Keys Corner » In the UK

What state is the UK education system in?

John — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 16:04:28 +0000

Judging from today’s results, it’s now virtually impossible to fail an A-level. The overall pass rate climbed for the 28th year in a row, with 97.6 per cent of A-levels being graded A* – E. Sceptics used to joke that you only needed to write your name at the top of the paper to pass an A-level, but given the appallingly low levels of literacy in this country it seems probable that more than 2.4 per cent of candidates failed to do that. From which it follows that A-levels are now so easy you can pass one without managing to write your own name. A simple “X” will suffice, even if the rest of the paper is completely blank.

[NB: A* is the new "best" grade, the pass grades then run from A to E in decreasing order of merit, F is a fail]

OK – the author admits he might be exaggerating slightly, but if only 2.4% of students are failing the exam used to decide whether you can go to university, and over 8% are getting the new “ultra-difficult” A* grade (with 27% getting the old top level A grade), there has to be something wrong with the papers being set, or the way they are being marked.

According to the Guardian, research at Durham University has found that a candidate who would have got a C two decades ago would get an A now.

Now, it could be that the quality of education has improved enormously in the last 2 decades, but in the same Guardian article, they state that the UK’s relative position in the OECD’S “Pisa Study” has dropped since 2000:

According to a respected international study, the OECD’s Pisa survey, the UK fell from fourth in the world for school science in 2000 to 14th six years later. It slipped from 7th to 17th for reading and eighth to 24th in maths. The findings were based on independent tests of children’s ability.

Pity the poor school leavers in the UK this year who will be trying to convince universities that their results justify getting a place to study there, as well as the universities, who will be finding it difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff.

“Efficient” British banking services

John — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 17:25:07 +0000

Whenever I have the misfortune to deal with British banks I am inevitably impressed by their lack of speed when dealing with customer requests. The latest example: we decided to close our joint UK bank account, since we don’t actually need it, and it just tied up money keeping the account in credit. (I won’t name the bank to protect the guilty). I wrote to them on 30th June requesting them to close the account and transfer the balance to our German bank using SWIFT.

On 23rd July (over three weeks later and after three phone calls to the branch asking why nothing was happening) they wrote back to tell me that to close the account and transfer funds abroad I would need to provide a certified copy of both Ruth’s and my passports with a specific text that the official doing the certification had to include on the copy.

We sent the copies back the day the letter arrived, on 26th July, and last Friday (30th July) I noticed that the online internet access to the account had been deactivated (a good sign). Today (2nd August) at 8:30 this morning, the passport copies arrived back in the post. The balance arrived on our German account this evening.

Total time to process: 33 days.

I don’t think, by the way, think that this is atypical. We have had several similar experiences with another of the British “Big Four” banks when we were administering my mother’s affairs in the last four or five years before she passed away.

Democracy in action?

John — Sat, 08 May 2010 04:49:27 +0000

With all but one seat now counted, the results of the British elections look like this (ignoring the smaller parties):

British election results after 649 seats have been counted

With the Liberal Democrats likely to be an important coalition partner in the new government, there is hope that the archaic “first past the post” system in the UK might be reformed to allow a fairer distribution of the seats in parliament in future elections.

Although I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting – the British don’t like coalition governments, as you might guess: the British expression for a (British) coalition government is a “hung Parliament”.

I’m glad they grit the roads here ;-)

John — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 18:07:20 +0000

Paignton is on the south coast of England in Devon. Comment from the original poster on YouTube two days ago:

A removal truck had been blocking the road outside our house for 3 hours and the drivers boss had just turned up, when they started the ignition it looked like they were going to try and move the truck, that’s what we were filming.

We had no idea that the car would appear from our right. The driver was warned how bad the roads were by their neighbour. There were probably 6-7 people on the pavements (2 were shown) but the driver was pretty insistent on getting to work.

The (British) Spirit of Christmas

John — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 21:31:07 +0000

It often seems to us that Britain has changed a lot in the thirty years that we’ve not been living there. In particular, it seems to be the most “Health & Safety” obsessed country in the world. Luckily, the Brits still have a sense of humour, as this blog entry testifies!

(Spotted by Ruth, . . . → Read More: The (British) Spirit of Christmas

Harebrained scheme

John — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 05:40:05 +0000

I can’t recall having seen such an idiotic idea for a long time:

Internet users could face an annual charge of up to £30 to download music, under plans to be unveiled today that aim to tackle illegal file-sharing.

