BC EDUCATION
Saved by @SteveeRogerr

THREAD on the Ofqual consultation.

The exams situation is a fiasco on top of a debacle. Yes - loads of kids have missed out on schooling. That is bad. Yes - the provision across the system is the most unequal it has been in living memory. That is bad.

 The solution proposed by the DfE and Ofqual is to get teachers to submit a grade that they think their students are “performing at”. Here there are a number of problems:
Problem 1: what does “performing at” a grade even mean? An exam grade is comparative - if someone has any particular grade all it tells you is where they are compared to their peers. There is NO SUCH THING as “grade 6 content” or “working at grade 6”.
This is as true in maths, where content is cumulative, as it is in something like English, where examination is much more subjective. If you ask teachers all across the country to grade, you will get substantial variability because objective criteria simply do not exist.
That’s not our fault, it’s not a training need, its not that we don’t know what we’re doing. It’s literally the way the system has been designed. You can’t train someone in a concept that does not exist.
If they want to change this and give us some kind of valid, objective criteria on which to judge, then they would need a lot more than five months to set and agree such a thing to any kind of reasonable standard. All else is smoke and mirrors.
In the proposal, exam boards are to provide papers that may or may not be compulsory, along with training for teachers to set and assess these papers, which leads us to...
Problem 2: If these papers are not compulsory, then why? How will you create a fairer system by having some students sit them and some not. Will some schools choose to not “risk” giving the papers for fear of underperformance and a forced lower grading?
When teachers want the best for the kids they care about, this could happen. So what then? The ones who didn’t sit the paper do better than the ones who did? (This could also work the other way). Optional is ridiculous. Which means...
Problem 3: If these papers are compulsory, how good will they be? It takes a team of examiners a long time (over a year) to write and quality assure a set of exam papers properly. We’ve only got up to five months.
That begs the question, will they just use the 2021 papers they’ve written? In which case, why scrap the exams if you’re going to use them anyway? Mixed up with this is...
Problem 4: Schools have paid entrance fees like normal to the exam boards. But, in the proposal, the exam boards won’t be paying actual experienced examiners to mark these papers. That’ll be up to teachers who are already up to their ears in, well, teaching.
Which is a non-stop full-time job despite what the outrage merchant press and bitter trolls might tell you. Linked to this is...
Problem 5: The actual, experienced examiners who won’t get any work for a second year running include part-time teachers and others involved in education, as well as retirees, most of whom tend to use it as an income top-up. They’re there to do the work, but now can’t.
The situation is a pea soup, apparently caused by ill-conceived reactionary responses and a distinct lack of planning (because, seriously, who would plan this?)
They could have kept exams. It wouldn’t have been a fair situation given the way this school year has been, but the proposed alternative is far, far worse.
The consultation itself is poor. The questions are written such that it’s a done deal. No, “do you agree with what we’re about to do?” Just “to what extent do you agree with certain parts we’re still debating?”
Whether you like the proposals or not, the consultation is here. Do respond: https://t.co/VwwFJisgN8
Oh, I forgot Problem 6: Appeals should be made to the school. Anyone who knows about school will know the kind of time this will take up when WE HAVE NONE, and how much pressure and emotional blackmail will take place. Just. No.
Also, read this: https://t.co/KLjvD3r6jN
Problem 7: https://t.co/WkSD1hw4so

More from Education

Philipp Leitner
Philipp Leitner
@xLeitix
Starting PhD student pro tips:

- Keep a backlog of “small ideas” that you don’t find the time to work on. Soon enough you will be asked to supervise undergrad students in some capacity, and these ideas will be exactly what they need to get started.

- In the first two years worry about learning and getting settled in your research field. In year 3+ you can worry about churning out papers (but that’s much easier of you have a good understanding of the field and its methods).

- Believe your advisor on strategy matters, believe in yourself when it comes to details and results (we have good intuition about what’s interesting and important, but only you know what you have actually done and what it means).

- Talk to other students as often as you can. No, they likely won’t know how to solve the specific issue you are currently having, but over time you will learn more from your colleagues than from your advisor.

