Talking of Mr Gove, he must have been miffed that news of his spat over-shadowed the announcement that he intended to eradicate illiteracy and innumeracy, and would enshrine this in law.
Sometimes the truth is so absurd that a parody is impossible. He is right. We have all been far too lax in allowing an outbreak of illiteracy of innumeracy. Shame on us.
It is the second idea that is manifestly absurd. Who will be punished if illiteracy still exists? Mr Gove? The illiterate individual? The teachers? Or will it be the parents who he also intends to punish if their children 'do not make sure their children turn up for class ready to learn'.
Monday, 9 June 2014
They just don't get it ...
One of the striking bits of fallout from the May-Gove spat was the line: A source at Number 10 said Mr Gove had not got off lightly and pointed out that Mr Gove had been forced to apologise to a civil servant, which in itself was a severe admonishment.
Apologise to the servants? How low can you fall?
How, in today's world, could anyone relish working for someone who regarded an apology as a 'severe admonishment'?
They will be making us apologise to our fags next.
Apologise to the servants? How low can you fall?
How, in today's world, could anyone relish working for someone who regarded an apology as a 'severe admonishment'?
They will be making us apologise to our fags next.
Sunday, 8 June 2014
How may I deport you?
An article on the BBC website set us thinking today, especially as it came at the same time as the 'resolution' of a row between Theresa May and Michael Gove which seemed to centre who who was being tougher on immigrants.
Over breakfast, we looked at our family which is depressingly 'English' bar the usual mix of Irish and Scottish. Our surname is Normanised Welsh in origin so that hints at the male line (if our grandmothers are be believed). One member of the family is qualified to play for Scotland but has no vote in the referendum while another, very English one, happens to be domiciled in Edinburgh and does.
Then there is the Peruvian great grandmother and the two lovely half Polish children-in-law - both Cambridge graduates and not to be entirely trusted with domestic plumbing - whose parents were fleeing racial hatred, another unpleasant regime and tyranny not very long ago.
Tom Shakespeare has a good point about a natural division of England into smaller parts, something John Prescott tried but for which he found no traction amongst the populace. Where JP went wrong was neither choosing the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms nor their modern equivalent: television areas. The moment you include Leicestershire (Mercia) in East Anglia or Gloucestershire (The Marches?) in the South West, the odour of compromise bubbles to the surface.
Like many families, our ancestors left the land in the mid 19th century and became educated entrepreneurs. and so perhaps we should be railing against any immigration by others, but we are not. As Tom Shakespeare - ah, name to conjure with - so eloquently puts it, we are first and foremost human beings. Although that idea probably puts us down as 'untrustworthy Guardian-reading, wishy-washy, left-wing, intellectual liberals' in some quarters.
All this inspired the following which is dedicated to Theresa May and her friends MG and the farrago who is driving the intolerance:
How may I deport thee? Let me count the ways:
Your mother's folks were Vikings and your father's, they were Danes.
They say your aunt Matilda married ancient Norman stock
By a Saxon out of Wessex for a piece of Brighton Rock.
When Scot crossed into England they made an awful mess
The colour of your uncle's hair, came from a Pict we guess.
And now that Aunty Barbara is courting Samjit Din
I'm sure that they'll deport her, or refuse to let him in.
Our queen is really German. Her husband is a Greek.
Some Angevins who ruled us were really rather weak.
We're Celtic tribes we're Beaker Folk, we're Roman, Saxon, Dane
We're Frenchmen, Dutch, Italian, and Spaniards from the Main.
We've come from places far away, across the seven seas
From India and Pakistan, we're Malay, Thai, Balinese.
We all arrived and stirred it up and somehow made it fit.
The splendid outcome of this mix is what we call True Brit.
With apologies to so many poets ... Kipling or Chesterton would have said it so much better.
Over breakfast, we looked at our family which is depressingly 'English' bar the usual mix of Irish and Scottish. Our surname is Normanised Welsh in origin so that hints at the male line (if our grandmothers are be believed). One member of the family is qualified to play for Scotland but has no vote in the referendum while another, very English one, happens to be domiciled in Edinburgh and does.
