At the risk of starting a flame war…

Get a life, guys! Get a life!

(Comments are filtered. Trolling will not be approved. Constructive criticism will.)

Apparently the attack on her car was "a random attack by bored youths."

Of course, Blears is famous for being in touch with the feelings of voters, so she must be right.

It can’t possibly be an expression of disgust at the recent behaviour of the New Labour government.

Do you ever bother to look at the spam that you are sent? It is getting pretty interesting.

First of all, there’s the obvious stuff: apparently Romana’s roommates are out of town and she’s feeling lonely, so she kindly sent me her phone number. There are also many single women who want to meet me, and I don’t even need a credit card if I want an introduction. (Good job – I prefer the type of woman who has her own credit card, and an income big enough to cover the repayments.) Some of these single women apparently have their own websites as well as phone lines and email campaigns, so I think that if they’re still single after all their pro-active pursuit of boyfriends, there must be something wrong with them. The fact that they are chasing a married man might be a clue…

This morning, in a perfectly timed piece of spamming, I was invited to “Try A Revolutionary Coffee Experience” – but as this was directly below an email asking if I wanted a free trial of a colon cleanser, I declined the offer.

The entrepreneurial programmes on offer seem tempting, if a little bit obvious: “Send me $100 and I’ll tell you the secret of earning thousands of dollars a day.” Let me guess – it starts by sending out loads of emails…

And there is no shortage of lifestyle coaching programmes on the electric internet. Apparently the only people who achieve their personal goals are those who pay for life coaches. I think these emails should be linked to the ones telling us how to improve our computer’s performance: upgrade your spam filter.

When senior Labour Party advisers are describing people as “oiks” then it is evident that the party is about as connected to the working classes as Lord Fauntleroy.

This news hit the headlines this week.

Workmen at the University of York had to call in experts to help them to identify an unusual object found on campus – it turned out to be a human brain.

Dr Sonia O’Connor, research fellow in archaeological sciences at the University of Bradford added: “The survival of brain remains in this environment is extremely rare.”

There was no-one available for comment at the University of York.

The Education and Skills Bill had its Third Reading last week – and a Lib Dem amendment was accepted by the Government: schools must, "seek and take account of pupils’ views on policies on the delivery of the curriculum, behaviour, the uniform, school food, health and safety, equalities and sustainability " according to Children’s Minister Baroness Morgan.

When 150,000 school children were asked by Ofsted last year how much they felt that their views were taken into account when decisions were made, 34% replied "not much" or "not at all." So, in response, legislation will be submitted for Royal Assent "within the current Parliamentary Session" to ensure that children are consulted.

Meanwhile, senior teaching staff and LEA officials have a perfect right to ride roughshod over the views of the rest of the education professionals in their schools – better still, they are provided with professional training in "overcoming resistance to change" and "managing dissent in the staffroom" as part of the NPQH.

It’s nice to know that the Government values the skills, abilities and opinions of junior teachers so highly.

Several local councils in the UK want to stop people from using Latin idioms (I’m allowed to say ‘idiom’ because it’s Greek) because, and I quote, “some people might not understand it”

Let’s just remind ourselves of the clear English that local councils would prefer us to use:

• Luton Council: “A multi-agency project catering for holistic diversionary provision to young people for positive action linked to the community safety strategy and the pupil referral unit.”
• SW England Regional Development Agency: “Aligning the drivers, values and principles with the objectives is the key to unlocking the strategy. When they are fully aligned, they will illuminate the actions that need to be taken in the region.”
• Rhodri Morgan: “The only thing which isn’t up for grabs is no change and I think it’s fair to say it’s all to play for, except for no change.”

Great Britain has a new enemy – thanks to Gordon Brown’s wise and diplomatic use of legislation labelled as "anti-terrorist" when seizing the assets of failed Icelandic banks. Serious times, he said, call for serious men. He’s right – this is not funny.

So when Reykjavík declares war, how will we fare?

Their armed forces amount to 159,000 – against the UK’s 195,000. However, they aren’t currently engaged in 2 foreign wars already, nor are they actively involved in eight locations around the globe. There’s no doubt that they could bring more people to the party, and won’t be suffering from nasty hangovers (either from battle or binge) when they get there.

So once again, Blighty would have to rely on the chaps with the Polish uniforms to protect us: the RAF. The Icelandic air force is known locally as the "Surveillance and Air Rescue Wing" and it consists of four radar stations. Not much of a match for our 850 aircraft, including Tornados, Harriers, Typhoons and Reaper UAVs. The RAF’s finest hour may have to be repeated if Prime Minister Boredom Frown doesn’t apologise to Mr Haarde PDQ.

Thankfully, the Icelandic Coast Guard is no match for the Royal Navy either. Iceland’s "Bravest Men" may have earned their status in the Cod Wars, but manning a machine gun on a trawler in midwinter doesn’t really cut it when you are up against 12 nuclear submarines, 3 carriers, 8 destroyers, 17 frigates and 3 amphibious support vessels.

