Evaluation, statistics and OR

That A level time of year - again!

And I can't not comment!  But once again what do you say?  With over 97% of exams passed, is the A level really the exam you cannot fail?  On the one hand, you don't want to do down those whose results have come out today, on the other hand, what do you say to those of us with low A level grades from over 20 years ago?

Was I really so terminally thick that I failed my English A level back in 1981 - or if the CEM Centre grade inflation is to be believed, my O at A level would actually get me in today's currency a nice little D or maybe even a C?

The government is apparently putting in place measures to make A levels more difficult from September (bad luck those of you starting your A level courses in 2008!), but will this make much difference?  Can you imagine a politician standing up and saying that the pass rate has gone down now exams are more challenging and that this is a good thing?  Not in a million years!

Those in academic circles know that standards are falling in A levels - behind closed doors it is debated, but never published and to use the phrase "dumbing down" gets you bullied, dismissed or your contract not renewed.  The CEM Centre research quoted by the CBI earlier this week will be buried - which is a shame as these guys really know their stuff.

However when there is an attempt to re-base by changing the qualification structure, everyone seems to go to jelly.  Tomlinson was reviled for his outstanding work on qualifications, and if the Diplomas are the back way to implementing his vision, so much the better.

The Daily Telegraph is perhaps not the best place to look for rational and impartial debate on this topic.  I looked at the comment board on the A levels this morning and sincerely hope that Becky who commented at 8:16am as one of this year's breed of all A students wrote firmly tongue in cheek.  Otherwise her examiner and her teachers should be sent to prison for stealing state money - they haven't educated her, she wasn't literate. 

The columnist whose article got ripped apart was trying to make a decent point however.  We can argue all we like about the standards at A level, but what about the depressingly large proportion of 14 year olds who lack literacy and numeracy skills?  What about those who leave school with nothing, or worse leave school with one G at GCSE and are therefore not eligible for some forms of support as they have a (useless) qualification?  If nothing else, doing A level study equips you with a few skills - not least being able to access the Daily Telegraph comments board - but to leave with no skills is a waste of opportunity.

Contextual Value Added - Why bother?

Ofsted has come out of the closet on its views of publishing contextual value added scores and their use - albeit that their views seem to be something of a curate's egg, and need just as much careful interpretation as the actual CVA figures themselves.

Contextual Added Value (CVA) is the latest measure to show how well schools are serving their clients (sorry, pupils), and takes into account prior attainment (added value) and the factors in the local environment that might affect performance but are outside the school's control such as poverty or ethnicity of the local population.  This is all mulched up together (good statistical term that) to give a score normalised around 1000 and with a confidence interval - which is generally not so well published as the basic score.

Ofsted has given out guidance on interpretation, for use by schools, and has said which bits of what is published should be used and which bits are meaningless - this BBC summary is quite good on this.

My gripe is this: government would like parents and guardians to have information available on which they can base their choices for their children, and later in life, similar information available to potential students so they too can choose the best route for their future.  However, with literacy and particularly numeracy levels at a low ebb in England, how are people expected to interpret CVA information?  Yet it is this information that will be supplied to people to make choices on.

In my view, these figures are not fit for public use, and therefore it is questionable whether there is any value in putting them in the public domain.  If an absolute score has a confidence interval of 10 which could take it above or below the national average, all people need to know about an institution is that it is average.  Anything more and the number is being vested with spurious accuracy, giving people lots of opportunities to make the wrong decision, as they don't understand numbers.

There is a similar link to the publication of medical findings that are too statistically complex for 99.9% of the population to understand, so now we are faced with a measles epidemic in the UK due to people panicking.

I think the "Tiger that Isn't" should be compulsory reading for everyone in the country - but that assumes a decent level of literacy too! 

Who is responsible for pupil behaviour?

Sir Alan Steer has published his review of pupil behaviour, and has said that parents and adults set a bad example for young people.  Bad behaviour is a key reason for teachers leaving the profession that has to be one of the most important to the progress of the country.

