Have you noticed photos of what types of students newspapers use to illustrate stories about A-level results?

Sexy A-Levels think that they have spotted a pattern, and it involves sexy young female students! they also have a fascinating insight into this picture...

Meanwhile Biased-BBC have spotted a different approach at the right-on BBC.

Are A-level students really doing that much better in their exams?

Somehow I doubt it and having seen some recent A-level papers they seem a lot easier than those of the 1980s.


Graph courtesy of Alex Masterley who seems to have done much better in his A-levels than I did. Maybe he took them much later than me!

Education, education, education - improvements in standards were not real!

I am not shocked to learn that the latest OECD Economic Survey of the UK is not convinced about the veracity of the UK's alleged incredible rise educational standards under the last Labour government. Here's some of their comments:

'Despite sharply rising school spending per pupil during the last ten years, improvements in schooling outcomes have been limited in the United Kingdom.'

Limited improvements but Labour have boasted for years about how education standards have improved under their increased 'investment'.

That's subjective but exam standards really rose under the Labour government, didn't they:

'Official test scores and grades in England show systematically and significantly better performance than international and independent tests … The measures used by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) … show significant increases in quality over time, while the measures based on cognitive tests not used for grading show declines or minimal improvements.'

How can that be? Surely the last Labour government and the teaching unions would not have conspired to artificially boost exam result, would they?

'The share of A–level entries awarded grade A has risen continuously for 18 years... independent surveys of cognitive skills do not support this development.'

This is shocking news and a damning indictment of the last Labour government, although to be fair the OECD do also say that 'The share of A–level entries awarded grade A has risen continuously for 18 years and has roughly trebled since 1980'

So educational standards have not risen and pupils are not any better taught or more intelligent than they were in the 1980s. So when teachers and government ministers said that any questioning of exam standards was disrespectful to hard working pupils, they were hiding the truth; shocking.

I turned to the BBC, after all they have an education news section on their website expecting to find an angry piece decrying the lies that they and we had been fed by the last Labour government. Imagine my surprise when as at 8pm on Thursday 17 March I can find not a word about the OECD report; are they trying to hide the truth from the British public?

Here are the screen dumps to show that the BBC are not reporting this relevant news story...

Monday morning catch-up

So much I wanted to post on this weekend but not enough time, so here's a catch-up post:

1. Over 25% of A-level students get A grade and something like a third of prospective entrants to University mathematics courses fail a maths exam.


2. The Times reports that: "A devastating official report suppressed by ministers has revealed that soldiers’ lives are being put at risk by “endemic” failures at the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

The secret dossier blames “political fudge” and Whitehall incompetence for the plight of soldiers in Afghanistan who are provided with inadequate frontline kit."


3. My Own Doubts riffs on a theme I have touched on before as he explains why, contrary to the agreed media narrative, racism is a problem of the "left" not the "right".


4. The Spectator think that there is a "stench of realpolitik" about the release of al-Megrahi.


5. The Telegraph reported that:

"Britain's payments to the European Union will soar by almost 60 per cent next year, according to figures "buried" in government documents.

The Treasury statistics show that the UK's net contribution to the EU will increase from £4.1 billion this year to £6.4 billion in 2010/11.

The figures were published in the Treasury's annual Community Finances statement, which was slipped out last month just before parliament broke up for its summer recess. "

Do read this story as it reminds us of Tony Blair's duplicity and Gordon Brown's capitulation over the UK rebate.


6. This Telegraph article from last year may give us pointers on how Gordon Brown will look to raise money if he manages to somehow win (or avoid) the general election - raiding private pension funds in the name of serving the collective welfare.


7. The Mirror reported that: "John Prescott has landed his most bizarre job yet - as professor of climate change at a Chinese university.


8. A site that is becoming a daily must read for me,Beeb Bias Craig, takes Michael Crick to task for anti-Conservative bias in two wee researched articles - here and here.

9. The Mail reports that: "Traditional lightbulbs will disappear from our shops in just ten days.

All conventional pearl, incandescent lightbulbs are being banned by the European Union to slash energy bills and carbon dioxide emissions.

The move covers every type of frosted traditional bulb, from the 60 watt pearl bulbs used in table lamps to more specialised opaque 25 and 40 watt bulbs shaped like golf balls and candles.

Clear and frosted 100 watt lightbulbs will also not be on sale from September 1."

Are A-levels getting easier?

I know I have discussed this before but I found an interesting BBC magazine piece that I think bears wider coverage. BBC's John Hand took an A-level in Italian and concludes

"I outperformed my 1989 D grade for English Language Studies, based on a couple of hours of Italian study each week.

If I had the full six hours of classroom time each week, maybe I too would be in possession of an A grade. "

Two hours of study a week and he got a C at A-level, does that not seem a little "dumbed down"?