Then there is the Peruvian great grandmother and the two lovely half Polish children-in-law - both Cambridge graduates and not to be entirely trusted with domestic plumbing - whose parents were fleeing racial hatred, another unpleasant regime and tyranny not very long ago.
Tom Shakespeare has a good point about a natural division of England into smaller parts, something John Prescott tried but for which he found no traction amongst the populace. Where JP went wrong was neither choosing the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms nor their modern equivalent: television areas. The moment you include Leicestershire (Mercia) in East Anglia or Gloucestershire (The Marches?) in the South West, the odour of compromise bubbles to the surface.
Like many families, our ancestors left the land in the mid 19th century and became educated entrepreneurs. and so perhaps we should be railing against any immigration by others, but we are not. As Tom Shakespeare - ah, name to conjure with - so eloquently puts it, we are first and foremost human beings. Although that idea probably puts us down as 'untrustworthy Guardian-reading, wishy-washy, left-wing, intellectual liberals' in some quarters.
All this inspired the following which is dedicated to Theresa May and her friends MG and the farrago who is driving the intolerance:
How may I deport thee? Let me count the ways:
Your mother's folks were Vikings and your father's, they were Danes.
They say your aunt Matilda married ancient Norman stock
By a Saxon out of Wessex for a piece of Brighton Rock.
When Scot crossed into England they made an awful mess
The colour of your uncle's hair, came from a Pict we guess.
And now that Aunty Barbara is courting Samjit Din
I'm sure that they'll deport her, or refuse to let him in.
Our queen is really German. Her husband is a Greek.
Some Angevins who ruled us were really rather weak.
We're Celtic tribes we're Beaker Folk, we're Roman, Saxon, Dane
We're Frenchmen, Dutch, Italian, and Spaniards from the Main.
We've come from places far away, across the seven seas
From India and Pakistan, we're Malay, Thai, Balinese.
We all arrived and stirred it up and somehow made it fit.
The splendid outcome of this mix is what we call True Brit.
With apologies to so many poets ... Kipling or Chesterton would have said it so much better.
Saturday, 24 May 2014
General questions 2
The second A Level General paper was from June 1968. This continued the expectation that the students had a far wider knowledge of 'current affairs' than could surely have been possible for a seventeen/eighteen-year old. These papers must have been primarily designed to see if one could simply write an essay. Alternatively, they could have been designed to weed out the independent school student - the children of politicians, farmers, diplomats, teachers or the professions - from the state school ones.
Here are some more examples:
- What big advances in medicine (including surgery) have been made in the last thirty years? What further advances seem at present likely before the century ends? It would have been a bold student who mentioned MRI scanning, the eradication of polio, cancer treatments, stem cell advances ... How on earth could they begin to know?
- 'Lives of great men all remind us / As we from their pages turn, / That we too may leave behind us / Papers that we ought to burn.' Comment on this in the light of biographies you have read. And how many biographies has the average 17-year old read today?
- 'Comedy should be placeless and timeless; it does not need gimmicks.' Justify this statement with examples from the comedy (not restricted to the theatre) of different ages. This was from a period before television comedy got under way and assumes that one has studied the history of theatre or at least seen comedies from different ages.
- Has the rush to grant independence to new states in Asia and Africa been justified by results? Ouch! The Sixties had indeed seen a tidal wave of countries becoming independent but how impatient of us to ask whether the results were justified after only a handful of years. Can we not allow them a generation or even two? And how can a student have any real idea in an era when few will have travelled to any of the countries concerned? Of course, it was to winnow out the sons of diplomats, colonial officers and British Council staff.
- Discuss the present state and the possible future of agriculture in an increasingly urbanised and industrialised Britain. Not a question designed to appeal to many inner city lads. The 1967 paper also had a question which mentioned the concreting over of Britain suggesting it was a current theme.
- Can bad men write good books? Give a reasoned verdict. How lucky they were to live in a world so easily divided into good and bad.