For those of us without children, it is relatively easy to put all the blame on parents, but as the review points out, young people are also influenced by what they see around them.  Greedy and aggressive behaviour will have an influence on all those around us, not just those that we are related to.  If what you see around you is the norm for behaviour, and that includes a lot of swearing, throwing V signs at other drivers for real or imagined discourteous behaviour, lack of acknowledgement of the existence of others, lack of basic good manners, and a me-me-me culture, what sort of person do you turn out to be?

So we all have a role to play in the development of young people, but the current norms of society seem to push against us all playing our part.  The "wot you lookin' at" riposte and fear of reprisals if one comments on bad behaviour puts a break on what is left of society trying to regulate itself.  However learning providers who work with difficult young people say that setting boundaries, not swearing back and telling people when they have crossed the line is important, and develops respect.

Indeed it seems to me that society has become a dirty word in the UK and anything that limits personal freedom is resented.  At the same time, we are bombarded with directives from government, health advisers, and a range of "authority" bodies on how we should behave and live our lives, developing an intolerance of the nanny state.  However someone needs to remind us when we overstep the line, as it seems that our personal views of limits of acceptable behaviour have been eroded, and while we all demand respect, we are not inclined to give it.

How far the media and its constant building up and destruction of figures in public life is responsible, how far the liberty of the 60s is to blame - two questions for the sociologists perhaps.  But as individuals we can all make a difference by behaving with integrity, and doing as we would be done by.  If you like being sworn at in the street fine, but if not....

14-19 Diplomas - the way of the future or the emperor's new clothes?

And to be honest, I am not sure which way I lean on this one.

I am concerned about A levels, in that I don't think they are a consistent currency for measuring educational attainment.  I did three back in 1981, failed one and got two in those days reasonable passes, but passes that would now be considered not good enough.  They were hard, and required interpretation and thought, or so I thought then.  I did another one in 2004 and got straight As, and could see the marks I had gained for each section of the assessment, so where I had done slightly less well and where I had been frankly embarrassingly good.  Now as this was an A level in French and I have never been good at verb endings or gender agreements between adjectives and nouns and have trouble remembering what gender things are anyway, this brilliance was a bit worrying.  I also didn't feel I needed to interpret or analyse anything (no learned debate of Candide or Les Enfants de Siecle).

I am also concerned that A-levels and those that teach them are, with the best will in the world, a bit removed from the work arena.  I can quite see that something is needed for those who don't want to leave school at 16, or whose parents are unlikely to let them leave school at 16, that is a bit more grounded in the real world therefore.  Thus the Diplomas in Manufacturing for example, particularly as they are influenced by the needs of real employers, should be a good grounding in practical knowledge and skills that can assist in employment and also in developing the talents of young people.

I think I agree with the CBI in that Diplomas in Humanities and Languages may therefore not instantly spring out as priority areas for development.  Equally the problem of running a dual system, with private and grammar schools working with A-levels as the gold standard and non-selective schools and colleges running with Diplomas will inevitably bring or reinforce a two-tier system.

On the whole I am not wedded to A-levels, so I would be happy to see them go once and for all, if there was a system with the full range of subjects available for young people to access.  Whether anyone will see the need for a Diploma option in Latin or Ancient Greek, it must be offered in order to provide the full catalogue of options.

What I find unhelpful in the whole debate, are those people and organisations that trash the concept of Diplomas without any real knowledge.  If they continue to get bad press before they start, those young people who do them will be stigmatised, and Diplomas could fail without being given a chance.  The A level isn't a sacrosanct gold standard, any more than the O level was.  Stop sneering and see how young people and employers work with the new qualifications and assess it in 10 years time.

Numeracy and Skills for Life

The National Audit Office has officially congratulated the Government on the achievement of its 2004 and 2007 Skills for Life targets and says it is well on the way to achieving the 2010 target too.  This is good news.

Personally I would thank the Government a bit less and instead heap praise on the LSC, learning providers, community and voluntary groups and individuals who have delivered those achievements.  I would also praise the individuals who overcame barriers of all sorts to improve their basic skills - be that finding the time to do the learning, making that first scary step into a college or provider, or even more daringly, admitting to someone that they needed help with something as fundamental as literacy skills.

