Some updates on the exam/blonde girls
A reader asks what the rules are about your extra points - namely, if you have enough, can you have a whole new A-level, or does it have to be a better grade in an existing one? She asks because she would always have liked to be able to speak Spanish, and as she has 10 points to add she could have an A-grade in the langauge, which is a pretty good standard. I feel the rules need to be clarified. In the first instance I believe the extra points have to go to giving you a better grade in the subjects you have already sat, that after all is the rationale behind them. Only then, when you have all A-grades, can you begin to entertain the idea of another A-level, and I think then it has to be related to one you already have - so if you have French, you can have Spanish, but not if you have Physics.
On the education theme, there is I fear a growing crisis in the education of blonde girls. This year there has been a noticeable lack of them getting a large number of A-levels. The Daily Mail
here and
The Times show that their academic achievements are not totally a thing of the past, but the Telegraph has a 12 page picture special with just the one. The glory days are gone.
Labels: education
The Tories and secondary moderns/grammar schools
David Willetts is going to announce the Tories won't return to the 11+. He's clearly been reading the same research as I have, namely the Bristol university study, which I posted on
here. The findings of that study were (read the post linked to for more details) that overall attainment was slightly higher in a secondary modern/grammar system [1], but the distribution of results was much less equal (basically the gains were at the top end) and for those in the secondary moderns, worse than it would have been in comprehensives. It also found that poor but bright children did very well if they got into gramamrs, but very few did, even when their test results were as good as children from richer families [2]. It didn't go into the reasons for this but they are not hard to imagine.
This is being represented as a big shift in policy, but it isn't really. 17 years of Tory government did little to return to a secondary modern/grammar system, and although Mrs Thatcher prevented some secondary moderns/grammar schools from closing, and her position had clearly shifted from the 1970s when she was Education Secretary, she was (and presumably remains) an opponent of the 11+[3].
Update: Stephen Pollard enters the fray into today's Daily Mail, with his customary grasp of the issues, claiming that the Assisted Places scheme was what allowed children from poorer families to attend grammar schools.
[1] The cry of "bring back the grammars" rarely is accompanied by one of "bring back the secondary moderns", despite the fact that (if similar to the old system) 80% of children end up going to the secondary moderns.
[2] Advocates of grammar schools on the left tend to argue that this could be got around, but given the hullaboo in the Daily Mail etc about 'social engineering' when universities tried to change their admissions systems, I'm sceptical.
[3] She's very clear on this point in her autobiography.
Labels: education
