A-Level Exam Practices In Need of Drastic Reform

Although the A-Level examination results came out almost two weeks ago and for the most part students were either pleased with the grades they were given (I got in to Cardiff University with AAB in Politics, Economics and History) or deservedly failed, for an unlucky minority there is the hell of having papers sent to be remarked with their places in universities at stake.

It is commonly the case amongst bright pupils that entire grades are lost because of a seemingly errant result from 1 of the 6 units per subject. That an examination candidate could contrive to follow up 5 high A or B grades with an E or a U over the six parts of a subject, giving them a much lower overall grade, would not seem possible, apart from when the pupil is poorly prepared or massively misses the point of what they're supposed to be doing. However in the modern examination system, the 'Mark Scheme' is king and content matters little.

As A-Level history students (for example) study over 100 topics between them (with teachers able to choose content both between and within the examination boards - Edexcel, OCR, WJEC) it is very likely that the examiner with whom the paper ends up has no teaching experience of the topic's content. Furthermore, with the preponderence of thoroughly incompetent teachers in the state education system, the exam boards (always desperate for new markers) tailor their Mark Schemes for use by people who have absolutely no idea what the students have learned or written.

Therefore the only thing that matters in many exams is not what has been written but rather the pattern in which it has been written. This means that even the brightest students can answer a question beautifully, including all the necessary content and balancing the two sides of an argument and still fail horribly. If the right buzzwords and blatant allusions to the structure are not included then the incompetent or uninformed markers cannot allow it high marks. This biases the exam system against students with flair and genuine ability and in favour of those who are simply good at doing exams. This is not the exam system which anybody wants yet the cost-cutting, slipshod examination boards will do nothing to rectify it.

Students with an abnormally low score in one exam paper should have their paper immediately, if possible before results are published, re-submitted to an experienced examiner with a teaching knowledge of the content and of the candidate's previous successes. This will produce a fairer exam system which does not routinely sabotage the hopes of intelligent, hard-working students who have otherwise performed highly.

Cardiff Local Election Pillocks 3

Ed Bridges - Lib Dem - Gabalfa
Councillor Ed Bridges is a weird one. He was the Liberal Democrat Candidate for Cardiff North in the last Assembly election and presided over a very weak performance, probably losing the Lib Dems the chance of getting John Dixon elected on the South Wales Central list.

Councillor Bridges is of very frightening appearance, particularly for a Lib Dem, his shaved head making him look thuggish. The most worrying factor about this Gabalfa Councillor is that he appears completely obsessed with libraries. He is studying for a Post Graduate Degree in the Dewy Decimal System (or something) and finds a way to transform discussion on anything from parking charges to nuclear war in an instant.

Councillor Bridges is evidently a bit weird. But so is 'balfa, so he'll hold his seat.

UPDATE: I met Councillor Bridges at the count and he is a thoroughly nice chap. He came top of the poll with 999 votes. I met several more Liberal Democrats - all thoroughly crackers - and he and Gwilym Owen (defeated Heath candidate, another nice chap who hoped to pick up spare Plaid Cymru votes through having a "quite Welsh name") could certainly show them a thing or two. Fenella Bowden is fucking horrible.

Cardiff Local Election Pillocks 2

"The Jayne Cowan's Three Arse Cheeks Party - Rhiwbina"

Former Conservative Councillors Jayne Cowan and Adrian Robson are standing this time as Independents in the Rhiwbina ward. Councillor Cowan left the Conservative Group on Cardiff Council shortly after the last local elections when she was found to have lied about claiming a £3,000 training junket - an ironic transgression for a councillor best known amongst her colleagues for being thoroughly irritating on the topic of allowances. She had given the rest of the Conservative group much grief about what they claimed in the past - amounts which paled next to the sums she collected from the taxpayer. Her husband, Councillor Adrian Robson, had to follow her out of the Conservative group out of fear for his very testicles, sharing a house with the incomparably fierce Cowan.

Cowan and Robson have ever since sat as 'Independents' although they puzzlingly take the Labour whip on a routine basis. They don't have jobs and live off their council money, claiming to be full-time local councillors. They have been incredibly active in the community and feed their constituents fried foods in regular "Chips and Chat" sessions. A dog can't even briefly foul a footpath in Rhiwbina without Cowan and Robson (although such is Cowan's domination that poor Adrian deserves to be written in smaller font) arriving with clipboards and demanding an investigation. They are supremely annoying and it was feared last April that Cowan would be inflicted on the entire Cardiff North population as an Independent candidate in the Assembly election.

Cowan is a professional, full-time merchant of bollocks. The trio, Cowan, Robson and Penylan-resident Brian Jones - someone who they may as well have met in the queue at the chip shop one day for all we know about him - are a motley crew of oddballs. Their campaign is aided by canvassing information which they relieved the Cardiff North Conservative Office of shortly before their departure and they mysteriously only knock Conservative doors in 50+% Tory Rhiwbina.

The people of Rhiwbina will surely hand the Independents' rotund arses to them on May 1st but the public are still to hear this sad story of Cowan's deviousness and ethical corruption. Cowan is up against strong Conservative candidates in Gareth Neale (the former Lord Mayor, longtime councillor and previous Conservative group leader), local mother and festival organiser Debi Ashton and retired electrical engineer and current chairman of the Rhiwbina Residents Association Chris Taylor. However Cowan's campaign is strong. With her incessant leafleting and the lack of full set of Labour candidates (only one Labour man has been nominated, a definite endorsement by the Labour Party leadership) many believe it could be close on election day.