I pick out literacy skills because that is where the main achievements have been made and where the most progress and impact has come from.  A further swathe of learners will have achieved English as a Second or Other Language qualifications, enabling them to function better in British society.  Where the policy has almost failed however, is to improve the numeracy skills of the adult population - the scale of the problem is greater, but to date the impact has been less.

In part, this has to be laid at the feet of a society where it is acceptable to say "I'm no good at maths".  I would be mortified to say that but I do remember class mates at school saying that, and the easiest way to get people off a business studies degree is to face them with a pretty basic quantitative methods paper, which many fail because it's numbers, and answers are right or wrong, though you can get the odd mark for getting a method right.

Another key reason is the way maths is often presented as a scary separate subject rather than integral to life as we know it.  Construction courses include maths for calculations for how much plaster or tiles to cover a wall, mechanics courses include maths in terms of quantities of lubricants and mixes of washes and anti-freeze, cookery is all about measurement and proportion, even art and drawing includes geometry and proportion.  The more obvious subjects such as economics, accountancy, management all need a good grasp of numbers and what they mean.  While betting slips, the pools, darts and football all bring a certain need for arithmetic and statistics, God's own game of cricket has inspired some of the most complex mathematical modelling that the man in the street will encounter.

So why is it acceptable to say you are no good at numbers?  Grab life, your leisure time, your finances and your work and take pride in being able to do maths.

Should children be in school?

Yesterday (Friday 28th March) the airwaves were full of debates about whether children should be kept in school or not.  The intention of the debate was looking at school food and how to prevent children eating fast food every lunchtime rather than the healthy options offered by the school canteen.

There seemed to be a certain level of horror at forcing children aged between 11 and 16 to be in school during the lunch hour - it was against their human rights, it was preventing them making adult decisions about what to do in their free time and what they wanted to eat.

What utter tosh!  You can't have it both ways.  You can't say that children have to be driven to school as the streets aren't safe and they might be abducted or attacked or damaged by traffic, and then say that they can go out at lunchtime when all these things are just as likely to happen.  You can't say that childhood doesn't last long enough and then expect 11 to 14 year olds to make decisions about what to do in their lunchtimes and roam the streets, albeit that 15 and 16 year olds might start to take that responsibility.

In addition, lunchtimes are an ideal time to get involved with sport, hobbies, music, drama or catch up with homework.  When I was at school, breaks weren't long enough for games of hopscotch, huge sessions of french cricket, the music club, rehearsals for official or less official music or drama events, time in the library and getting that last bit of homework finished or that last bit of preparation for a vocab test done.  Has all this gone nowadays in the search for the best chippie?

Say no to young people from time to time.  Say that they must stay in school (there will still be truants, but not a mass outbreak).  Tell them what to eat - self-discipline is something that comes with age and how many middle aged middle class can say no to that glass of wine at the end of the working day?  Kids shouldn't be left to go to hell in their own way, until you have shown them how life can be otherwise.

Construction Skills and the Olympics

The 2012 Olympics and the bespoke buildings and resources required for them will mean a need for more skilled construction workers - about 182,000 of them according to the Construction Skills Network.

It is good to see this sort of statement from the industry, although all sorts of other projects at both local and national level will also drive needs like this.  I have been involved in trying to forecast the extra numbers needed for a variety of construction projects in the Coventry and Warwickshire sub-region as well as for the major regeneration of Hastings.  Organisations in the South East have had similar headaches over projects such as Terminal 5 and the Thames Gateway.

What makes this one a bit different?  The world's eyes are on us for the 2012 Olympics - can we do what we said we would do in our bid?  Elements of the media are already talking down the Olympics, in much the same way as they talked down the Millennium Dome after a few editors were inconvenienced when it opened.  It is right or trendy or clever to start saying the whole thing will be a fiasco now, before we have got to the opening ceremony?  That shows very little faith in our construction industry, the people who will take part in the opening ceremony and the business growth that should come from the Games, assuming it isn't sabotaged by the Whittering Classes (Chattering seems far too kind a terminology).