- 'Profit' has recently come to be regarded as a dirty word. How dirty do you consider it to be, and why? This was in the days before the famous line 'the unacceptable face(t) of capitalism'.
Perhaps the modern critics of the A Level system have a point: the questions have become easier over the years, but these questions were written for young people growing up in a pre-mass media, pre-television, pre-internet age and assume some sort of ideal student who had read biographies and plays, and who had an informed view of agriculture, medicine, science, architecture and planning. In other words a miniature adult. No doubt that is what Mr Gove aspires to once again.
It is hard even to imagine what naive drivel was produced in answer to some of these questions.
Don't miss the next episode: a few questions from the actual subject papers.
Here are some more examples:
- What big advances in medicine (including surgery) have been made in the last thirty years? What further advances seem at present likely before the century ends? It would have been a bold student who mentioned MRI scanning, the eradication of polio, cancer treatments, stem cell advances ... How on earth could they begin to know?
- 'Lives of great men all remind us / As we from their pages turn, / That we too may leave behind us / Papers that we ought to burn.' Comment on this in the light of biographies you have read. And how many biographies has the average 17-year old read today?
- 'Comedy should be placeless and timeless; it does not need gimmicks.' Justify this statement with examples from the comedy (not restricted to the theatre) of different ages. This was from a period before television comedy got under way and assumes that one has studied the history of theatre or at least seen comedies from different ages.
- Has the rush to grant independence to new states in Asia and Africa been justified by results? Ouch! The Sixties had indeed seen a tidal wave of countries becoming independent but how impatient of us to ask whether the results were justified after only a handful of years. Can we not allow them a generation or even two? And how can a student have any real idea in an era when few will have travelled to any of the countries concerned? Of course, it was to winnow out the sons of diplomats, colonial officers and British Council staff.
- Discuss the present state and the possible future of agriculture in an increasingly urbanised and industrialised Britain. Not a question designed to appeal to many inner city lads. The 1967 paper also had a question which mentioned the concreting over of Britain suggesting it was a current theme.
- Can bad men write good books? Give a reasoned verdict. How lucky they were to live in a world so easily divided into good and bad.
- 'Profit' has recently come to be regarded as a dirty word. How dirty do you consider it to be, and why? This was in the days before the famous line 'the unacceptable face(t) of capitalism'.
Perhaps the modern critics of the A Level system have a point: the questions have become easier over the years, but these questions were written for young people growing up in a pre-mass media, pre-television, pre-internet age and assume some sort of ideal student who had read biographies and plays, and who had an informed view of agriculture, medicine, science, architecture and planning. In other words a miniature adult. No doubt that is what Mr Gove aspires to once again.
It is hard even to imagine what naive drivel was produced in answer to some of these questions.
Don't miss the next episode: a few questions from the actual subject papers.
Monday, 19 May 2014
General questions
Rootling in the loft recently, we came across some A Level exam papers from 1967 and 1968. The questions relating to the main subjects were completely incomprehensible. Once upon a time we might have been able to understand the questions and we have the evidence in the form of a certificate that we actually knew enough to get more than an 'Unclassified' or whatever was awarded in those days.
It was the General papers that provided the most interest not only because we could actually understand the questions but because they provided a glimpse of the exam system of the time. They also suggest that pupils of the time were either much more sophisticated than their equivalent today, that the examiners were expecting them to be so or that they were trying to impose a 'grown-upness' on the young of the late sixties.
Here is a sample of the 1967 questions.
- Discuss, with examples of one or more well-known artists, the aims of the portrait painter. What effects has the development of photography had on the painting of portraits? This is in a general paper, not an Art A Level
- Write a critical appreciation of any opera or ballet you have seen. (Every aspect of the work and its performance should be considered.) It is good to see only highbrow entertainment being allowed but what does that threatening remark in the bracket really mean?
- Give an account of the origins and development of Jazz music. To what extent do you regard modern 'pop' music as a form of Jazz or as a revolt from it?
