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New UK Initiative - Make Science Easier
An anonymous reader writes "Examiners in the UK have been told to make science 'easier'. From next year 70% of the paper must consist of 'low demand' questions in the form of multiple choice or similar answers. Currently this type of question makes up some 55% of the test. When the recent A level results were announced, with even more students in the UK getting A grades than ever before, educators were congratulating themselves on improved teaching. 'Jim Sinclair, the Joint Council for Qualifications director, emphatically denied that the changes would lead to a rise in the number achieving grade C - the top grade in the foundation tier. Future results would depend on how the marks were allocated. Dr Sinclair added that the changes would help to stop children being turned off by science.' Even still, it's hard to see the benefit from future science students passing by guessing."
Congratulating themselves for better teachings, that's bull, every year people get straight grades and you just get all the adults shouting that students are actually really stupid now and that the tests are just getting easier, trust me, at no point do they entertain the idea of the students being better taught.
They've been dumbing down exams in England for years. I was at school when they switched from O levels to GCSEs, so I did both. I saw one of the lower level GCSE maths exams and it was a joke; given an advert for a cooker with a numerical cost, the student was asked to write the price in words. Huh??
I took O, AO and A level maths and they were hard. But by god I worked for them thanks (in College anyway) to an amazing maths teacher. I didn't get great grade but I earned them.
Since then the emphasis has been on getting as many students to pass with high grades as possible, education be damned. They don't care about making students think; maybe that explains the state of British society.
Thank god I emigrated years ago.
If both of your mom (and dad?) are not 110% into it, then it could be worse than just keeping her in school. Not only that, but your sister needs to be into it too. It takes a lot of hard work not to slack off when you are at home.
My parents got 'homeschooling fever' when I hit high school, my siblings are all a lot younger. I did it through high school, they did it anywhere from first grade all the way through to the end of high school. It works if everyone is on board. At the start, I was not, but that's a long story. As a high schooler I taught myself more than my mom taught me. Which is good, you comprehend a lot more that way.
So long and short: it works, but make sure you are all on the same page and on board with the idea. It ain't cheap. The best math is probably Saxon Math. A lot of home schoolers go with the Abeka system of educational materials but there are others like Bob Jones and such. You may find yourself off better keeping her in school and tutoring her on the side.
they've exported their politicians to England to fuck up the English system
Thank you for proving my point: there is no English parliamentary system, if you want one, go get one, but complaining about Scots in the UK parliament just demonstrates how distorted the use of the word "English" often is
todo - The developer's equivalent of confession: "Forgive me Father, for I have sinned..."
Maybe that's showing the incompetence of the journalist? The correct answer is B.
The next question is worse, question 20:
Digital technologies, such as CD and DVD players, have increased
A) the speed at which sound travels
B) the quality of sound you can hear
C) the range of frequencies you can hear
D) the loudness of sound which can be produced
Apparently the answer is B, but C and D are also correct (at least, compared to vinyl, which is what CDs replaced).
Look at 23!
Assume the orbits of Pluto and Earth are circular. Earth is 150 million km from the sun. Pluto is 5913 million km from the sun. What is the smallest distance between Pluto and Earth in million km?
A) 5913 + 150
B) 5913 - 150
C) 5913 x 150
D) 5913 / 150
Apparently they don't think 16 year olds can count any more!
The rest of the paper (the higher tier bit) isn't so bad. It's a shame it's still multiple choice though.
>>The average IQ is for many populations is roughly ~100
100 is average IQ by design. Scores are normalized so that 100 is always average.
There is more to education than rote learning and memorization. You learn how to learn, how to problem solve, how to think critically, how to express ideas better, how to write better, etc...
It also does expand your mind. You might not remember all the facts you learned in 7th grade biology, but conceptually you understand it better and will be better able to process information concerning biology better later on. This could come in handy for example when discussing a medical procedure with your doctor. One tends to take this knowledge for granted, but if you never learned it then things like veins, arteries, blood cells, etc... would all just sound like the rest of the jargon the doctor was saying.
The range of frequencies that can be stored by the medium might depend if it's analogue or digital. Obviously digital can store "22kHz" easily, but the needle on a record can't vibrate that fast (or whatever). The loudness on a vinyl isn't unlimited, again the needle can't vibrate far enough for some sounds.
/very/ difficult to choose three wrong answers that are definitely wrong.
:-)
This is why I hate multiple choice, it's
E is, indeed, correct
no, b is wrong. Digital does not, in general, carry more information than analogue. The sound is analogue at the source, at best the sampling-process preserves all the information that is there (atleast the part the human ear is capable of hearing) but the sampling-process certainly doesn't add new information that wasn't there in the analogue input. (if it did, we'd call that 'noise')
There are advantages offcourse, no idea why they didn't mention one of them. For example:
digital sound can be transported, stored and manipulated by computers.
digital sound does not degrade aslong as the transmission and storage-systems are adequate.
digital sound is unsesnitive to noisy electric environments, aslong as the noise is under bit-error levels.
You can use error-correcting on digital sound. CDs, DVDs and DAB-radios all do.
digital sound is independent of media and can be moved from one media to another without quality-loss.
It's not as if it'd been hard to come up with a real advantage rather than the bogus ones....
Careful there. Don't take it for granted that the education at a private school is better. I went to one and it was very hit and miss. Some great teachers, and some terrible teachers. The real eye-opener was hearing that we were the only ones who went there for a better education. Everyone else was there to make connections with rich, powerful, and important people. Part of that was making yourself look like you were worth knowing. Tense atmosphere there. Succeed or die. Some went with the 2nd option. No mercy for failure. People who left were forgotten as if they had never existed. Very weird to mention someone who was there last year but didn't return and get a blank look and a "who?" in response. Watch Dead Poet's Society, that movie is dead on.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
I will second this. One positive effect that voucher systems have had in some areas is that once private schools open themselves up to scrutiny by accepting vouchers, some have been found to be so deficient that parents realized that the "failing" public schools were actually better, pulled their kids out in droves, and the crappy private schools closed. Private does not mean better - research every school individually.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
There are also a number of private schools, especially in the US, whose sole existence is there to provide religious foundation in education. The most popular private school in my area didn't have teachers - they had monitors that plugged in video cassettes of the "teachers" doing lessons for that class. The education received there was wholly inferior to the nearby public school (many of which aren't as bad as you'd think), but the private school always had it's doors full because a) they worked religion into everything and b) it was a very racist area of the country, and the private school had very, very few minorities attending. I know of several female friends of mine who were moved over to the private school when starting high school to protect them during the "promiscuous years".
Public schools in the US get a bad reputation that in many cases simply isn't deserved.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain