Topic: A Level farce/General Education ranting

[thaddeus]

Being able and capable and driving companies I worked for and doing the stuff I did and do is worth working for as well

Not all of us have to be 'taught' how to think and 'taught' how to be effective.

There are plenty of great people with brains in their heads that have driven forward and done amazing stuff.

Degrees are nice. Getting there without one? That's an amazing achievement.

I hear what you're saying and it sounds like you've carved out a top career so full respect.

Without a degree now though I'd expect it would be very difficult to get a foot in the door at most IT companies (appreciating this may vary with geography and size of company).  In my relatively short 20 years in work I've seen the bar shift higher as the government steered more people to A-Levels and university.  Jobs that were open to pretty much anyone now require a degree, senior jobs require degree + experience or a masters and the more niche/specialist jobs state a PhD as desirable and more often than not get filled by someone with one.

It annoys me as the most open-minded and creative person we appointed over a few years and rounds of appointments started his working life driving gritting lorries and we were only able to shortlist him because he'd picked up some relevant experience in the depot office.  IT professionals that have often known nothing but it from school to university to workplace are often quite narrow-minded and wedded to what they know works.

[west_london_red]

Being able and capable and driving companies I worked for and doing the stuff I did and do is worth working for as well

Not all of us have to be 'taught' how to think and 'taught' how to be effective.

There are plenty of great people with brains in their heads that have driven forward and done amazing stuff.

Degrees are nice. Getting there without one? That's an amazing achievement.

I can’t speak for every person whose ever been to university but I certainly wasn’t taught how to think or be effective, the point of a degree is usually to gain knowledge, how you use and apply it or not is up to you. But I’d rather see a doctor with a degree then a self taught one

[west_london_red]

It probably does hold me back in terms of finding another job if I was looking, but fortunately I'm not. 

I did 2 years at uni (out of a 5 year degree) and it was in many ways the best time of my life, I don't regret going at all, but I wasn't ready for it from the academic point of view (helps that it was free for me, so only had maintenance loans to pay off).

Degrees have their place, but I’d rather have a CCIE then a degree for example, and ACCA qualified account will earn more then someone with just a degree in accounting.

[Andy @ Allerton!]

I hear what you're saying and it sounds like you've carved out a top career so full respect.

Without a degree now though I'd expect it would be very difficult to get a foot in the door at most IT companies (appreciating this may vary with geography and size of company).  In my relatively short 20 years in work I've seen the bar shift higher as the government steered more people to A-Levels and university.  Jobs that were open to pretty much anyone now require a degree, senior jobs require degree + experience or a masters and the more niche/specialist jobs state a PhD as desirable and more often than not get filled by someone with one.

It annoys me as the most open-minded and creative person we appointed over a few years and rounds of appointments started his working life driving gritting lorries and we were only able to shortlist him because he'd picked up some relevant experience in the depot office.  IT professionals that have often known nothing but it from school to university to workplace are often quite narrow-minded and wedded to what they know works.

I'm not sure I've ever carved out a top career.

I'm sorted for life if that's what you mean. Me and the missus have done our best and we've done some great stuff.

Mostly self-taught and even now - every week I need to learn stuff and I love it. It's massively challenging and massively difficult.

And that's what I love. Learning something new every single day.

I never did a degree but I kind of wish I had. Would that affect me now? Every month I learn something new. I thing I do it because I didn't go to school. I think I do it because i never had a degree.

But most of all I learn stuff every day because I can.

["Bobber" Thanks :)]

And yet, magically, I have been in full-time employment at the cutting edge of tech for around 40 years. And getting paid to do it and to drive it and I can absolutely guarantee If I had had to get a degree to do what I've been doing for decades I would have failed to get that.

And here we are

What can you say?

Like you say, IT and tech is one of the few industries where ambition and drive can replace more formal qualifications such as degrees. As long as you’re prepared to put the time in and self study, you can pretty much go anywhere in IT. Which I have done.