- Describe the satisfaction you have received from the formal, as distinct from the representational, elements and qualities of one work of art in any medium. Um ...
It goes on to ask one to comment on the proposition that 'When science comes in at the door, common-sense flies out the window'; whether we prefer the work of contemporary novelists to the novels of an earlier generation, with examples; whether the public image of the poet has changed from that of fifty to sixty years ago, and how; and whether we agree that 'morality is only a majority opinion on social conduct - and at that the opinion of a bygone generation'.
In a later section - only one question may be answered from each section - we are asked how much influence and what kind is exercised in the world by the British Commonwealth and what is needed to enable the Commonwealth to survive; we are invited to suggested the changes that are imminent in Western Europe and the NATO Alliance and what effect these will have (it was the height of the Cold War); we are asked to 'account for the rapid increase in organised crime'; and, most surprisingly, we are invited to consider whether it is a fair appraisal of the British political scene that 'While the Tories become more and more radical and Labour more and more conservative, the Liberals vociferously support both sides of every question'. Ouch! It is hard to imagine this last question being acceptable in today's politically-sensitive environment.
To answer these questions intelligently in a 45 minutes essay would require considerable knowledge of what used to be called current affairs and is now known as 'politics'. It would also require a degree of prescience not normally found in 18 year olds. Mr Gove would be proud as would any Etonian who had been faced with the question starting 'You are the Prime Minister of Britain and ....' in his entrance exam, taken when he was 13 years old.
These are not questions likely to be answerable by the vast majority of today's young.
It was the General papers that provided the most interest not only because we could actually understand the questions but because they provided a glimpse of the exam system of the time. They also suggest that pupils of the time were either much more sophisticated than their equivalent today, that the examiners were expecting them to be so or that they were trying to impose a 'grown-upness' on the young of the late sixties.
Here is a sample of the 1967 questions.
- Discuss, with examples of one or more well-known artists, the aims of the portrait painter. What effects has the development of photography had on the painting of portraits? This is in a general paper, not an Art A Level
- Write a critical appreciation of any opera or ballet you have seen. (Every aspect of the work and its performance should be considered.) It is good to see only highbrow entertainment being allowed but what does that threatening remark in the bracket really mean?
- Give an account of the origins and development of Jazz music. To what extent do you regard modern 'pop' music as a form of Jazz or as a revolt from it?
- Describe the satisfaction you have received from the formal, as distinct from the representational, elements and qualities of one work of art in any medium. Um ...
It goes on to ask one to comment on the proposition that 'When science comes in at the door, common-sense flies out the window'; whether we prefer the work of contemporary novelists to the novels of an earlier generation, with examples; whether the public image of the poet has changed from that of fifty to sixty years ago, and how; and whether we agree that 'morality is only a majority opinion on social conduct - and at that the opinion of a bygone generation'.
In a later section - only one question may be answered from each section - we are asked how much influence and what kind is exercised in the world by the British Commonwealth and what is needed to enable the Commonwealth to survive; we are invited to suggested the changes that are imminent in Western Europe and the NATO Alliance and what effect these will have (it was the height of the Cold War); we are asked to 'account for the rapid increase in organised crime'; and, most surprisingly, we are invited to consider whether it is a fair appraisal of the British political scene that 'While the Tories become more and more radical and Labour more and more conservative, the Liberals vociferously support both sides of every question'. Ouch! It is hard to imagine this last question being acceptable in today's politically-sensitive environment.
To answer these questions intelligently in a 45 minutes essay would require considerable knowledge of what used to be called current affairs and is now known as 'politics'. It would also require a degree of prescience not normally found in 18 year olds. Mr Gove would be proud as would any Etonian who had been faced with the question starting 'You are the Prime Minister of Britain and ....' in his entrance exam, taken when he was 13 years old.
These are not questions likely to be answerable by the vast majority of today's young.
Sunday, 11 May 2014
Customer service - Banking style
It is really too easy to knock banks. Yes, of course they pay themselves eye-watering bonuses but that is because they are 'the best people' and without that quality of people, they would not be able to provide the superb level of service that they do.
