand and encourage the universities to make a bit more room. It's not like you'll have top universities getting overrun with students who aren't in their league because the applications were done way before any of this was an issue and you wouldn't have kids destined for a B and two Cs getting conditional offers from Oxbridge.

Yes it's a bit unfair on someone in five years time who goes up against a 2020 A level candidate who has inflated grades and they lose out on a job as a result but (correct me if I'm wrong) I really don't think specific A Level grades take precedence over a degree and or an application letter and interview in most recruitment processes. 

I don't know, I'm not going to pretend it's simple but I can't look at this government and even begin to convince myself that they'll make a genuine effort to help the disadvantaged kids that have lost out today if it costs them even a milligram of political capital and we've seen the same thing multiple times throughout the pandemic.

[Bluewolf]

Johnson has shrugged off protests about it claiming the results as 'Robust' & 'Dependable' so I don't know why everyone is getting upset about it... He seems like someone we can trust.. 

[Honey Honey]

25 minutes ago, RandoEFC said:

Yes it's a bit unfair on someone in five years time who goes up against a 2020 A level candidate who has inflated grades and they lose out on a job as a result but (correct me if I'm wrong) I really don't think specific A Level grades take precedence over a degree and or an application letter and interview in most recruitment processes. 

It's not uncommon in London for grad roles to set minimum A levels needed to apply. It's like a revised way snobs used to say "redbrick uni grads only" to try and keep the state educated people out without an HR lawsuit.

[Stan]

Reading all these stories about reduction of grades just because they're from a disadvantaged area or historical grades of that school is properly infuriating me. Absolutely scandalous.

[Stan]

 

 

[Spike]

When I think of Brexit I think of people like this

[Honey Honey]

Why didn't teachers get to do appealing before kids got results? 

[RandoEFC+]

1 hour ago, Harvsky said:

Why didn't teachers get to do appealing before kids got results? 

This has been raised in a couple of circles today. They could have hoovered up the really egregious errors which applies to a minority of kids but is making all of the headlines and retweets now.

[Stan]

Gavin Williamson saying students will 'be over-promoted into jobs beyond their competence' following the grades fiasco.

 

OH THE FUCKING IRONY. 

[Inverted]

All that's happened is that everything implicit within UK education has been made explicit.

The unis, for all their talk of a "holistic" approach to admissions, will be rushing to send their condolences before slamming the door on all those "unsuccessful" students from poorer areas that they grudgingly made conditional offers to.

Edited August 14, 2020 by Inverted

[6666]

How do you get to the stage where you're hiding ice cream to protest immigration? 

People that become tribal do the dumbest shit.

[Stan]

 

 

[RandoEFC+]

Good. This is going to cause havoc with university places unfortunately but that's less of a problem than students getting life changing adjustments to their A level grades.

[Rucksackfranzose]

2 hours ago, RandoEFC said:

Good. This is going to cause havoc with university places unfortunately but that's less of a problem than students getting life changing adjustments to their A level grades.

Genuine question; do you know whether this applies to the territories as well? Asking because it says England in that tweet.

Edited August 17, 2020 by Rucksackfranzose

[Stan]

1 hour ago, Rucksackfranzose said:

Genuine question; do you know whether this applies to the territories as well? Asking because it says England in that tweet.

Yep. This from a BBC article 

Quote

The decision by the UK government brings England in line with the other UK nations.

 

[RandoEFC+]

2 hours ago, Rucksackfranzose said:

Genuine question; do you know whether this applies to the territories as well? Asking because it says England in that tweet.

Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland had announced the same already.

[Stan]

Sadly ironic  

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-53812315

Quote

 

An award-winning writer whose dystopian fiction about an algorithm that sorts students into bands based on class says she has "fallen into my own story".

Jessica Johnson, 18, said the University of St Andrews had initially rejected her after her English A-level was downgraded from an A to B.

Exams this year were cancelled due to Covid and grades based on an algorithm.

Ms Johnson said it was "ironic to become a victim like one of her characters".

Her piece, A Band Apart, won an Orwell Youth Prize Senior award in 2019.

"I wrote about the inequality in the education system," the Ashton Sixth Form College student said.

"I wrote about the myth of meritocracy and it was about an algorithm that split people into bands based on the class that they were from.

"I feel like that is quite ironic, I've literally fallen into my own story."

"I feel a victim of it," she added.

Ms Johnson, of Stalybridge, Greater Manchester, needed an A in English Literature for a place at St Andrews and a £16,000 scholarship.

"I've done a lot of extra-curricular work and I've been given that scholarship on the basis of my achievements and it just felt like all of that [has] been taken away from me because of the place I live and the college I attend," she said.

About 40% of A-level results - published on Thursday - were downgraded from teachers' assessments by exams regulator Ofqual, which used a formula based on schools' prior grades.

Following protests, the government has now said teacher estimates will be used and Ms Johnson is hoping she will get in at St Andrews.

She said she was "thankful" and "excited" about the government's U-turn but felt it should have been done sooner.

"It's caused a lot of stress and anxiety that it didn't need to by making us wait," she said.

Professor Jean Seaton, director of the Orwell Foundation, praised Ms Johnson's "prescient story".

She said the teenager "saw into the heart of what the system represents and her story demonstrates the human ability which exams only exist to uncover".