Somehow I think John Hand feels conflicted by this finding as he is keen to pint out first that:

"as a journalist, I am well versed in the art of gaining short-term knowledge of a subject."

and second that to fit in with "the narrative" on exam results:

"having seen the range of skills needed to gain top marks, it is important to value the efforts of those 18-year-olds who have done well today."

The most ingenious exam cheating method I have ever seen

Cheating in exams is a lot more hi-tech than in my day.


Note: NotaSheep does not condone cheating in any exam, although with the dumbing down of the exam system I also fail to see why anyone would need to cheat...

The important A-level results

Chicken Yoghurt has the key A-level results:

"The Independent:Two Blondes

The Times: Two Brunettes

The Telegraph: One BRunette, one BLonde, and one Redhead

Daily Mail: One BR, one BL, and one R.

Sky News: One BR, one BL, and one R

The Guardian: Two BLs

The Sun: Two BL and one T (Token non-ugly bloke)

ITN: Two BLs and one BR. "

This trend has been spotted before but never before as well documented.

Key Stage 2 English Test marking

From today's Times comes a fine example of, I'm not sure what actually...

Two 11 year old pupils answered a (presumably creative writing) question. The first child wrote about Pip Davenport, a fairground inventor:

“If he wasent doing enthing els heel help his uncle Herry at the funfair during the day. And had stoody at nigh on other thing he did was invent new rides... Becoues he invented a lot of new rides he won a prize. He didn’t live with his mum he lived with his wife."

The second child wrote:

"Quickly, it became apparent that Pip was a fantastic rider: a complete natural. But it was his love of horses that led to a tragic accident. An accident that would change his life forever. At the age of 7, he was training for a local competition when his horse, Mandy, swerved sideways unexpectedly, throwing Pip on to the ground, paralysed."

Let's take a look at the two answers and as they used to say "compare and contrast" them. The first has appalling spelling, poor punctuation and has a last sentence that seems to have little relationship with the rest of the story. Assuming spelling is of importance then I don't see how it could be marked any higher than a 'D'. The second answer has no apparent spelling mistakes, rather decent usage of punctuation (although I would have put a semi-colon rather than a comma after unexpectedly) and tells a story well. I would have marked that as an 'B' for an 11 year old.

In fact

"both children were awarded five out of eight for sentence structure. Child A was given eight out of twelve for composition and effect while Child B received only seven marks."

Yes that's right, both children were awarded five out of eight for sentence structure which seems pretty unbelievable. Even more incredibly the first answer was awarded one mark more for composition and effect. Unless the first answer received extra marks for effect for making the examiner sit up and go "what the heck is that about" then I fail to see how the examiner made such a decision. Surely the examiner didn't make the decision based upon the perceived class of the writer: one writing about funfairs and one about horse-riding.

I know that I have moaned about the dumbing down of education for quite a while now but it is an important issue. Far from building a "knowledge based economy" the Labour party seem intent on destroying any excellence within our education system and levelling down so that nobody feels excluded. This "all shall have prizes" approach is counter-productive and I believe actually evil.

Education dumbing down (part xx)

I note that The Telegraph report that:

"Since 1996, 11 and 14-year old children, who narrowly fail Sats tests, have their papers automatically reviewed, a practice that has led to an estimated 300,000 pupils being upgraded.

The practice known as "borderlining" applies to pupils whose score is three marks or less below the passmark.

Those who scrape through their exams just above the passmark are not subjected to the same review. None of the pupils reassessed have been down-graded.

Ken Boston, the chief executive of the Government-sponsored Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, wrote to Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, saying that the system had "flaws".

Borderlining is to be removed this year, a move which is expected to see children's scores in English, maths and science fall by up to two percentage points.

Michael Gove, the Shadow Children's Secretary, said: "The credibility of the exam system has been put in danger by this whole process. The Government constantly talks up its own flawed method of measuring its performance but international league tables show that we are slipping behind in maths, English and science.

"Ministers cannot escape their responsibility for tests which parents and teachers say they can no longer trust.""

Of course the "powers that be" haver an explanation, and most convincing it is too:

"A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said: "The decision to discontinue the process of checking test scripts that fall close to grade boundaries, known as borderlining, was made in 2005 following advice from the QCA to ministers.

"It is being implemented this year and markers and schools were told about new processes to improve marking quality. The decision was made public as part of normal DCSF and QCA business. QCA's job is to continually seek to improve its administration and monitoring of standards in national curriculum testing. This is a matter for them."

A QCA spokesman said: "The new measures this year will lead to more accurate marking.""

So the Labour government and their henchmen, not content with making the syllabus smaller and the exams easier, had to make the marking of exams easier as well. Their casual attitude to truth and reality sicken me.