Cowan is a sad figure who couldn't derive the required hit of fame as a regular Conservative councillor. Now she has had her few years in the rather meagre local government limelight she can piss off. Her success so far isn't completely inexplicable. Even a turd can float.

Cardiff Local Election Pillock 1

Whitchurch Councillor Sophie “Chairman Hao” Howe

Councillor Howe of Whitchurch was Labour's ill-fated Cardiff North candidate for the Assembly Election 2007. Being kept warm at the ‘Equal Oppurtunities Commission Wales’ by her party’s higher-ups, Ms Howe is a fire-breathing Labour partisan who attempted to charm the crowd at a Rhiwbina Baptist Church hustings for the Assembly election with a rather lively rendition of the “Maggie Maggie Maggie – Out Out Out” chant favoured by the kind of people you see in archive footage who you would not want to leave alone with small children. She was met with puzzled silence and lost the previously marginal seat by 15pts and no fewer than 4884 votes. Howe was defending a majority of 550 votes previously generated by Sue Essex, someone people actually like.

As a local councillor Sophie has visited the Tongwynlais section of her Whitchurch & Tongwynlais ward twice in four years and once attempted to browbeat cancer-stricken Freda Salway, the Chairwoman of the Children’s Committee, into allowing into the meeting room a group of children she had dragooned into putting on a little show as a way of securing more money for some obscure socialist project.

Councillor Howe was elected as the 4th placed candidate in the four seat ward, beaten by Conservatives Tim Davies, Linda Morgan and Brian Griffiths. The intelligent and hardworking Cardiff North Conservative Secre Mike Jones-Pritchard wants her seat so that he may do great things and looks on course to get it, this time unobstructed by the late Independent Conservative Victor Riley.

Howe was photographed at Llanishen Fach Primary School last April with Gordon Brown in an attempt to make her look heavyweight. Like our Prime Minister, a pillock in his own right, Sophie now looks like political toast. Maybe Chairman Howe and Mr Bean could club up and open a burger van once everybody’s forgotten who they are.

The Advancing Age Of Childhood

The very well respected child psychologist and Times columnist Dr Tanya Byron today proposed new, tougher restrictions on the sale of violent computer games. If you ask me this is the responsibility of parents and the games industry but, strangely, that isn't what bothers me the most about these laws.

Dr Byron primarily works with small children of primary school age, children who are still forming personalities and learning about the world they live in. She wishes that these small children be restricted from those interactive games whereby a character will patrol cities killing and maiming people. So why does her plan, which has just been seized by the government with both hands, include a tougher restriction (a large fine and possibly prison sentence of not more than FIVE YEARS) for the retail of such games to 17 year olds?

It is a characteristic of the government and of British society over the decades that the age whereby one must take on adult responsibilities has been rising. This increase has accelerated in recent years.

The minimum age for purchasing tobacco was moved to 18 last October, banning the sale of cigarettes to 16 and 17 year olds, people universally well informed regarding the harmful effects of tobacco, something which absolutely dominates their education as 10/11 year olds.

The legal age for driving a car, an absolutely vital aspect of modern life for anybody who ever wants to have a job or a family, is set to rise to 18 - ruling out an extra year for learning a very important skill at the ideal time for learning it.

In England those who do not excel at education and wish to move into full-time employment following their GCSE's will be banned from doing so and will be forced to find some Hairdressing Studies/Art Of Bricklaying course of dubious worth to not turn up to for another two years. This, combined with the fact that the most employment a GCSE-age pupil is allowed is delivering newspapers, make earning money from work and holding down a job an alien concept for many teenagers.

What we have seen is a concerted effort by the government to stop young people having to take responsibility for themselves or to learn to become adults. Taking the trouble to make sure a 17-year old never plays a violent computer game will add to the infantilisation of young people. When our government delay the benefits of growing up they hamper the maturation of young people. If we have nothing to grow up for we may never grow up.

Marxist Teachers Unions - BBC Have Your Say Post

The aimless left wing ideology of the teachers' unions have brought us bog-standard comprehensives and the collapse of discipline. The teachers' weedy unthinking public-sector socialism (which is, of course, completely in opposition to the strength, bravery and discipline of the armed forces) get in the way of the career choices of the thousands of pupils every year who choose to go into the services. It is a real problem that our education system is so dominated by the liberal left.

Wales Millenium Centre Says It All - The Assembly Government Hates You

In five or six years I will probably be a taxpayer. I joined the Conservative Party because, although I am socially very liberal, social liberalism don't pay the bills. I want a government that will respect the taxpayer. This means being squeamish about spending public money, seriously agonising over every penny. I want a government that considers how every pound they spend might have been put to better use.

Could a business have taken on more staff with this money? Could a mother have bought better food with this money? Could we have made it easier for her to buy school uniforms? Is this somebody's rent? Somebody's Student Loan repayment? Quite often it is, particularly with the pending abolition of the 10% tax rate and the relentless rise in portion of the National Income taken in tax.

The S4C budget (£85m and rising because nobody watches) sickens me, the overprovision of unrequested and useless Welsh language services makes me insane, the Wales Millennium Centre debacle (all on the taxpayer yet again) makes me want to break the arms of all the wet socialist thespians who were too lazy, unimaginative and had too little regard for those everyday people who now fund their profligacy to work out a proper board of benefactors.

The public purse is not a buffet table for every marginal unwanted leftish cause. It is real money that has been taken out of some working person's wallet. That is why Welsh Labour and Plaid Cymru and all those idiot civil servants who throw this money around like confetti should be ashamed today. They've fucked up and they don't even know it and they don't even care. We don't need a huge government and if they weren't so damp, so stupid and didn't have their heads so completely buried in the sand they would see it. Thieving bastards.