So, why not help the Olympic dream by encouraging young people to learn to be skilled craftspeople, with abilities that will ensure they are employable beyond 2012?  If you are mobile and flexible and skilled, there will always be jobs, as our need for major projects to be undertaken never seems to end.

Pass a language, don't speak it!

Today's rumour on the BBC education website that GCSE languages could be assessed without an oral exam goes beyond dumbing down, and if true, would turn language teaching in England into a bad joke.

It appears that the oral examination may be dropped and some form of continuous assessment brought in as the oral examination is a bit stressful, and that stress might stop people taking up languages.  Now I might be a bit of a freak, but the best memories I have of my O-levels (French, German, Spoken English), A-level (AS and A2 French), Degree German and PhD were the oral examinations, where you got a chance to show off to someone outside your circle of teachers and could demonstrate that you could do it!  I remember in my O-level French oral, rather patronisingly explaining to the examiner that many of my class mates might be having trouble, as we had all only recently returned from our German exchange trip - I got an A for the oral.

Setting aside my rather perverse view on the fun of oral examinations, the real test of learning a language is being able to have some sort of spoken interaction with a native speaker of that language (probably why Latin orals never really got fashionable).  That other person shouldn't really be the person who taught you the language in the first place as they will have preconceptions about your ability and also are already prepared for your accent and way of expressing yourself.  They may not be able to be wholly objective therefore.

If you find yourself using a foreign language in anger that you have had to learn in school, it is also likely that your experience will be stressful - be it that first attempt at buying a croissant or a beer or a coffee, trying to find a loo, trying to find your way round the Paris metro or how to pay for 200 miles on the Autoroute.  Even more stressfully, you could be trying to work out what that nice policeman with the speed camera is trying to say about your ability to stick to the speed limit, and respond to that politely.

Stress is an inevitable part of our lives and learning to cope with stressful situations is also part of the education process, so stopping a testing process at age 15 or 16 because it is a bit stressful can really be nothing more than dumbing down and certainly not in the interests of a young person.  It would be nice if someone saw sense on this, but I really doubt that will happen.

Today's rumour on the BBC education website that GCSE languages could be assessed without an oral exam goes beyond dumbing down, and if true, would turn language teaching in England into a bad joke.

It appears that the oral examination may be dropped and some form of continuous assessment brought in as the oral examination is a bit stressful, and that stress might stop people taking up languages.  Now I might be a bit of a freak, but the best memories I have of my O-levels (French, German, Spoken English), A-level (AS and A2 French), Degree German and PhD were the oral examinations, where you got a chance to show off to someone outside your circle of teachers and could demonstrate that you could do it!  I remember in my O-level French oral, rather patronisingly explaining to the examiner that many of my class mates might be having trouble, as we had all only recently returned from our German exchange trip - I got an A for the oral.

Setting aside my rather perverse view on the fun of oral examinations, the real test of learning a language is being able to have some sort of spoken interaction with a native speaker of that language (probably why Latin orals never really got fashionable).  That other person shouldn't really be the person who taught you the language in the first place as they will have preconceptions about your ability and also are already prepared for your accent and way of expressing yourself.  They may not be able to be wholly objective therefore.

If you find yourself using a foreign language in anger that you have had to learn in school, it is also likely that your experience will be stressful - be it that first attempt at buying a croissant or a beer or a coffee, trying to find a loo, trying to find your way round the Paris metro or how to pay for 200 miles on the Autoroute.  Even more stressfully, you could be trying to work out what that nice policeman with the speed camera is trying to say about your ability to stick to the speed limit, and respond to that politely.

Stress is an inevitable part of our lives and learning to cope with stressful situations is also part of the education process, so stopping a testing process at age 15 or 16 because it is a bit stressful can really be nothing more than dumbing down and certainly not in the interests of a young person.  It would be nice if someone saw sense on this, but I really doubt that will happen.

How can Geography be boring?

