Mailwatch(ed) Forum

I have rather mixed views on the whole catch up thing. I think that initially Williamson and many Tory MP's exaggerated the amount of lost learning in lockdown in order to try and justify re-opening schools when the scientific data was still very mixed. I think the Unions and the academy chains saw it as a good excuse to push for more government spending which is how we ended up with the £15bn figure.

In reality I suspect in junior schools teachers have had a lot for freedom to teach a more balanced curriculum over the past two years because they have not had to waste so much time preparing for pointless SATS tests. As a result many pupils will be going off to secondary school better prepared than in the past. In secondary schools more and more schools have moved towards teaching GCSE's over 3 years rather than 2 years so this provides plenty of scope to allow pupils to catch up without the need for extra lessons or individual tuition.

The pupils who have missed out the most are the pupils who have been doing their GCSE's and A Levels in the past couple of years but no new catch up funding is really going to help these groups now. These pupils will probably need extra assistance at university particularly in science courses because pupils have missed out on lots of practicals over the past couple of years.

At the end of the day Williamson has dug himself into this hole and hopefully he will get the axe in the next coiple of months.

Wrong on the unions. The £15bn was suggested by Sir Kevan and supported, with some reservations, by the unions. According to Mary Bousted.

And I can assure you that teachers in any key stage have not had 'more freedom' in the past two years. Having seen what they have been expected to do, and have achieved, I am amazed that there are any left.

I thought the number of schools teaching a 3-year KS4 was pretty small - do you have any numbers on that?

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Wed Jun 02, 2021 8:42 pm

“Maybe this is being a Yorkshireman, but I always thought £1.4billion was a pretty hefty amount. But I do recognise that this is part of a process.”

100 bricks is quite a lot of bricks, but still woefully inadequate if you intent to build a family home rather than a very small outhouse.

EDIT: that quote being Williamson's, not Tubby's - my overzealous editing of the quoted post there!

satnav wrote: ↑Wed Jun 02, 2021 10:52 pm At the end of the day Williamson has dug himself into this hole and hopefully he will get the axe in the next coiple of months.

Literally or metaphorically?

However... he'll remain in post: you only have to look at education under Gove (and Cummings) to see what the Tories think of education.

And he's a Johnson/Brexit loyalist, which counts for much more than competence.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/educ ... 62076.html

Not like this loathable creep has anything more pressing to focus his attention on is there?

Once again it displays Williamson's lack of intelligence.
The picture was put up in 2013 as an ironic joke. The same committee has decided to remove it, as is their right...

Mr Williamson tweeted that the monarch has “worked tirelessly to promote British values of tolerance, inclusivity and respect around the world”.

There it is, return of the Empire; it’s not “British values”, it’s what you would expect from any decent minded human being

As a postscript I posted the above on the Guardian comments page and got put on the naughty step!

'...and removing a picture from a wall in a place 99.99999% of people have no business in being or seeing, [i.e. like MOST FUCKING PLACES OF WORK AND STUDY AND LIVING] is really, really, really unfaaaairrr'

Having been a member of an MCR in Oxford once, I can tell you we had no picture if the Queen and about 8 people showed up for meetings. Most contentious issue was whether we should buy Die Zeit or the German guy should buy it himself. He had to buy it himself.

Strangely, German media failed to miss this grave insult to their nation.

Training providers have been left livid and refusing to sign contracts after the Department for Education revealed their researchers would randomly reject half of all eligible bootcamp applicants.

https://feweek.co.uk/2021/06/11/uproar- ... andom/amp/

I'm staggered that a randomised blind test on humans in essentially social studies research would ever get ethical approval. These sorts of educational projects are evaluated all the time, always by a sort of action research input-response methodology. In clinical blind trials there has to be a high potential benefit in order to make the trial acceptable (simply because those on placebo are at a disadvantage compared to those on the studied treatment).

I've got experience with this and I can't remember any study working like this. If I were part of the ethics committee I'd turn it down flat. I wonder if the Rat Boy is actually following the rules here.

So you apply for this course because you think it'll be good for you... and the DfE makes sure you can't do it for a year as reward?

Yup. That's ethics, DfE style...

I expect the control group will simply shrug their shoulders and think of the Queen...

You probably get told to apply for it or referred to it by the JCP, because it would be beneficial (former JCP 19+ contractor speaking). They're making JCP complicit in this, and will screw up their performance targets in the process.

Not that that's the main issue, but it's there.

I assume you don't get to do any course at all because that would fuck up the experiment.

I can't see the JCPs can refer anyone if there's a 50% chance of the client being effectively banned from courses for a year.

A-Level studlents have been messed about for the last 18 months, and now this:

https://feweek.co.uk/2021/06/10/20000-s ... ffers/amp/

No, Mr Sanders Kristal, UCAS Head of operations, 20% is not just a small percentage, it is fully one fifth of all university applicants.

Cyclist wrote: ↑Fri Jun 11, 2021 5:53 pm Training providers have been left livid and refusing to sign contracts after the Department for Education revealed their researchers would randomly reject half of all eligible bootcamp applicants.

https://feweek.co.uk/2021/06/11/uproar- ... andom/amp/

And they've been forced to do a U-turn. They're now on a witch-hunt to find out who leaked their secret plan to the press.

https://feweek.co.uk/2021/06/15/dfe-scr ... ation/amp/

I suppose they think ethics is the county south of Suffolk.

The DFE put a post on Facebook yesterday claiming that Marcus Rashford had given his backing to their initiative to help pooper pupils over the holidays. This looks like a very convenient re-writing of history. From what I can remember the DFE was looking to cut help to poorer children over the holidays until Marcus launched a campaign which forced them to make a 'U'turn.

That's odd, satnav. You appear to have been implanted with the same false memory as me. It must be that, because I cannot imagine any Government Department ever distorting the facts and lying to the public.