Saturday, August 23, 2008

Filling the bucket

A thought: do public exams undergo such an intense media dissection simply because the results come out in August, when there's so little else on?

Amid the inevitable kneejerk denunciations of "dumbing-down" and "grade inflation" that surrounded this year's GCSE results, the most cogent response came, of course, from the Guardian. Not, sadly, the editorial, which makes some sound points on the attainment gap between the richest and poorest students, but still obsesses over the minutiae of A*-C pass numbers without contemplating what the letters actually mean. No, the most insightful analysis comes in an article that doesn't even mention GCSEs at all...

More, including obligatory Yeats quote, to be found here.

3 comments:

Rog said...

"Only following orders" goes down an even darker road.

Anyway, I came here expecting an article on dog feeding.

garfer said...

Apparently C is the new A. I thought they'd shut down years ago.

I'm off to smoke a pipe with Rudolph Steiner.

Tim F said...

True, Murph, although I think we're some way from call centres with ARBEIT MACHT FREI above the gate.

Good move, Garfer. I'm doing crack with RD Laing.