I went to a shit school. The following year after I left annual Ofsted reports were introduced and my school was in the National news as the worst failing school. All the heads were retired off and a new head came in and within 3 years, he turned it around to such a degree that he was knighted. I left with GCSE Ds, Es and Fs and went into painting and decorating for 13 years, then in 2005 I career changed into the world of IT and even though it’s a career choice that involves constant studying in order to keep up with how tech is always evolving and demands a lot of sacrifice of my personal time because of that, I wouldnt change what I do for anything.

Going back to your first post, I always have this thing at the back of my mind where knowing what I know now, if I had the chance to go back in time to school, knowing what I know now about hard work/drive/dedication, getting the A’s in A Levels, how would life have turned out instead?

[Andy @ Allerton!]

Like you say, IT and tech is one of the few industries where ambition and drive can replace more formal qualifications such as degrees. As long as you’re prepared to put the time in and self study, you can pretty much go anywhere in IT. Which I have done.

I went to a shit school. The following year after I left annual Ofsted reports were introduced and my school was in the National news as the worst failing school. All the heads were retired off and a new head came in and within 3 years, he turned it around to such a degree that he was knighted. I left with GCSE Ds, Es and Fs and went into painting and decorating for 13 years, then in 2005 I career changed into the world of IT and even though it’s a career choice that involves constant studying in order to keep up with how tech is always evolving and demands a lot of sacrifice of my personal time because of that, I wouldnt change what I do for anything.

Going back to your first post, I always have this thing at the back of my mind where knowing what I know now, if I had the chance to go back in time to school, knowing what I know now about hard work/drive/dedication, getting the A’s in A Levels, how would life have turned out instead?

I tell you what mate. You have done amazing.

And that's what I love about life.

We have people like you that are absolutely amazing. And this is why the kids of today should never ever give up.

With people like you in the world, we can all make it.

Like me. I absolutely in Academia was utterly and totally shite

If I was analyzed  today then I'd be lucky to get a half arsed job emptying the toilets at amazon.


You have done amazing mate and it's good to hear.

[west_london_red]

If more people went to university, there would be no Brexit...

Just thought I’d lob that hand grenade in before I go to bed  

[TepidT2O]

Are you happy?

Do you have enough to get by?

If so, then don’t dwell on the past...

IT is an odd field, but generally, education is the great leveller, the way out of poverty..

Sadly we seem to have begun a phase where blissful ignorance is championed

[Andy @ Allerton!]

If more people went to university, there would be no Brexit...

Just thought I’d lob that hand grenade in before I go to bed  

I didn't go to University and I voted remain

Stop talking utter shite mae and fuck off to bed

["Bobber" Thanks :)]

I tell you what mate. You have done amazing.

And that's what I love about life.

We have people like you that are absolutely amazing. And this is why the kids of today should never ever give up.

With people like you in the world, we can all make it.

Like me. I absolutely in Academia was utterly and totally shite

If I was analyzed  today then I'd be lucky to get a half arsed job emptying the toilets at amazon.


You have done amazing mate and it's good to hear.

Thanks mate, I might be similar to yourself, where you are always needing to learn something new, and if you don’t have something new you need to learn, you find something anyway. I think it’s true what you say, because you didn’t do well out of school and didn’t get a degree, that it’s constantly driving you on to keep on learning and challenging yourself even now. I know I do so, not only because IT is ever changing, but because I always feel that I’m still  behind my peers because of how bad I did in school.

I look at my 16 and 18 year old kids and just think how lucky they, kids these days seem to be so much more focussed with their education compared to when I was at school and they have so many more opportunities than I had.

[bornandbRED]

Being able and capable and driving companies I worked for and doing the stuff I did and do is worth working for as well

Not all of us have to be 'taught' how to think and 'taught' how to be effective.

There are plenty of great people with brains in their heads that have driven forward and done amazing stuff.

Degrees are nice. Getting there without one? That's an amazing achievement.

No doubt there are many alternative routes, but degrees don’t really teach you how to think. If anything, it’s the opposite - and the reason some struggle is because the whole point of a degree is typically to engage in independent thought and to independently digest subject matter in a critical manner. A complete paradigm shift compared to school/A-Levels where you’re spoon fed everything and encouraged to rote learn. GCSEs and A-Levels are little but memory tests that reward discipline more than intelligence. 