- Relatedly, other people (your advisor, other profs, other students, reviewers) are neither idiots nor almighty gods of knowledge. They will have insights, but some of the things they tell you will turn out to be garbage.
EDUCATION
Corey A. DeAngelis
Corey A. DeAngelis
@DeAngelisCorey
Chicago Public Schools are supposed to open for some special needs and pre-K students Monday

The Chicago Teachers Union is now threatening to refuse to return to work in person.

https://t.co/MgDgNe6REj


Meanwhile
https://t.co/FIij8J3r7z

Dr. Fauci: "The default position should be to try as best as possible within reason to keep the children in school or to get them back to school [...] if you look at the data the spread among children and from children is not really big at


UNICEF: "Data from 191 countries shows no consistent link between reopening schools and increased rates of coronavirus
EDUCATION
Advertisement
Ifeanyi Okpala
Ifeanyi Okpala
@Okpala_IU
Saturday Morning Graduate School Admissions/Funding Breakfast

• 1297 USA Scholarships
• 5 Hot Tips for current B.S, Master/PhD applicants
• Admission and FULL Funding Info to Sweden🇸🇪, Australia🇦🇺, France🇫🇷, Germany🇩🇪 and China🇹🇷
• 6 IGTV Videos

Follow @Okpala_IU

A Thread

Are you working hard to study full time (Bachelor, MS, MBA, PhD) in the United States of America🇺🇸?

Here are 1297 verified Scholarships for year 2021

Search here: https://t.co/3AHhW7RUfK

Follow @Okpala_IU for more

Watch other videos on IGTV:

5 Hot Tips for current Bachelor, Master/PhD applicants

1. Standardized Tests (TOEFL, GRE, GMAT)

Yes, the school may have waived it for admissions but providing it definitely increasing your chances of getting funded. If it strengthens your overall profile, that is excellent.

2. Do not trivialize Letters of Recommendations

Remember that your application packet (all supporting documents) is what is being looked at while you are being considered for admission and funding. A lot of schools read LoRs very carefully so ensure you get strong letters.

Read my notes on LoRs:
EDUCATION
Gail Simone
Gail Simone
@GailSimone
You know what I don’t miss? Parent teacher conferences.

Most of Rocketkid’s teachers were lovely, but we had two that still stick out in my mind as sad/hilarious.

The first one, he was in elementary school. The teacher said it was ‘important’ for us to come in.

1/

So we worried about that for two days until the meeting. What could be wrong? It’s scary for parents to be left hanging like that.

So we meet his teacher, goatee and sunglasses...we live in the boonies and yet there’s something here like he’s trying to be a player.

2/

Not like a lady-player, like he’s got an image of himself in his head. We like teachers, but this guy’s manner is just weirdly kind of pushy a little bit.

Anyway, we sit does in the kid chairs, he’s behind his desk, again, weirdly focused on ‘power,’ somehow.

No idea why,

3/

We ask about our son, he acts as if he forgot that’s why we’re there, says some random stuff, all normal, nothing at all worthy of a conference. I mean, contact and communication is important, but thus just feels off-the cuff entirely.

4/

So then suddenly he gets really intense, but pretends being casual. Like it just occurred to him.

And he says to me, ‘So, I hear you’re a writer.’

What?

I tell him yes, I write comics and some animation and stuff.

He says. ‘I looked you up.’

5/
EDUCATION
Ben Brown \U0001f442
Ben Brown 👂
@EdRoundtables
Improving Remote Education - A Thread.

Over the last couple of weeks, the discussion has been about what primary schools are offering to their communities and how we can improve on it.

I'm relistening to the sessions, so points may not be in order as I add them... 1/

1. Non-teaching SLT are not experts on remote learning, what can they base any judgement on?

2. Facilitating staff discussion and sharing is likely to be far more effective to develop practice within your school. /2

3. Increasing access to devices/internet is a step towards making offers more equitable, but it is only part of the process.

4. Entertainment and engagement are different things.

5. Pre-recording should not be perfection, perfection wastes time and energy.

6. It is scary being beamed into someone's home, but having your home on show is also stressful. (perhaps something for Ofsted to consider, we are guests in other people's homes)

7. Giving over staff meetings to staff discussion and sharing is probably a better use of the time than other stuff you have planned.
EDUCATION

You May Also Like

Jaya_Upadhyaya
Jaya_Upadhyaya
@Jayalko1
GHATI SUBRAMANYA, DODDABALLAPURA (KAR)
#bharatmandir

One of the most important place for snake worship.
The murtis of Kartikeya and Narasimha are self-manifested.
There is an anthill which is opposite the shrine. Bhaktas pour milk on it as part of rituals.


Here Subramanya performed penance in the form of snake. He sought protection from Narsimha for Nagas from Sri Vishnu’s vehicle Garuda, known for his dislike towards serpents.
The Pushya Suddha Shasti is one of the biggest festivals here believed to be appearance day of Subramanya


It was in this region where Subramanya vanquished Ghatikasura, the demon. Hence called Ghati Subramanya.
Childless couples visit here to seek blessings for getting a child.
The installation of snake murtis near the shrine is believed to be an auspicious act.