Ofsted has reported on the quality of geography teaching in schools based on its inspections between 2004 and 2007, finding that it was the worst taught subject in schools and that pupils found it boring.  As a suggestion, Ofsted recommended covering global issues in classes including climate change and sustainable development as well as trade disputes.  The Inspectorate feels that geography needs to be made more relevant.

Words fail me - well almost!!  I did Geography O and A levels and also sat the supplementary S level paper you could do at the time (1981), and it was the most interesting and most relevant subject I did.  Even (perish the thought) 27 years ago we studied the greenhouse effect and climate change, and debated whether it would make life warmer or colder in the UK.  Field trips and questions about soil and river formations and glaciation made any trip out with the school or my family more interesting as you kept a good eye out for a hanging valley or a fault formation.

My inspirational teacher - Daphne Swann - had travelled widely in school holidays and worked with international aid agencies in Africa as well as teacher exchanges in Europe.  Consequently any discussion of third world countries could be enlivened by slide shows and stories from Nigeria or China, while our A level field trip was to Denmark.  That included port surveys, dairy farming, retail developments, coastal and dune formation and flora, and glacial deposits via land forms (the end of the last Ice Age ice sheet makes the hills in the centre of Jutland) and the soil and stone forms in those land forms.

And this is perhaps what it comes down to - any subject can be killed by a bad teacher, and any subject can be inspirational with a good teacher.  My nascent interest in French aged 10 was killed off for a good 20 years by a poor teacher.  My abilities in Maths were limited by having 10 teachers in 2 years and it wasn't until Polytechnic and John Hobson that I remembered I could actually do Maths.  I don't think I would have passed Chemistry O level without a fairly scary but amazing year taught by Dilwyn Thomas, and Miss Polemounter enabled me to get a Latin O level and still be able to understand Private Eye citations and church inscriptions even today.

Geography should be one of the easiest to teach and inspire if a teacher has any ability and any interest in the world they live in - do we give potential teachers the right messages?

The Migration Paradox

For my final post in this space before 2008, I return to an old favourite topic - migration.  This is for two reasons.  Firstly there is a report looking at the effects of migrant workers on the UK economy knocking around and I always like to comment on them.  Secondly tomorrow sees the expansion of the Schengen agreement area in Europe, which the UK is not party to, but which is forecast to bring economic benefits to the European tourism industry.

The Ernst & Young ITEM Club has published an economic analysis of the impact of migration - it was reported on by the Daily Telegraph on the 18th December under the highly balanced headline "100,000 lose out to migrants in hunt for work".  In fact the report does say that potentially 100,000 young Britons may be unemployed as migrant workers have taken jobs they might have taken, but does also point out that migrant workers have gone into jobs that British people do not want to do. 

Migrant workers taking the dirty jobs have kept a number of industries going and prospering.  The report quotes and I can confirm that the Scottish fish industry is based now on migrant workers at the processing end (mainly Estonians I gather).

The report indicates that economic growth is boosted by migrant workers, which has impacted favourably on interest rates, wage inflation, and headline inflation.  In an interesting juxtaposition, the Telegraph article also advises that there will be a clamp down on entry visas for visitors.

The rest of Europe is considering the economic and social impact of the widening of the Schengen arrangement.  This removes boundary controls between currently 15 European states (not the UK and Ireland), widening to 24 European states tomorrow, and Switzerland joins the group in 2008.

The tourism industry is hailing this as a great thing, as it is perceived that the need for border controls and individual visas is a barrier for Russians in particular, who are as likely to visit Turkey, where there are no visa requirements, as the 15 old Schengen states, where one visa is required.

To be fair, there is also some consternation as to whether this will make it more difficult to combat organised crime, illegal immigration and terrorism.  However to watch images of EU nationals being able to go through borders without controls makes me wonder why people want to go to Britain, where even returning ex-pats are made to feel guilty as they line up to have their passports checked.

Father Christmas will have an easier time getting round the rest of Europe next week than he will getting into the UK to hand out presents to the good children.  After all, he comes in from the Norway/Finland border, so who knows, he could actually be Russian (do you really trust all his little helpers?), and aiming to steal our dirty jobs!

Seasons Greetings and see you in the New Year!