Have Hull and surrounding schools gone back this week? Anyone on here know how it's going? Many absentees?
My sons ER school goes back next Friday! WTF! Also plenty are Academies now, so follow their own timetables...
Slightly off topic - but schooling related... Does anyone on here know of a decent article that defines & explains accurately the "problem" with the "algorithm" that has created all this flack/backlash recently ? It (to me ) seems the mainstream media don't have a good handle on the issue ! Note: Please stay away from political commentary that may break the forum rules.
If you've got the stomach this might help... https://assets.publishing.service.g...fications_in_summer_2020_-_interim_report.pdf
That explains how it works, and it works how they were asked to make it work (ie no grade inflation), but doesn’t really explain the problems which caused the Govt U Turn. Ignoring that the U Turn was undoubtedly impacted by public perception (because the public are, famously, also voters) the main problem was that the system is inherently discriminatory in the first place and therefore when you try to write an algorithm to replace what the system usually ends up with as an outcome you’ll end up writing a discriminatory algorithm. This article is a good one, and has useful links. https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/08/20/1007502/uk-exam-algorithm-cant-fix-broken-system/ One quick anecdote to explain why is a friends child who was assessed as being level 7 (don’t ask me to explain levels though...they are way beyond my understanding!) took mocks and got level 8.(a good result apparently). However more children at that school did well in mocks, which are independently assessed, than usual and so the algorithm decided they were just above middle in their school, so gave a result which put them just above middle in previous years results...so they got given a 5 instead!
That sounds something like the system I heard they use in the USA. A bright kid from Europe went to the USA half way through schooling, all the other kids were pissed off because her higher grades pushed them down. Far too complicated for me to work out and understand why. Should add that they also reduced her grade too.
We are one of the three councils that return next week. Personally, our kids are back Wednesday as we have two training days beforehand. Lots of secondary schools are doing staggered starts across several days so we won’t really see the full traffic impact until the week after.
Tomorrow the remaining primary schools will be back and many secondary schools will have their new Year 7s in. Traffic is getting worse day-by-day.