We have the good-fortune to use two different on-line banking systems.The one from Barclays comes from the same Disney-inspired design stable as some of Microsoft's work, narrowly avoiding putting everything into Comic Sans. The wonderful pop-up screen that fills 2/3 of the screen contains lots of logos and other unhelpful information while leaving the 'OK' button just below the bottom of the screen so that you have to scroll down to find it; every time. Has no one told them or have those 'best people' not listened?
Then there is the RBS Bankline one which allows you to give your accounts a 'Alias' which is more memorable than their abbreviation of the account name but then does not allow you to use it and expects you to remember the numbers of all your business accounts. They too have a problem with things fitting on the screen and have produced something which looks like a techie's first rough.
Working with these streamlined, customer-friendly organisations is straightforward too: witness this recent message when we tried to set up a new Direct Debit payment system:
Notification of AUDDIS Migration Date - Service User Number : XXXX
Further to the submission of the above application form to Vocalink Ltd, and completion of successful testing I am pleased to confirm your Service User Number has been allocated a ‘Migration’ date for DD/MM/YYY(note; this date is the BACS Processing date and the Migration file should be submitted the working day before).
IMPORTANT : An AUDDIS 'migration' file must contain ALL DDIs held against the SUN(Service User Number). The file must be sent as a 'live' file and only the AUDDIS special transaction code of 0S is to be used. - Please refer to the AUDDIS migration guide page 17 for details.
Please also note that after being in 'migrate' status for 4 weeks you need to be set to full 'live' status. To go fully live you must ensure ALL DDI's are converted onto AUDDIS, and that you do not post D/D mandates to banks when setting up new instructions. We will contact you at this time to check these items before we make the change on the bacs site. Please refer to the AUDDIS migration guide for further details.
Should you have any queries regarding this please contact our Help Desk as soon as possible on 0870 240 5544/156 6680 option 1.
Thank You
The layout and spacing is exactly as it came through by email and it was not from a front-line person. It was from the 'second level of support'. Exciting eh? It certainly made it easy to set up the new arrangement.
We have the good-fortune to use two different on-line banking systems.The one from Barclays comes from the same Disney-inspired design stable as some of Microsoft's work, narrowly avoiding putting everything into Comic Sans. The wonderful pop-up screen that fills 2/3 of the screen contains lots of logos and other unhelpful information while leaving the 'OK' button just below the bottom of the screen so that you have to scroll down to find it; every time. Has no one told them or have those 'best people' not listened?
Then there is the RBS Bankline one which allows you to give your accounts a 'Alias' which is more memorable than their abbreviation of the account name but then does not allow you to use it and expects you to remember the numbers of all your business accounts. They too have a problem with things fitting on the screen and have produced something which looks like a techie's first rough.
Working with these streamlined, customer-friendly organisations is straightforward too: witness this recent message when we tried to set up a new Direct Debit payment system:
Notification of AUDDIS Migration Date - Service User Number : XXXX
Further to the submission of the above application form to Vocalink Ltd, and completion of successful testing I am pleased to confirm your Service User Number has been allocated a ‘Migration’ date for DD/MM/YYY(note; this date is the BACS Processing date and the Migration file should be submitted the working day before).
IMPORTANT : An AUDDIS 'migration' file must contain ALL DDIs held against the SUN(Service User Number). The file must be sent as a 'live' file and only the AUDDIS special transaction code of 0S is to be used. - Please refer to the AUDDIS migration guide page 17 for details.
Please also note that after being in 'migrate' status for 4 weeks you need to be set to full 'live' status. To go fully live you must ensure ALL DDI's are converted onto AUDDIS, and that you do not post D/D mandates to banks when setting up new instructions. We will contact you at this time to check these items before we make the change on the bacs site. Please refer to the AUDDIS migration guide for further details.
Should you have any queries regarding this please contact our Help Desk as soon as possible on 0870 240 5544/156 6680 option 1.