[Lusty]

I have a similar story to Andy, but you've got to be careful to avoid survivorship bias. Plenty of people do well without a degree, but on average you're more likely to do well with one than without one.

I managed to do well enough with a handful of GCSEs but when I was starting out people used to look at your CV and make a judgement on whether you were worth giving a chance. Now there's massive HR departments and automated systems that filter out CVs before they make it to a human being, and if you don't have a degree the system drops you before anyone looks at your track record.

I think that if I was starting out now I would end up in a very different place.

Edit: The other thing about IT as an industry is that back in the day you could easily get in at the ground floor doing things like help desk, user admin or teach yourself web design etc.  Nowadays that's all automated or offshore, so you need to be able to come in a couple of rungs up the ladder.

[Motty]

In regards to some teachers/schools overgrading pupils I'd say that at my 2 daughters school the A level students 100% didn't get over graded by the teachers, in fact they downgraded her in health and social to a B when getting a A was a formality as she was on for that after all the coursework she'd already been marked for. GCSE I'd of taken the government downgrading on the chin as I do think my youngest has been over graded slightly by the school.

My eldest has got a place in Chester now doing accountancy and finance which is a total change to Health that she was trying to get into so only time will tell whether this government fuck up will hinder her. She actually got offered the place in Edge Hill doing accountancy but they turned around and said they didn't have any accommodation left so she'd have to find digs in the town. Absolute fucking disgrace that don't have automatic rooms for first years and expect them to go off campus in their first time away from home.

[Riquende]

Weird how people are surprised Williamson isn't resigning over this. Government resignations only happen when they're an outlier that would otherwise make the leadership look bad for entertaining them, and Johnson's career-long broad trend of incompetence, dishonesty and moral bankruptcy is the depressing yardstick the country has to measure the rest of them against.

[filopastry]

Weird how people are surprised Williamson isn't resigning over this. Government resignations only happen when they're an outlier that would otherwise make the leadership look bad for entertaining them, and Johnson's career-long broad trend of incompetence, dishonesty and moral bankruptcy is the depressing yardstick the country has to measure the rest of them against.

The current gameplan for the legion of fuckups seems to be that if something goes wrong just blame scientists/civil servants etc.

[Circa1892]

Weird how people are surprised Williamson isn't resigning over this. Government resignations only happen when they're an outlier that would otherwise make the leadership look bad for entertaining them, and Johnson's career-long broad trend of incompetence, dishonesty and moral bankruptcy is the depressing yardstick the country has to measure the rest of them against.

Williamson has stuff on Johnson, and all of them - which is why he's in a role at all.

We have to bear in mind this is a man who was sacked for national security issues. He was sacked by May at the absolute nadir of her authority (probably because, for all she was both shit and a bit of a shit, there's probably no dirt on her) - yet makes a comeback. Definitely got shit on the triumvirate of shit at the top (Johnson, Gove and Cummings).

[CraigDS]

I was doing a full time job (for free!) until I left school

I'd say school taught me next to nothing - except for Physics and History - cos of top teachers

Both worthless in my life

Does School matter? Yeah maybe for some that have to be taught.

I'm pretty much self taught.. Been doing that for a while

I was never sure the purpose when I was there. But I accept that there are things to be learned.

Did it teach you the ability to self teach though? Even if you didn't realise it. As that's a massive things schools look to do.

[Andy @ Allerton!]

Did it teach you the ability to self teach though? Even if you didn't realise it. As that's a massive things schools look to do.

Not sure it did mate.

My school life was a bit of a write-off as I'd move schools so many times - it's only when you move around a lot that you realise how fucked up the British school system is - as you move around different schools have different curriculums (Not sure if it's the same now) - so you move and stuff you're supposed to know wasn't covered then when you move a few times - what you know and don't know is completely random and teachers don't seem to have the ability to compensate (I know I didn't!)

So I ended up just learning what I wanted to learn myself - which, luckily was programming in every language and on every computer I could get my grubby hands on

I suppose my ability to learn new stuff is a natural one - it massively annoys me when I find stuff I don't know, so I find out about it, work with it, use my current knowledge to augment it and then stash it away. Id' have been fucked if I couldn't do that though


Though maybe it did. There were a couple of great teachers I had, so perhaps their extra help made it possible for me to learn better. Was a long time ago now, so who knows?