Better exam results but pupils can't read or write

When I was in a previous job, I used to receive CVs from prospective employees and they all had wonderful GCSE results, there were A and A* grades all over the CV. However when they came to the interview which included a quick written test and an Excel exercise, the reality was most couldn't form sentences properly, spell all but the simplest of words and had little or no mental arithmetic skills. For years this government has been claiming that the exam results show how standards are rising. For years academics have been showing how the exam standards are being lowered whilst University admissions tutors and those in industry have been giving feedback similar to mine. Some examples:
This Telegraph article from June 2003 reported that "Pass marks for reading and writing examinations for 11-year-olds have been lowered again, prompting accusations that results are being manipulated so that the Government can meet its national literacy targets...markers have been ordered to drop the pass mark in this year's English stage two tests by five percentage points compared with last year. Pupils will now have to score only 44 marks out of 100 in the National Curriculum English Test to achieve level four, compared with 49 marks last year." This wasn't the first mark reduction, the article went on to explain that "In all, the pass mark has dropped 13 points from 1996, when students needed at least 57 per cent to make the grade." The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) had a ready explanation "A QCA spokesman said that the pass mark had been lowered simply because the test was harder than last year's. He said: "The questions in the test are different each year. The structure and content of the tests also changes. Different questions mean the tests can be harder one year than another. To make sure a level four is the same every year, the number of marks needed to achieve it varies with the difficulty of the test."" That was the explanation in June and was the same as the explanation as to why the pass marks were lowered in 1999 as well. In December of the same year, the Telegraph reported that a government commissioned study on the 1999 results showed that "the pass mark was being lowered by seven points to increase the number of pupils meeting the standard...the QCA report...shows that the 1999 test was not substantially harder than the one in 1996 and says the pass mark should have been at least five points and probably six points higher." The Telegraph article on the QCA report continues "The study compared the standard of the tests in l996, l999 and 2000 by setting them to groups of 11-year-olds in Ireland. It found those taking the later papers did much better because, though the standard of the test papers was similar, the pass marks were lower than in l996. "In 1999 the pass mark at level 4 was nine marks lower and also nine marks lower at level five," says the report by a team led by Alf Massey of the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate. "To bring standards in l999 in line with those pertaining in l996 the l999 cutscores would have needed to have been set six marks higher," it said. Mr Massey suggested that at least half the improvement between l996 and 2000 resulted from more lenient marking. "The experimental evidence indicated that a significant proportion of the apparent improvement in national results may have arisen from variation in the standards," his report said."

Let's take a look at GCSE results, in 2005 GCSE results again improved but only because this statistic fiddling government decided that a GNVQ was equivalent to four A-C GCSE passes. Where the figure of four comes from we are not told and I doubt that one GNVQ is equal to one A-C GCSE pass. If you exclude GCSE equivalents from the pass rates in 2005 then according to this Telegraph report the magnificent results start to look less magnificent; "The inexorable rise in the five or more A*-C pass rate looks less impressive once vocational qualifications are taken out of the calculation. The GCSE pass rate on its own has remained almost stagnant for the last five years, hovering around 50 per cent. Here is a table to show this

The government also had to produce figures for students passing Maths and English as well as those who failed these but passed other subjects such as Media Studies "The table compiled for Radio 4 also compares schools with and without the requirement for passes in maths and English, with the result that the number where all pupils achieve the benchmark drops from 102 to 65."

Of course whenever someone points out that exams are getting easier and that the results might not be all that they are cracked up to be. A government minister or whining parent is rolled out to say something along the lines of "As the father of someone who has recently undertaken examinations, I have become increasingly annoyed with those who say that the examinations are easy: they are far from it. I have witnessed first hand the substantial amount of work and effort needed to be successful at this level. Give credit where it is due and celebrate the success of those undertaking these exams." or "I think we should celebrate the hard work that has gone into students attaining these results and not spoil their day". These sort of arguments are rather hard to counter without looking mean and nasty and that is of course the point behind making them.

An article in yesterday's Sunday Telegraph reports that the "National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations, said that the low pass marks call into question the Government's claim to have improved literacy and numeracy." It is now the case that a 14 year old can pas the English exam set for their year with a mark of just 30 per cent and in maths they can reach the level that the Government says is expected for their age with just 22 per cent in the harder papers and 39 per cent for the ones aimed at less able pupils. This is just ridiculous, the government are conning students, parents, the educational system, industry and the electorate.


This Labour government were elected promising to increase literacy and numeracy, what they have done is to raise literacy and numeracy rates by "dumbing down" the exam system with very little improvements in actual literacy and numeracy. The supine press in this country that spent most of the time from 1997 to 2005 with their metaphorical tongues right up this government's collective metaphorical sphincter have a lot to answer for, for not holding the government to task and not allowing the opposition both political and educational the space to do so.