Rescuing
Democracy in the United Kingdom from our current Elected
Dictatorship
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Spin,
not face-to-face confrontations with the voters, is the
Government's chosen method of communication. Ordinary people
are dangerous. Ordinary people might ask a question which
throws a politician 'off message'; the Cabinet member might
reveal himself or herself to be a human being like us, and
not a programmed android. Worse still, he or she might tell
the truth.
Ann
Leslie - Daily Mail, September 16, 2004
Blair
wants to leave his mark on history - looks more like a stain
to me.
Peter
Thorndyke, Diss, Norfolk - Daily Mail, May 23, 2005
I
know I'm me - why do I need an ID card?
"Sorry,
officers, I don't have an ID card. I never applied for one.
It seemed a bit steep at 300 quid. I do have my free passport,
my driving licence and my London freedom travel pass, each
with my photograph. I have my NHS medical card, with its
lengthy number, given me at birth, my RAF service book with
my Armed Forces number, and a chit authorising me to wear
a few gongs -including a General Service Medal with Malaya
bar, for fighting communist terrorists on behalf of my country,
or so they told me.
"I've
also got various credit cards and store cards, all with
my signature on the back, generally good for buying the
everyday requrements for life as well as the odd luxury.
If you decide to arrest me, I suppose I'll have to be photographed
and given another number, besides my PINs.
"I'm
afraid I haven't got a pension book; it was taken away."
"By
thieves, sir?"
"No
... well, not exactly. By the Government. By the way, may
I see your warrant cards please, gentlemen?"
Oh
dear, they've disappeared.
E. Harry Gumer, Romford, ESSEX - Daily Mail, June 1, 2005
NO
means NO
When
does NO mean MAYBE?
When it's not the answeer the EU wants.
With
the courageous French NON resounding
in their ears, shabby, undemocratic self-interested leaders
of Europe propose ignoring the part of their precious constitution
that requires ratification by all members and continuing
without one of the biggest founder members to prevent derailing
the gravy train.
As
in Ireland, they refuse to accept any NO votes, ignoring
the will of the people, and re-stage votes until they can
engineer the 'correct' answer. Sadly, Foreign Secretary
Jack Straw dances to their tune like a puppet on a string.
With tactics such as these, how can anyone really believe
the EU has our interests at heart. Letter
from Steve Penny, Kingsnorth, Kent - Daily Mail, June1,
2005
Surely
the French result makes the £1million the EU recently
spent on a treaty signing ceremony seem a trifle premature
and extravagant. Letter
from Keith Wiseman, Bury, Lancs. - Daily Mail, June1, 2005
|
May
11, 2005 (741 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 1,610 US - 88 UK - >6,164? Iraqi - >17,300 civilians
- 25 media
May
31, 2005 (761 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 1,657 US - 89 UK - >6,164? Iraqi - >17,300 civilians
- 25 media
June
3 , 2005 (765 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 1,670 US - 89 UK - >6,164? Iraqi - >17,300 civilians
- 25 media
June
17, 2005 (779 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 1,716 US - 89 UK - >6,164? Iraqi - >17,300? civilians
- 25 media
Britain
has traditionally been one of the biggest net contributors
to the EU because we do not get as much money back from
Brussels in farm and regional subsidies as our rivals.
According
to Treasury figures, between 1995-2002, Britain's average
contribution taking the rebate into account, was £2.6billion,
or £43.55 per head of population.
The
French - the biggest recipient of farm subsidies - contributed
£1billion a year or £16.08 per head of their
population.
|
More
exams, less education
Anthony
Seldon, headmaster, Brighton College, says children are over-worked
by dumbed-down tests, and analysis and creativity take second
place to getting the right scores
THE
SPECTATOR - June 18, 2005
At
this time of year, like every head in the country, I watch over
my school with a mixture of pride and concern: pride that so many
of our pupils have obviously prepared well for their exams (and
have turned up!), and anxiety for those who are finding the ordeal
difficult or who will be failing to do themselves justice.
But
I have a wider concern, too. I have been progressively losing
faith in the examination system to inspire stimulating and exciting
lessons, and to assess pupils in ways that challenge and properly
differentiate between them.
