Umm no, you're completely and utterly wrong. Speaking as someone who did sciences at '0' and 'A' level and who has a tennager in the family. The "sceince" being taught today in schools is trivial bollocks and even the 'A' level doesn't quite make it to the standards of any of the JMB 'O' levels from the 1970s.
The message from John Cartmell contains these words:
That is an argument I just don't buy. Bright years occur at local level but the bigger the sample the less likelihood of any significant variation. At national level any variation in ability would be a good deal less than the variations in the process that is now supposed to keep the standard the same year by year.
The message from John Cartmell contains these words:
You might have thought that but I stand by my final paragraph. I trust that someone will come up with the date external assessors were first introduced for university degree courses if you can't or won't.
The message from "Doctor Drivel" contains these words:
Drivel is at it again with his useless misinformation. Polys were not universities and apprenticeships were the province of employers, not educational establishments. For Drivels information thick sandwich courses comprised an initial year with the employer, 3 years taking a degree and a final year with the employer. In contrast thin sandwich courses were 6 semesters of alternate employer/college (HND) followed by
2 years in which either further education or work might be involved.
You really do lack even basic comprehension Dribble. The quote you truncated to a meaningless degree is more fully "half baked comp sci grad with a head stuffed full of theoretical knbowledge he doesn't really understand". The subject in question is a 'computer science graduate', not a possible degree issuing institution.
IME and that of many other experienced teachers, group reading is useless, it simply allows some children to shine and others to feel inadequate and doesn't work. All children of this age need to read once a day on a 1 to 1 teacher basis if you want very good results. Ideally backed up by parental reading every day. Yes, It kills the teacher!
I agree that 30 is towards the top limit for y2 classes, which probably should only be 25. However in the past the numbers have been up to 45!, without the results being much worse than today.
But then it's not necessarily linked to parental income either as
I'm only quoting the actual US results. Regimented NC teaching doesn't work reliably and produces much worse results in poor areas.
Published test results are also pretty useless, when trying to see if a school will suit an individual child.
Very good, I hadn't heard that before.
That's normal! It's bound to happen when politicians/civil servants think they know better than the practitioner, how to teach. It also happens in the NHS and the police service. Unfortunately the good people tend to leave for private industry where there is less politics. As I have always insisted, appraisals( inspection reports) are not worth the hot air they are printed on! Which is one of the reasons why I became and remained, self employed, long ago.
Polys did issue university degrees of their own though it had to be centrally moderated. They were, in general, biased towards a technical subjects as they were frequently based on Tech. Colleges. Tech. Colleges did /do apprenticeship courses in co-operation with local employers - mainly on day release basis. "Doctor Drivel" did make some errors in his comment - but you appear to have missed them all! ;-)
With a class of 25-28 that was what was achieved. 30 is a touch 'over the top'. It does 'kill the teacher' but that's probably where she will be within a couple of weeks. ;-(
No-one heard 45 kids read individually every day and delivered the National Curriculum and the Numeracy and Literacy whatsits.
The message from John Cartmell contains these words:
That didn't make a poly into a university. That was a sleight of hand that came later. And it is stretching a point (well past breaking point) to call their degrees 'university degrees' unless you were thinking of LU external degrees.
Apprenticeships are (or should that be were given the lack of apprenticeships these days) with employers. In the case of the qualifications student apprentices took it would not have been a college requirement that the student was an apprentice and I doubt whether dribbles C & G class would have been restricted to pukka apprentices either.
Most current universities have their origins in lower ranked organisations and went through several stages. Different institutions gained Polytechnic status at different times and likewise moved on to University status in different waves. I can't now recall whether the progression was college of technology, polytechnic, college of advanced technology, or whether the later 2 were alternatives but they all offered degrees some considerable time before they made it to university status. My dictionary (Collins 1986) says the CATs made it to university status in the 1960s but offers no hint about the polys upgraded status and doesn't deign to mention the johnnies come lately of the university world, the colleges of technology.
Drivel is a moron who rarely gets anything right except by accident. I agree he certainly made some errors but as you claim I missed them all perhaps you would be good enough to enumerate *all* of them.
Or CNAA degrees which were *not* external degrees but were devised by the Polys themselves and assessed by them just like universities - except that each course had to be rigrously evaluated externally before being offered to the students.
Not true to my recollection. Certainly not true in practice even if a non-apprentice 8could have sneaked in on the course. This may have changed over time/college.
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The massive Poly -> University switch was a sleight of hand by the last Tory government so they could claim to have made more Universities.
Until 1830 there were only two universities in England - (and as far as international prestige and brad recognition goes that probably still true).
University College and Kings College were established in London by 1830. Other institutions, Manchester, Birmingham etc developed from mechanics institutes in the mid 19th century; they were not fully and formally accorded university status until the Education Acts around
1904. The Colleges of Advanced Technology were established in the 1950s, as yet another attempt to establish technical education as being of equal esteem with academic universities. But the Robbins report of 1962 led to the creation of New Universities on the basis of catering for demand limited only by the ability to pass the requisite A' levels. Results lots of Arts degrees and the existing and proposed CATs becoming universities. Technical Colleges (unlike Universities funded and controlled by local authorities) merged, became polytechnics,and offered degrees validated by CNAA from ~1970. For a time they did offer something alternative and more vocational than university, in fact something like the CATs were intended to be. But then the desire for status and being free from LA control led to them becoming universities. Leaving the sub-degree level to Colleges of Further Education which now seem to be called University Colleges.
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