Evaluation, statistics and OR

It all depends on how you look at things

One of my favourite books, both as a child and now as an adult, is Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth.  It is a type of Pilgrim's Progress for children, telling the story of Milo, who had loads of toys, but was always bored.  One day he receives a present, a toll booth (not an easy concept for English children until the M6 toll but work with me), and being bored, he decides to play with it, passing through the toll booth to another world where words and numbers are more real.

One of the characters he meets on his journey (he has a quest to rescue Rhyme and Reason from the Demons of Ignorance), is the Average Man, who is tall, short, fat or thin, depending on your point of view.  Another is Alec the 0.4 child in an average family with 2.4 children (he has sole use of the .3 of a car as the average family has 1.3 cars).  A key message throughout the book is that it all depends on how you look at things.

The FTSE and the other stock markets have been having an exciting August (the Daily Telegraph's Alex cartoon puts this down to too many managers taking their Blackberries on holiday with them), which is not normal.  Much has been written about the slump and the problems for pension funds.  No doubt there is indeed an underlying issue with unsecured loans in the States, but the reactions to the FTSE levels have been hysterical in my view.

Over the past 3 months, there has indeed been a fall in the FTSE closing price as you can see in the graph from the BBC below.

This seems like a terrifying drop until you consider where the FTSE was just a few months further ago than that, as in the 12 month history of FTSE closing prices again from the BBC shown below.

The scarier point on this graph to me is the over inflation of the FTSE around June time, but in the Autumn of last year, the index was consistently below 6000.  I could panic about any investments I might have or I could take the long term view - it all depends on how you look at things!

Qualifications pay

So another vintage year for A level and GCSE passes, and well done to those whose hard work paid off and they achieved the grades they wanted for further study or for work based learning options. 

To those who didn't do so well - the pain passes and you find your way through life.  I was listening to You and Yours on the 14th August, where they were doing a story on how not getting the grades you wanted wasn't the end of the world.  I was almost tempted to phone in myself to say that I got two poor A levels, but that meant I went to Hatfield Polytechnic and discovered OR and went on to do a PhD.  Considering my school regarded me as rather a failure, I thought this was quite an achievement.  However others with a very similar story got to the phones before me - so there is a way out!

But the basics still count - even if you don't get those qualifications at the expected time, you need to carry on trying and learning to get them eventually.  The Learning and Skills Council (LSC) published some research today demonstrating that qualifications do pay off in money terms (Five good GCSEs net £2,200 more).  They had spoken to around 4,000 employers to look at starting pay and how much each successive GCSE pass would net the holder.  For a first employment, they found that 5 good GCSEs would mean an extra £2,200 in starting salary.

Over the past 10 years, the LSC and its predecessor bodies used to fund household surveys and would include questions on levels of qualifications held and also on current salary levels.  I have never analysed one of these surveys without finding that with each progressive level of qualification (GCSE, A level, Degree, further degree), the average salary level increased and increased substantially.  In Coventry and Warwickshire we used to use these figures extensively in careers events and materials, and I tried to introduce the same analysis in Kent and Medway.  It is a powerful message and one that speaks directly to an individual's self interest.

The Household Surveys seem to have died a death, so thank you to the LSC for this research, and get that message out there!  While we all know an exception to the rule, someone with no qualifications who earns a fortune, I think if you scratch below the surface, they have gained vocational qualifications on the way to their success.

Results time

Very soon now, the A level results will be out, with the usual debate in the media about whether the youth of today are brighter than their parents or whether standards are dropping.

The French Bac results are already out - the relative simplicity of the French examining boards makes this possible even when the exams finish at about the same time.  Over 85% of candidates passed their Bac, with some entrants as young as 14 passing.  The comments in the press were broadly the same as we will get in a week or so in the UK.

It is a tricky issue - on one hand one does not want to trash the fragile egos of adolescents who have worked hard and struggled in order to achieve their no doubt excellent grades.  On the other hand, the lack of transparency of the grading systems and the rumour mill and the ever improving grades do raise the issue of whether or not standards have slipped.

