Completely OT - bedtime for children

Mark, I suggest youget some of the old O level papers. They really were harder. (My son told me this after doing some O level papers during his A level maths course... and it's not just the manual arithmetic)

Andy

Reply to
Andy Champ
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Not quite, but usually three weekday nights - it may not be much, milk, cheese, fruit, bread, things like that, but it takes time to go out and get it. With the amount of milk we consume, we can only get two days's supply upright in the fridge and we've had too many incidences of leaks when they're lying down. The milkman only delivers after we've gone to work for the day :( With the rest other items, we do try and plan ahead, but changes of finishing time from work tend to mean last minute changes of what we're eating and if we kept stocks in, we'd end up throwing too much away. It doesn't help that the school have a habit of letting us know at the last minute that the kids will need something particular for school the next morning!

The 7 year old gets three to four nights a week, the 5 year old gets a couple of nights and all three of them get books to read to us or for us to read to them.

I can agree with that - we actually had no internet for three and a half weeks, but that was because of a line fault.

There's no problem with ADSL around here. In fact they've installed FTTC throughout most of the area, much of which already had cable. We are unfortunate in that they've not installed FTTC yet and we're one of the few roads without cable, but we can get over 7Mb/s on ADSL, so no major complaints.

I know there are some schemes for those that cannot afford to pay for internet at home, but I don't know what or how good they are.

SteveW

Reply to
Steve Walker

top stream (overall, no streaming by subjects) took O-level Maths at the Jan sitting of the fourth year (i.e. after 3 years and one term at GS) and then Additional Maths in June (which would normally mean an extra year's teaching).

I still remember that out of 32 pupils in my cohort the Maths grades (in an era when pass grades were A-E) were 24 A, 4 B and 4 C. Mr Steffens was one of those really gifted teachers who knew how to combine discipline and kindness to bring out what his not always enthusiastic boys could achieve; he started as a pupil at the school, went to uni, came back as a teacher c.1927 and stayed there until he retired. I might not have appreciated him at the time, but I owe him a great debt.

Reply to
Tony Bryer

3rd year at secondary school.
Reply to
Dave Liquorice

In the mid 60s when I did my O-level GCEs the grading was 1 to 9. 1 to

6 were passes and 7 to 9 failed.
Reply to
Frank Erskine

Its the way they were graded that was different to now and is what made older O levels harder.

It was assumed that the pupils taking O levels didn't vary much from year to year and that any variation in the marking was due to the questions being easier or harder ( I think this was and is a valid assumption). Then the results were scaled so that the top 105 got a 1, the bottom 40% failed, and various bands in between (I also think this was a valid way to mark them).

Now some group of teachers decides how hard the questions are and if lots of kids pass its because the teaching is far better than it was (the only evidence being the pass rate for the questions they set BTW). If lots of kids fail then they decide they have made a mistake and make allowances for the error in the exam papers.

The same applies to A levels except they even dropped the old S level exams which put you in the top 2% or 5% if you got a 1 or a 2.

As it is now you get nearly everyone passing even though a lot of them don't have a clue. You also get the situation where 4A's at A level is going to get you into the best Unis as they now run their own entrance exams to actually separate out the really good from the chaff and most of the other Unis don't go on grades but use the actual marks as the grades are of no use to grade the applicants.

Then there is the increasing bias of course work influencing grades, the Unis and employers have no idea how much effort a pupil has put into that course work, or even if the pupil is the one that has done the work.

There are a lot of bright kids out there but the GCSE and A level exams do not separate them from the chaff and it really is easier to get grade A now despite what the educators will insist on telling everyone. Employers now this and they are more important than the educators ATM.

Reply to
dennis

I did Maths O Level and lots of others, thanks ;-)

Reply to
Mark

Get a bigger fridge ;-)

We do a weekly shop at the supermarket. Normally we avoid doing "between" shops. We always have some quick meals since people often go out early in the evenings.

We have the latter problem too. However, if the school gives us too little notice, then they don't get[1]. If sufficient parents do this then maybe the school will learn to give more notice.

Private school?

Neither do I. I doubt they'd also pay for a computer.

[1] Although, for us, it's often the kids that forget to tell us.
Reply to
Mark

+1

Best thing I ever did was get a big decent fridge that holds at 4C reliably (meaning I add +1 to +3 days to the expiry date depending on food type).

I've also found that doing a weekly internet shop from Ocado isn't any more expensive than Tescos or Sainsburys (if you choose reasonably - lots is Tesco price matched anyway). But the expirey dates are definately longer on average IME than Sainsburys, so it is quite possible to run for a week at a time. with zero intermediate shopping trips.

Cheers

Tim

Reply to
Tim Watts

Haven't tried Ocado (only recently started a service around here) but Tescos and Sainsburys were poor. Had a far higher instance of out-of-stock items than in store and some perishables had very short dates.