The
cry every August, when exam results come out, is that they are
becoming easier, that standards are being 'dumbed down', and that
there is 'grade inflation'. The government barks back that any
improvement in results is genuine and reflects the fact that pupils
are now better taught than ever.
The
improvement in the top A grade at A-level has indeed been remarkable.
For 25 years from 1963 a quota ensured that just the top 10% of
candidates achieved an A grade. But in 1988 the quota was removed
in favour of a new system: grades were to be awarded on the basis
of candidates meeting set 'examination criteria'. The numbers
of A grades began to rise sharply.
In
1991 it was 11.9%; in 1997, the year Labour came to power, it
was 16.3%; and last year it was 22.3%. Does this mean that the
quality of top A-level candidates has doubled in the last 15 years?
Rather
than wait for August's ritual dance, I want to open up in June
the debate about our national examination system and whether it
is serving our children - and indeed our universities - as well,
after years of innovation and alleged improvement, as it should
be. Biggest of these 'improvements' came just five years ago with
'Curriculum 2000', which introduced a wholly new exam, AS-level,
for pupils in the lower sixth.
The
exam debate has added piquancy for me this year as I have been
sitting my first A-level exam (or at least part of it) for 30
years. Sixteen lower-sixth pupils and I have been taught philosophy
outside the timetable, and I have set them the challenge of beating
me in the exam. The head of the department has predicted that
the pupils will all get As and that I'll get an E.
It
has been an eye-opener. I have listened to outsiders coming in
to talk to the group to explain exactly what one should be writing
sentence by sentence, and precisely the examples we should be
giving in our answers to achieve the best marks. As an exercise
in memory, it is excellent; as a test of intellect and problem-solving,
it is a non-starter. More on this later.
My
pupils at Brighton College feel similarly about their exams, as
do many of their teachers. Their frustration focuses in particular
on AS-level. Mary-Alice, and English Speaking Union Scholar from
Seattle, has felt cheated by the boring and mechanical questions
she has encountered this year, in contrast to exams she sat last
year in the US. She says, "I'm just very disappointed. All
I find myself doing is regurgitating facts, as my teachers have
told me."
"The
problem goes further than this," says Jessica, another pupil.
Because exams are so restricted and closed in content, she has
found that her teachers have constantly had to rein back lessons
- for example, in politics - because the discussion was going
beyond very limiting assessment criteria. "The teachers want
to teach and want to stimulate us," says Jessica, "but
they're constrained by the exams from doing so."
One
of our most academic English teachers has said that she has become
so disillusioned with GCSE and A-level that she is considering
quitting teaching. "At GCSE ," she says, "I find
myself being told by the examiners exactly what I have to teach.
I am also having to teach 'media' tests as part of the coursework,
such as the opening scenes of films, for which I have not been
trained and in which, frankly, I have no interest."
Like
many teachers, she deplores the increase in 'pre-release' material
at GCSE, with pupils given their texts in advance. Our pupils
are just about to sit full A-levels in which they take their copies
of Othello and their Chaucer and Larkin texts into the
exam, chock-full of their own and their teacher's notes. Our school
chaplain, new to teaching, is incandescent at the changed examinations
system he has found on his return to the classroom. "I strongly
dislike the positive temptation that coursework at GCSE gives
pupils, parents and teachers to cheat. Drafts of course-work bat
to and fro between teacher and pupil, while parental input and
the ubiquitous internet provide ample opportunities for dishonesty.
Many
indeed are the reasons why, year after year, exams results improve,
which led to accusations of dumbing down. Coursework, which can
amount to 60% of the total mark in some GCSEs, is part of the
reason. 'Modular' exams at GCSE and A-level, which break down
the previously long exams into bite-size portions, and where pupils
can regularly resit parts until they get the results they hope
for, are another explanation. It is simply easier for candidates
to crank up their results with modular exams than one-off terminal
exams at the end of two years.
But
the biggest factor in explaining why grades have gone up so much
in recent years is that exams are now so prescriptive and assessment
criteria so blatant. "I no longer find myself teaching history
per se. I am teaching history GCSE and history A-level. This is
a quite different thing," says one of our staff.