My only comparison is that I did my main batch of A levels in 1981, gaining a C in Geography and a D in History and failing appallingly my English Literature A level.  In 2004 I did A/S and A2 French in a year at evening classes and got As for both.  I don't believe I worked harder in 2004 - in fact I am sure I didn't study as hard, as I was firstly in employment and then setting up a small business, which tend to occupy the mind rather.

Where I won out in French was that I had real life experience and knowledge to bring to my essays - I remember being able to quote my Internet rates and e-mail accounts in one of the exam essays on new media.  Back in 1981, my classmates who did French were restricted in general to studying classic texts - if I had had to study Rabelais or Anatole France for my A-level I am sure I would have failed.  Instead I could concentrate on things that either interested me (music, cinema) or were pretty obvious to anyone who read a paper or watched the news (crime, transport policy, immigration).

My personal assessment therefore of my success in A level French after all these years therefore is that I was more mature and had a wider general knowledge, plus the advantage of a home in France.  I didn't know genders of nouns, my use of various tenses of verbs was probably all over the place, but I knew an awful lot about culture.

But what is important about learning a language in an academic environment?  In my view, it is where the principles of grammar should be drilled in, dull as that can be.  The cultural side you can pick up if you are interested via France 24, TV5, newspapers and magazines, France Inter Radio - it is what you go to France to learn if you like.  But before you go, it would be nice to know how to speak grammatically!

Increasing the demand for skills

The Commons Education Select Committee has issued its last report on post 16 skills and learning - a bit like the Curate's Egg, some bits are highly insightful and will therefore probably be forgotten or ignored, as it was published in August when Education is on holiday!

The BBC report on it intrigued me into reading the whole report.  The BBC story on "Skills scheme restrictive - MPs" did the usual stuff on highlighting potential bureaucracy for learners and expressed concern at Train to Gain.  I am probably not the biggest fan of Train to Gain, due in part to the focus on employed status learners, when all adults could use some support for learning.  However I am aware that employers, particularly in smaller private sector businesses, could use some help when training their staff.  The Audit Commission said that some of the employers benefiting from Train to Gain would have done the training anyway - perhaps true of the large public sector employers, but less likely to be true of the private sector as every minute away from work and every penny spent paying a training provider has a direct impact on the bottom line.

So what were the things that impressed me?  One of them was actually something that in the BBC report, made me see red, until I read the full version.  Basically the report doubted the direct link between qualifications and prosperity unless those qualifications were linked to overall business development and the needs of the business.  This is a clear message that Investors in People has been about for years - invest in your people to make sure they have the right skills for the business today and tomorrow, and is therefore as much about business planning excellence as people development excellence.

A second key message - the new Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills must not become dominated by Universities, but must also keep the Skills part of its agenda firmly in the public eye and in the core of its activities.  Well, Amen to that, but it is probably a lot more prestigious to hobnob with Professors at Oxford or Cambridge than get down to real issues with the local college of Further Education.

A third key message - qualifications and skills are not necessarily the same thing.  The credit framework is not quite there yet, but employers do not want to buy full qualifications if half or more of the content is irrelevant to them, and learners may not want to learn the whole qualification if they can see no point in some of it.  It does raise the question of whether the national Qualifications Framework is really fit for purpose currently, but that is another issue.

A fourth key point - the importance not just of getting the skills supply side right, but actually building the demand for skills and learning.  It is difficult but it is a key activity.

A fifth key point (it really was a good report) - the issue of funding ESOL.  Sadly the BBC report was borderline illiterate at this point, so I urge you to read the real thing, but it is something I know I have spoken to clients about and have muttered about in previous postings - funding is being cut, or rather refocused, so those learners that need ESOL teaching are less likely to get it in future.

However, the Commons Education Select Committee is no more, so it will take a while for the two successor select committees to find all of this out for themselves once again.  In the meantime I hope the skills campaign works in terms of increasing the demand for skills out there among individuals and employers.