How much is delivery costs from Ocado?

Reply to
Mark

Some schemes will heavily subsidise both computer and broadband cost, but then the kids computer is hogged by the rest of the family.

e.g.

One brother is active in downloading torrents of illegaly transferred films killing the ISP monthly bandwidth quota, the other is running an eBay business passing on hooky stuff, the mother is having an breakdown / affair out on facebook (which will lead to divorce), the father has this thing visiting several 'websites of the night', and the trojan zombie process inside the machine has it's own surfin' and emailing habits no one can control.

"A zombie ate my homework" will be the only fib the kid will be allowed to tell teacher.

Reply to
Adrian C

Indeed.

Our 7 year old is now expected to get "computer time" at home.

I'm currently rebuilding a knackered laptop with Xubuntu LTS which means bits of the school learning web won't work, but that's just too bad.

They'll get LibreOffice .doc files or PDF and it's their problem if they don't open at school. Any format that comes here that doesn't work will result in a note back.

I refuse to have any MS in the house and if it weren't for this old laptop, she'd be unlucky because I generally don't let the kids near my good one (too much previous abuse).

To be honest, she's not doing anything that can't be done with a question sheet and a bit of paper anyway...

Reply to
Tim Watts

IME (and I do know Ocado supply from a giant warehouse [mine comes from Dartford], not by pushing a trolley round the local Waitrose) the supply/OOS ratio is excellent. Genenerally 1-2 substitutions (mostly sane) per week (sometimes none) and a failure to supply an item maybe once in the last 3 months.

They did have some issues with packing badly and squashing stuff - but I complained, they refunded and said they could trace the exact person who packed my lot and do some further training. Few problems since.

I do like the way they pack into 3 different colourcoded bags too - green for frozen, red for fridge and purple for everythign else. Bloke even brings it into the kitchen if you want (that's an official service).

Anywhere from expensive (6+ quid) to completely free. Generally a few quid late evenings around 9pm, free at some unpopular times midday weekdays and late at night and mentally expensive on Sundays. The slots are one hour wide and they stick to them too (sometimes they ring ahead and ask if they can be early, but if that's not acceptable, they will not complain (at least to the customer) about sitting in the van doing nothing and coming at the appointed time.

I like them for their sense of customer service - and the fact they have a good iPhone and android app.

Cheers,

Tim

Reply to
Tim Watts

I've got windows and linux PCs at home but the kids will always prefer the windows one if they can. They complain the linux PC does not work properly but can never demonstrate the problem.

I had a brief look at LibreOffice but it didn't seem to work very well (menu options grayed out for no obvious reason).

I don't think they have paper at schools any more ;-)

Reply to
Mark

I tried em, and they had so little stock it wasn't worth it.

Waitrose direct is better.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Not even in the toilets?

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

That's just mean, its about freedom and if someone wants to use windows they should be able to, just as someone should be free to use linux.

However you can't expect others to change their preferences just because you can't work with them, its up to you to change yours if you need/want the stuff.

I wonder if you refuse to buy petrol or use motor vehicles because the oil companies make profits? Or refuse mains electricity and water because they are run by profit making monopolies? Maybe refuse drugs because the companies make huge profits. Why refuse to use M$ stuff, its just products from another company. They aren't even expensive.

Reply to
dennis

I've used Tesco, Sainsburys and Ocado quite a bit over the years and seemed to have settled on Ocado mostly.

a big advantgae is that because they work out of a warehouse they have much better stock control and so it's uncommon for something to be out of stock after you ordered it (the website tells you if something is out of stock at ordering time). The website gives you minimum days for the useby date etc. And as Tim says it doesn't really work out anymore expensive on the whole.

Though there are some things we will get elsewhere oocasionally - for some reason they don't seel big bags for pasta for instance.

Delivery costs range from £0.00 (if you are lucky) up to £7 I think. Depending on day and time. I guess a typical averge charge would be around 3.50 - 4? (min £75 order - there is a min charge of £3 on orders of £40 - 75)

They also do a pre paid delivery scheme called delivery pass for 6.99 mnth or 69.99 year. Which is pretty good if you use it a lot - it's probably break even after a couple of shops (or even less) unless you can always get the very cheapest slots. Free's you up on delivery slot choice and a min order of just £40

Reply to
chris French

It certainly sounds that way.

Reply to
stuart noble

I've pre-indoctrinated mine that linux has a cool penguin with machine guns:

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MS Windows is just gay and gets ripped to bits by "bad things on the Internet"

They believe me - I just have to give them a working system to keep it that way :)

No problems with the pre-packaged one in Ubuntu 11.04 (latest) not with OpenOffice in previous versions. Are you hand installing it - under what OS?

Yep...

Reply to
Tim Watts

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