[Elmo!]

Not sure it did mate.

My school life was a bit of a write-off as I'd move schools so many times - it's only when you move around a lot that you realise how fucked up the British school system is - as you move around different schools have different curriculums (Not sure if it's the same now) - so you move and stuff you're supposed to know wasn't covered then when you move a few times - what you know and don't know is completely random and teachers don't seem to have the ability to compensate (I know I didn't!)

So I ended up just learning what I wanted to learn myself - which, luckily was programming in every language and on every computer I could get my grubby hands on

I suppose my ability to learn new stuff is a natural one - it massively annoys me when I find stuff I don't know, so I find out about it, work with it, use my current knowledge to augment it and then stash it away. Id' have been fucked if I couldn't do that though


Though maybe it did. There were a couple of great teachers I had, so perhaps their extra help made it possible for me to learn better. Was a long time ago now, so who knows?

I'm very similar to you Andy, I think peopel like us are attracted and suited to IT.

I'm hopeless at strucutured learning but give me something I don't know and I'll happily go and learn it in my own time. In a classroom I'll get bored so easily and can't concentrate.

Almost everything I know in IT is self taught, or learnt on the job on adhoc basis from colleagues or just needing to research something in order to complete a task.

[liverbloke]

No doubt there are many alternative routes, but degrees don’t really teach you how to think. If anything, it’s the opposite - and the reason some struggle is because the whole point of a degree is typically to engage in independent thought and to independently digest subject matter in a critical manner. A complete paradigm shift compared to school/A-Levels where you’re spoon fed everything and encouraged to rote learn. GCSEs and A-Levels are little but memory tests that reward discipline more than intelligence.

Hence the graduate who knows it's a door and knows its purpose and knows how it was made and its general structure and knows the science and mechanics of the door but cannot pass through it because there isn't a push or pull sign under the handle.

[12C]

The current gameplan for the legion of fuckups seems to be that if something goes wrong just blame scientists/civil servants etc.

It’s an traditional upper class thing.
Blame the servants.
When they got a parlourmaid pregnant, the wife sacked the parlourmaid.

[Mutton Geoff]

just to turn it around a bit came out of sec mod school with next to nothing went straight into a career in catering which i enjoyed despite the shit hours you have to work, but after about nearly 30 years it wasnt fulfilling me even though i can modestly say i was a dam good chef and was in a secure job in fact been at my last place for 16 years.
Then i went by chance into an O.U. promotion evening and a few years later had a decent degree in Eng Lit. This allowed me to get out of catering and move into education and my years spent in education workwise were the best years of my life;

So with regards the importance of Education and Degrees it is a case of one size doesn't fit all.
 
Just to add on the other side of the coin there are quite a few students i have met and worked with who find being in school does not suit their needs at all.

[TepidT2O]

That’s a pretty inspirational story Geoff...

[TepidT2O]

Next parent who emails me asking for me to change their kids centre assessed grade gets told to fuck right off.

Agree, don’t agree. They were done honestly  and fairly with several layers of oversight.

I mean, you can’t just decide you want the grade changed.. and more importantly, there is no mechanism for doing so...

Inundated

[Elmo!]

Next parent who emails me asking for me to change their kids centre assessed grade gets told to fuck right off.

Agree, don’t agree. They were done honestly  and fairly with several layers of oversight.

I mean, you can’t just decide you want the grade changed.. and more importantly, there is no mechanism for doing so...

Inundated

I knew there was an ulterior motive to you being so against using teachers grades.


 

[TepidT2O]

I knew there was an ulterior motive to you being so against using teachers grades.


 

Ach. Same shite different source. Last week every fucker wanted to appeal on mock grades and then wanted us to change their mock grades because they didn’t think they were fair.

Still, there’s a huge issue for next years university entry.. fewer places, 6 months out of school.. some schools have done more online than others....

It’s going to be worse for them... poor buggers.

[west_london_red]

Next parent who emails me asking for me to change their kids centre assessed grade gets told to fuck right off.