So
pupils in our schools are becoming very adept at GCSE French or
A-level physics. They're taught precisely how to play the system.
But this is very different from teaching pupils to be good linguists
or good physicists. We are teaching them less to think than to
excel in exams. And, in one sense, everyone wins - the candidates,
the schools, and the exams boards. The government can boast that
schools are now 'better than ever'.
The
main concern is with the sixth form, where I believe pupils receive
a less challenging, rounded education that they did when I was
at school. The wholly unnecessary AS-level is the real curse here.
Almost uniquely in the world, British pupils now sit summer public
examinations at the ages of 16, 17 and 18. Worse than that, because
of modular exams, they also sit papers halfway through the year.
This puts a great burden on the pupils and schools, has cut right
across extra-curricular activities, and 'general studies', and
has resulted in an unnecessary glut of almost continuous coursework
and examinations.
This
treadmill would perhaps be tolerable if the AS- and A-levels were
better exams than the old A-levels they replaced. But for arts
subjects, questions have become more predicable, specifications
much more tightly prescribed, while for science A-levels, long
questions have given way to easier, fragmented ones and candidates
are led through questions. Opportunities for analysis, creativity,
extended argument and problem-solving have all declined. The exams
have made our schools duller places.
The
top universities are equally concerned about their ability to
select candidates on the basis of A-levels when nearly a quarter
of grades are at the top level. Dr Geoff Parks, director of admissions
at Cambridge, argued at the recent independent schools conference
at Brighton College that A-levels should go. What is needed, he
said is an examination system that allows universities to identify
a sound knowledge-base, originality, insight, analytical and problem-solving
ability and the opportunity to develop arguments at length.
So
what alternatives are there? Many British schools, both State
and independent, are turning to the international baccalaureate:
38 signed up to it in the year 2000, and this has risen to 71
in 2005. The IB offers a broader curriculum, more challenging
questions and a greater opportunity for independent and critical
thinking. But the questions on its papers can still be formulaic
and offer insufficient opportunity for originality.
Mike
Tomlinson, the former chief inspector-of-schools, who has said
that 'A-levels do absolutely nothing to encourage scholarship',
proposed a new diploma earlier in the year. This diploma offered
some of the breadth of curriculum and examination of the IB, but
it has been rejected by Education Secretary, Ruth Kelly, because
it would mean losing the 'gold standard' of A-levels (which prompts
the question whether A-levels are indeed the gold standard they
once were).
Another
possibility is to establish an English baccalaureate with the
rigour of the IB but without the compulsion to study set subjects
beyond the age of 16. This seems to me to be the most attractive
option, and a meeting of the university directors of admissions
and heads of state and independent schools is shortly to be convened
in Brighton to consider it further. If independent schools collectively
had been doing their job properly, they would have vetoed the
nonsense of Curriculum 2000, and devised their own examinations
system, in association with academic state schools. But independent
schools have not sought to set the agenda in education, though
they are now beginning to move more on to the front foot.
One
has to wonder why so many examinations are required in Britain.
I am just back from visiting some of the leading secondary schools
in North America. Teachers and students were stimulated by their
academic work because the schools sit far fewer external exams.
There is a far greater trust and professional respect for the
teacher than one finds in the UK. If universities in a
country as vast as the US can select their students largely on
the basis of schools' own gradings, why can't that happen in the
UK? One parent I met in Washington DC, who'd recently returned
to the US, summed it up: "In English prep schools, my children
were essentially just studying math and English, listening passively
to the teacher talk, and were being tested constantly: over here
they have a much broader curriculum they're far more involved
in lessons and learning much more."
In
the absence of any better system, one must continue for the time
being with the status quo. I am full of admiration for our pupils,
who work very hard, and will deserve thoroughly the excellent
grades I hope they will receive in August. I just wish that the
exams they faced had stimulated them more, but that is not their,
or their teachers' fault. As for me, I confidently expect to achieve
that predicted E grade in my philosophy module. What the hell;
I just wrote what I wanted to and ignored the advice about what
the examiners were looking for. But for me at least, the grade
doesn't matter. The problem with the system is that pupils cannot
afford to be so cavalier.
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