So my conclusion: Iceland couldn’t invade us, because they can’t get here past our sea & air power. We can’t invade them, because they would kick our arses in a land battle.

I think it’s time for an apology, Mr Brown.

Much to the BBC’s amusement (and mine, too, I have to admit) it seems to be bothering the Ockers that Team GB is ahead of them on the Olympic Medals Table – as the Sydney Morning Herald reported this morning, “Poms are winning, call an inquiry. ”

I think that they need to learn from Our American Cousins.

Before today’s Gold Rush was quite over, this is how the BBC reported the Medals Table:

Le Figaro:

The Berliner Morgenpost:

However, the Washington Post has invented a new way of counting medals that doesn’t just put the USA on top – it puts Australia ahead of GB, too.

And finally, MSNBC:

They don’t need to actually lie about it – just find a way of telling the truth that suits your prejudices.

If you got your A’ Level results today, congratulations. (I hope that there is no need for commiserations.)

However, let’s try to avoid jumping onto one of the many bandwagons associated with the ever-rising pass rate of the old-fashioned ‘Gold Standard’ of British education.

First, let’s look at the difference between modern A’ Levels and the ones that far grumpier people than me took in the “good old days.’

In the “good old days,” A’ Levels were marked on a bell curve every year and within each board, so only the top 10% of people taking a paper would get the top grade regardless of how many questions everyone answered correctly . This meant that there was no way of knowing if Joe Bloggs, who took UCLES A’ Level English Literature and got an A, had done as well as Bert Philpott, who took JMB English Lit and got the same grade. In effect, they weren’t the same grade and there was no way of measuring them against each other. The exams weren’t even looking for the same skills.

Worse still, if Joe & Bert’s little sisters took the same exams a year later, their grades couldn’t even be compared within the same boards because, as any fule kno, the bell curve changes with every cohort.

So in the middle of the 1980s (and just in time for me to take A’ Levels) the Uniform Mark Scheme was introduced. This meant that the mark boundaries between exam grades became fixed.

Fixed? Well, according to the Curriculum, Evaluation and Management Centre at Durham University, not precisely fixed – because while a 50% mark in one of my A Level papers would have got me a grade C when I took my A’ Levels in 1987, in 2006 it would have got me an A.

But crucially, that doesn’t mean that it’s easier to get a grade A in the 21st Century – because a valid interpretation of the data we have seen so far could be that it is proportionally harder to get 50%.

So we are still left with the question, has so-called “grade inflation” actually happened?

Here’s a few factors to consider when making that judgement:

1. Modern A’ Levels require a consistently high level of effort throughout the two years of study, as students have to complete exams at the end of the first year, at Christmas and again the end of the second year, and coursework throughout both years. Compare this with my own course in which all I needed was to collect a full set of notes for all my subjects, memorise them in time for the exams, and then sit nine three-hour papers in five days. In effect, I attended lessons and completed homework (an estimated 24 hours per week ) for 20 months, revised like fury for 4 weeks, and collected my certificates. As a measure of employable skills, my A’ Levels are useless – whereas modern A’ Levels are much, much more relevant because they measure how students perform under steady pressure over two years, meeting continual deadlines.
2. The curriculum and syllabus for modern exams are far more specific than they were in the “good old days.” My favourite anecdote is to point out that in the 1980s, I explained how nuclear power stations work for a Physics exam. My answer explained how fissile material heated water, which turned a turbine, which was used to generate electricity. I even explained how Fleming’s right hand rule dictated the assembly of a generator. Meanwhile, a couple of years ago the same level physics exam asked students about the ethics of nuclear power. But this is a glib comparison: I had a choice of topics to answer, and a variety of ways to answer them, so I didn’t actually need to know anything about nuclear power stations – I could have concentrated on another topic and made the choice in the exam. Modern students do not have that choice. And anyway, just because the ethics of carbon capture versus nuclear waste isn’t as precise a Fleming’s right hand rule, it doesn’t follow that it is easier to learn, less relevant, or easier to answer questions about.
3. Teaching standards. Yes, I had to comment on them sooner or later. While it is absolutely true that there are no demonstrable or even implied links between the standards that the government demands that teachers meet and pupil performance in exams , there is no doubt that teaching standards have improved over the last two decades. However, Ofsted doesn’t deserve the credit for this. Neither does the ridiculous testing regime imposed by national & local government as well as individual schools (I once counted up the amount of time that a secondary school I taught in spent assessing 14-18-year-old children – it was 25% of their time in school.) The reason for the improvement in standards is the unintended consequence of all the scrutiny that teachers have been under: teachers are now teaching to the test.

It doesn’t matter how complex a problem appears to be, the correct answer is quite often the simplest.

For all the pressure on the education system, for all the debate about skills, standards and professionalism, the truth is that education in this country is delivered by about half a million teachers, all of whom have been told that their job security and their next pay rise depends upon how well their students perform in their next examinations.