The murti of Karthikeya with a seven headed cobra faces eastwards while Narasimha faces westwards.
To ensure that both are visible to bhaktas at the same time, a huge mirror is placed in the rear in the sanctum sanctorum.
ALL
Vibhu Vashisth \U0001f1ee\U0001f1f3
Vibhu Vashisth 🇮🇳...
@VIBHU_Tweet
VEDIC COSMOLOGY, also known as Hindu Cosmology, and cosmography are both interesting and inspiring. Today’s “modern” Vedic texts originated around 3,000 B.C.E. This is the oldest scientific and the oldest religious doctrine known to the human race.


Our current astronomy of the solar system and universe has its roots in Vedic knowledge. It only shows that man had advanced knowledge of astronomy way before our current civilization came into existence.
We are here to talk about the Vedic version of the planetary system,

starting at the top from the eternal planets to the temporary planetary system within innumerable universes in the material world.

Talking about “cosmic manifestation,” we need to incorporate both spiritual and material existence.


The spiritual realm of the planets is everlasting, and this will forever be beyond what the material universe can encapsulate. The spiritual realm belongs to the “super dimensional” or “anti-material” dimension. It means that it is beyond what we can perceive,


beyond time as a linear dimension, and the space of our vision and perception.

There are innumerable planets, all indestructible and forever lasting. That is what the Vedas say about the spiritual planets. Our concentration here is more towards the material side of things.
ALL
Advertisement
Vibhu Vashisth
Vibhu Vashisth
@VIBHU_Tweet
RANI GAIDINLIU:THE LESSER KNOWN FREEDOM FIGHTER

Rani Gaidinliu joined the freedom struggle at 13 &was sentenced to life imprisonment at 16."We r free people—the White should not rule over us.”Thus calling out to her Zeliangrong tribesmen was the voice of 13yr-old Rani Gaidinliu.


She joined the freedom struggle in the present-day Northeast India. Today, her struggle is lost in history as most of her countrymen wouldn’t even have heard her name. B'coz our history textbooks tell us that only Mahatma Gandhi &Pandit Nehru got India its Independence.


At 16 yrs of age, this valiant girl was sentenced to life imprisonment for leading a movement to drive out the colonial rulers from Manipur and Nagaland. Nevertheless, she was released in 1947 after India’s independence and was given the title ,"Rani of Nagas".


EARLY LIFE AND HERAKA MOVEMENT

Gaidinliu belonged to the Rongmei clan of the Zeliangrong tribe in the Tamenglong district of western Manipur. Born on January 26, 1915, she was fifth among eight children.


Her native village was Nungkao, which is present day Tamenglong distt. Brought up in a specially backward region,she couldn't receive any formal education. However,this didn't stop her from joining the freedom struggle. At the age of 10 she came under the influence of her cousin.
ALL
Ottoman History Podcast
Ottoman History Podcas...
@OttomanHistory
Here is a special thread introducing our series on “The Making of the Islamic World.” It offers 10 episodes about the transformation of Islamicate societies between the 7th and 17th centuries. You can find the series page here: https://t.co/7mL9eWmMmz


This is Chris Gratien posting. I created this series during Fall 2020 for my students as asynchronous material supported by readings and discussion. This is going to be a long thread, but it will be a great shortcut for those looking to make similar use of these materials.

There are two items worth pointing out: 1. This is an overview of the political, social, and cultural history of Islamicate societies. It does not deal with the origins of Islam or many theological questions. It does discuss Islam’s spread and the transformation of Islamic law.

2. This is the first part of a two-part sequence that takes the history of the Islamic world into the present. It emphasizes developments and themes that have particular relevance for later periods.

This is really a multivocal narrative of Islamic history. We feature over 20 scholars from almost as many institutions. Many of those who worked on it, myself included, study the early modern and modern era but have teaching obligations that take us further back in history.
RELIGION
Andrew Chen
Andrew Chen
@andrewchen
👇 Thread. New deck getting published this week: "Consumer startups are awesome, and here's what I'm looking to invest in at Andreessen Horowitz." If you want to read it, subscribe to my newsletter here: https://t.co/262t8eh0wf


1/ A lot of new consumer technologies have been introduced to US households in the last 100 years. But it's taken many of them - like the telephone - more than 50 years to get to the majority of the US. Why is that?


2/ We had to literally teach people how to use phone. Which end goes to your mouth, which goes to your ear. Say "hello" when people call. The motivation of consumers to talk to their friends has always been there, but we had to teach the behavior


3/ If you compare phones to the latest technologies, there's been a huge shift. Things are being picked up much faster.


4/ Even while there's been all this innovation recently, physically speaking, we are still the same human beings from 100,000 years ago.
STARTUPS