He's made a clear attempt at blackmail with this photo today. Note the whip and the red book in the foreground reminding Johnson and co that he used to be chief whip and has a lot of dirt on them he can share if they sack him. He loves a good leak does Williamson.
This is a better option for the students, but still not the most accurate solution. Surely using the mock results would have been more realistic.
Teachers' grades the preferred method for everyone I have spoken to at my daughter's school., and other schools. If you don't trust the teachers who have been involved on a daily basis, then what's the point? Mocks only a good indicator, if people had known they were carrying value. Many schools deliberately "toughen up" the mocks to encourage students into action. Teachers' grades reflect progress over 2 years not just one random result where students could not have realised the importance placed on them. Also worth noting that the process involved still ensures a spread over the grades and ranking of students.
Teacher estimated grade accuracy is also brought into question, as they are apparently 12% higher at A-level and 9% higher at GCSE than last year's actual results. Does most students mock to finals grades vary by that much? Genuine question by the way.
In my opinion vast majority of pupils' scores do show a rise from mocks to their actual exams. Very often they are used to find the gaps and then you spend remaining time plugging those gaps in their attainment. We would start doing boosters etc after school to help as well - also set online tasks etc. My daughter took her mock in the December of 2017 and scored a 4 in her higher math's paper - her final grade in May 2018 was a 7.
Can't answer for everyone but in my day no bugger took mocks seriously. We knew they carried no weight so hardly knuckled down and revised when we could be outside playing football. Different kettle of fish when it came to final exams.
There was a teacher on the radio the other day who explained very eloquently why that's the case. He said that many years you think there are a number of pupils who might get an A* on the exam because there's no question that they can perform at that level. When the exams come around, a few of them won't - maybe they didn't revise enough, maybe they were having a bad day, or maybe the wrong questions come up. Two of them might get their A*, and two might have to be content with an A. But ahead of time you've got no idea which ones will just fall short, so you have no option but to predict that they'll all get the mark of which you think they're capable. It does re-raise the question about whether exams are the best way of measuring capability in the first place, but that's another debate!
Its a long time ago now, but one of the lads at school broke his wrist the week before the O Levels and couldn't take any exams at all. As you say, illness, injury, personal circumstances, weather and even just hormones and allergies can combine to reduce a pupils performance from optimal. Rarely pupils drop lucky with the questions and exceed expectations too.
Agree with this. I always think my family is a great example of why no system is perfect. My Gran was recognised locally as very intelligent and gifted at school but left with awful qualifications. Her course work etc was fantastic but she always fell apart at exams. Where myself I did naff all in Senior school and literally did the least amount possible but came out with all high scoring O levels even though I left in the November and only went back for exams and representative sports.
At school my maths teacher, who was brilliant btw, actively told all of us not to revise for mocks so that he could make an assessment of where we were at the time then use the rest of the year to focus on our weak areas. We were top set and most of us got A’s so don’t know if that approach would work with less able kids but it worked for us.
There is another possibility. If you look at the list of candidates, Williamson still might be the best man for the job - imagine Francois, Grayling, Fabricant, Chope, Cash, etc as Minister for Education...
This what you get when a cabinet position is used as a thank you for supporting Brexit. No marks in positions of influence
Or the 3rd option where they believe that they can get away with literally anything. I offer the fact that they've just closed Public Health England (with the blame for the govt's handling of Covid) and handed it over to a millionaire mate who's failed at Track and Trace once already. They don't care what we think - they believe that we'll believe anything they tell us; so long as they keep promising to get Brexit done it'll keep enough people in tow.
She was also fired from Talk Talk after a data breach cost them £60m and her Tory MP husband is a keen proponent of privatising the NHS.
Isn't Matt Hancock the MP for West Sussex (including Newmarket) and in receipt of numerous donations from the horse racing industry? Like this one: Name of donor: Tattersalls Ltd Address of donor: Terrace House, 125 High Street, Newmarket CB8 9BT Amount of donation, or nature and value if donation in kind: £10,000 Date received: 25 November 2019 Date accepted: 25 November 2019 Donor status: company, registration 00791113 (Registered 06 January 2020; updated 15 July 2020) So *why* did Cheltenham go ahead?
I’d question the validity of those figures for a start, but even if they were elevated by 12% I’d still argue that the actual ranking of students would be more or less right, and in this anomaly year it would be better to be generous and fair rather than strict and hugely unfair (in some cases) . It’s looking like Universities will lose thousands of non returning overseas students so they actually want the increased numbers to compensate. As for mocks, in my daughter’s case, we agreed not to have a strict revision regime because she had a lead role in a show. As this is the industry she wants to work in, and this experience is just as valuable as exams, we agreed that she would get the show out of the way and then knuckle down. Her results are out on Thursday. As an e.g. in Maths she is predicted 6. in the mock, she got 5, the algorithm would probably have given her a 3 due to the previous results at school. Yet she has an older sister doing a degree in maths who would have worked with her over Easter. A 3 would see her having to re-sit, or even being turned away from the college. Obviously this is just one example, but my point is, the teachers are aware of the pupils, their attitudes to work, there ability etc. It’s not a perfect method, but in the circumstances, it has to be the fairest. I also say this in the knowledge that the school has completely messed up two subjects, and one teacher will almost certainly knock down the score just because in her wisdom she changed the exam board and curriculum half way through.