Agree, don’t agree. They were done honestly  and fairly with several layers of oversight.

I mean, you can’t just decide you want the grade changed.. and more importantly, there is no mechanism for doing so...

Inundated

Your the expert mate, but I’d honestly just say to them if you don’t like the grade I have given then sit the exams in the Autumn or whenever it is, improve on their predicted grades and that you’d love to be proven wrong.

[Riquende]

I try to keep my head down as much as possible at school and never interact with the parents, but being one of the few people who work during the summer I was asked to forward on an Ofqual statement to our outgoing Year 11's parents the other day. Now I've got people replying with all sorts of queries, complaints etc. I did reply to the first few saying it was totally out of my remit and I was just a messenger, but all that happened was they wanted me to get hold of the relevant teachers for them so I just ignore everything now.

I'd hate to actually be caught up in all this!

[Black Bull Nova]

It’s an traditional upper class thing.
Blame the servants.
When they got a parlourmaid pregnant, the wife sacked the parlourmaid.

I think you have summed this crowd up more succinctly than I have seen yet

They still had fagging at Eton when Johnson, Osborne and Cameron were there.

[12C]

I think you have summed this crowd up more succinctly than I have seen yet

They still had fagging at Eton when Johnson, Osborne and Cameron were there.

I had a mate many years ago, a sound lad and a red by fact his sister married a lad from Kirkby. Anyway we went out on a meal and a club crawl for his 21st.
He invited his public school chums along. I have never been so embarrassed as when these c*nts started throwing their bread rolls round the restaurant. They went to some minor school in the Midlands but obviously aspired to being Bullingdon c*nts. Their attitude was disgustingly entitled.
I was brought up to think that wasting food was a sin -mainly because we didn’t have any to waste, and these slugs were throwing food at each other for fun. I realised then that there was a class of people who were thick, ignorant and basically shit.
For the record, my mate was embarrassed as fuck as he had absorbed a different set of values since leaving that school.

[killer-heels]

I know people have said the algorithm was fine but thats not what the select committee said. What was the issue? Was it just flawed from the beginning?

[Andy @ Allerton!]

I know people have said the algorithm was fine but thats not what the select committee said. What was the issue? Was it just flawed from the beginning?

Sounds to me like it wasn't properly tested before deployment

[Lusty]

Sounds to me like it wasn't properly tested before deployment

It was tested on last year's data, found to be rubbish, and deployed anyway.

[CraigDS]

I know people have said the algorithm was fine but thats not what the select committee said. What was the issue? Was it just flawed from the beginning?

Too much emphasis on the schools results over previous years with not enough focus on the individual, the fact schools may be improving for various reasons or that a cohort may actually be better than those previous years.

[TepidT2O]

I know people have said the algorithm was fine but thats not what the select committee said. What was the issue? Was it just flawed from the beginning?

It was mostly fine for schools as a whole and certainly nationally. The problem was for departments (and schools) with changes year on year.

So if you’d had a U in English over the last 3 years, someone pretty much had to get a U this year,  even if it wasn’t likely this year.

On the flip side, of physics only ever had 1 A*, if you predicted 2, you were only getting 1. That was really unfair, because such small numbers didn’t take account of genuine cases for individuals.

Essentially there’s always variation, kids who do better and kids who do worse.  In an exam, you can take that. When it’s an algorithm? Not so easy. 

[TepidT2O]

Fucking hell...

It’s got worse...

It seems the BTECs have been pulled at the last minute, they now won’t be published tomorrow.

Some really odd reports out there.  Kids who have been entered for foundation languages (maximum grade a 5) being awarded a 6 by algorithm!  This trumping the teacher assessed grades. 
Also examples of kids going from 1 to 8!

Chaos.

[killer-heels]

Sack the algorithm nerds.

[CraigDS]

Sack the algorithm nerds.

[Red-Soldier]

So now we have overinflated GCSE grades too.

[TepidT2O]

So now we have overinflated GCSE grades too.

Oh ...so massively.. especially at the top end. 

We’ve had huge numbers get the grades we wouldn’t usually expect.  So class sizes will be heaving.