Thank You
The layout and spacing is exactly as it came through by email and it was not from a front-line person. It was from the 'second level of support'. Exciting eh? It certainly made it easy to set up the new arrangement.
Monday, 3 February 2014
Computer systems
A chum sent us this 'delightful' story of the problems of installing a new computer system to help colleges determining their funding levels.
During 2013 the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) introduced a new Data Collections and Funding Transformation Programme (DCFT), the adverse consequences of which have spilled over into 2014.
In an attempt to explain the purpose of the new system, Skills Minister Matthew Hancock said that the SFA was moving to a new data collection system that would underpin a more streamlined and less complex funding system. The new system would remove the need for thousands of different funding values for each course and qualification, and that it would replace earlier complex funding formulas and funding systems.
The intention is that the DCFT will replace the:
In addition, the new Learning Aim Reference System (LARS), that should have been available since last August to help college staff check whether qualifications are eligible for funding, and how much per learner providers should receive, is still not available. Providers have to use ‘Lars Lite’ instead. This is a temporary downloadable database from the SFA that apparently is also producing unreliable data.
Initially, Mr Hancock seems to have laid the blame for the failures on inadequacies in colleges’ own internal management information systems. In a written answer to a parliamentary question about DCFT, Mr. Hancock claimed that there had been some issues for colleges and other providers in the calculating funding due to them where their own internal management information systems have not been able to report accurately their management position. This was even after the SFA had admitted that there were serious problems with the DCFT system and had apologised to providers for the inconvenience caused.
Eventually, Mr Hancock was brought up to speed with the real reason for the difficulties and has now gone so far as to say that that he personally takes full responsibility for the disruption the new system has caused to providers.
The four computer contracts for a system that does not work cost over £11.3m.
Let's look on the bright side, this is nowhere near as much as NHS England and the Ministry of Defence have spent on IT systems that don’t work and we can look forward to the Margaret Hodge and her Public Accounts Committee asking what Mr Hancock means when he says 'personally responsible'.
During 2013 the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) introduced a new Data Collections and Funding Transformation Programme (DCFT), the adverse consequences of which have spilled over into 2014.
In an attempt to explain the purpose of the new system, Skills Minister Matthew Hancock said that the SFA was moving to a new data collection system that would underpin a more streamlined and less complex funding system. The new system would remove the need for thousands of different funding values for each course and qualification, and that it would replace earlier complex funding formulas and funding systems.
The intention is that the DCFT will replace the:
- Learner Information Suite (LIS)
- Learning Aim Reference Application (LARA)
- Online Data Collection (OLDC) system
- Provider Online (POL)
- Provider Information Management System (PIMS)
- The LIS has become the ‘Funding Information System’ (FIS)
- The LARA has become the ‘Learning Aim Reference Service’ (LARS)
- The OLDC has become the ‘Data Exchange Service’ (DES)
In addition, the new Learning Aim Reference System (LARS), that should have been available since last August to help college staff check whether qualifications are eligible for funding, and how much per learner providers should receive, is still not available. Providers have to use ‘Lars Lite’ instead. This is a temporary downloadable database from the SFA that apparently is also producing unreliable data.
Initially, Mr Hancock seems to have laid the blame for the failures on inadequacies in colleges’ own internal management information systems. In a written answer to a parliamentary question about DCFT, Mr. Hancock claimed that there had been some issues for colleges and other providers in the calculating funding due to them where their own internal management information systems have not been able to report accurately their management position. This was even after the SFA had admitted that there were serious problems with the DCFT system and had apologised to providers for the inconvenience caused.
Eventually, Mr Hancock was brought up to speed with the real reason for the difficulties and has now gone so far as to say that that he personally takes full responsibility for the disruption the new system has caused to providers.
The four computer contracts for a system that does not work cost over £11.3m.
Let's look on the bright side, this is nowhere near as much as NHS England and the Ministry of Defence have spent on IT systems that don’t work and we can look forward to the Margaret Hodge and her Public Accounts Committee asking what Mr Hancock means when he says 'personally responsible'.
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