[British] Ministers are backing proposals that would enable millions of broadband users to pay an annual levy which would allow them to copy as much – previously illegal – music from the internet as they wanted. The money raised would be channelled back to the rights-holders, with artists responsible for the most popular songs receiving a bigger slice of the cash.

Can you imagine anyone who can download unlimited music from the internet buying CDs as well? We buy most of our music from iTunes these days and only buy CDs rarely – and only if they are priced below the iTunes price of 9.99 Euro per album. Instead of supporting the music industry, this proposal will decimate it.

Where can I sign up? And when can I subscribe to unlimited film downloads too?

Update (2008-07-24 21:20 hrs):
Reading the BBC web site this evening, it seems the newspapers misreported the plans this morning:

Mr Taylor [of the British Phonographic Industry] said newspaper reports stating that online users could be subject to an annual levy to cover losses from file-sharing were incorrect.

Which is a pity, but does show that the industry hasn’t lost it’s marbles completely!

I don’t think I could do that…

John — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 16:40:40 +0000

Apparently, a couple who has been living for ten years in room 1 of the Travelodge hotel at Grantham, UK, has been forced to move out of their room as the hotel has been closed for refurbishment. I really don’t think I could live in a Travelodge for 10 years.

(Posted from the Hotel . . . → Read More: I don’t think I could do that…

1984 has been delayed, not cancelled

John — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 05:15:02 +0000

When I read this in today’s Guardian, my first reaction was “but it’s not the 1st of April yet”. One the one hand data privacy experts in the EU has been fighting tooth and nail over the last years to prevent the USA getting a pile of personal data each time someone flies to or from the USA; on the other hand, the EU is considering similar measures, which the UK is lobbying to extend to track EU citizens traveling within the EU:

Passengers travelling between EU countries or taking domestic flights would have to hand over a mass of personal information, including their mobile phone numbers and credit card details, as part of a new package of security measures being demanded by the British government. The data would be stored for 13 years and used to “profile” suspects.

Brussels officials are already considering controversial anti-terror plans that would collect up to 19 pieces of information on every air passenger entering or leaving the EU. Under a controversial agreement reached last summer with the US department of homeland security, the EU already supplies the same information [19 pieces] to Washington for all passengers flying between Europe and the US.

But Britain wants the system extended to sea and rail travel, to be applied to domestic flights and those between EU countries…

In fact, according to a recent article by John Lettice, some of the protest from the EU against the USA’s data collection is caused because the EU bureaucracy has been unable to coordinate an agreement with the USA fast enough to stop the USA forming bilateral agreements with some EU-states which don’t have a visa waiver agreement in place with the USA, thus undermining the EU’s position when negotiating deals with the USA. Given that the UK government has been regularly involuntarily leaking data about millions of its citizens recently (lost DVDs and CDs have become a regular topic in the British press in the last 2-3 months), this enthusiasm for collecting even more data really can’t be considered a good idea.

Better not publish your bank account details

John — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 14:55:50 +0000

Jeremy Clarkson, the BBC Top Gear presenter, is regretting mocking the fuss made about the British government losing CDs with millions of sets of personal data on them. He published an article in the Sunday Times which included his bank account details, claiming that concerns about identity theft were exaggerated. Someone promptly transferred �500 from his account to British Diabetic Association. Because of the Data Protection Act, Clarkson has no idea who was responsible for the transfer.

Clarkson’s revised opinion about the lost CDs:

“Contrary to what I said at the time, we must go after the idiots who lost the discs and stick cocktail sticks in their eyes until they beg for mercy.”

Should be enough…

John — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 20:59:00 +0000

The BBC reports:

The UK has built up a stockpile of 100 tonnes of plutonium –
enough to make 17,000 nuclear bombs, according to a Royal Society report.

Well, that should be enough for any conceivable (or inconceivable) purpose, when you consider that just over 6kg of plutonium was used in the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. I hope it’s well guarded , because the plutonium is stored in powder form, which is ideal for use in a “dirty” nuclear bomb. The Royal Society has made several suggestions for making it harder to use the plutonium in terrorist attacks, but the British Government’s position is:

It would not be appropriate to take any decisions until the public consultation on new nuclear* has been completed and the outcome is known,

(* See the Government website here for more information on the “new nuclear” consultation.)

Who is trying to pull the wool over our eyes?

John — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 06:31:39 +0000

The front page in today’s Observer:
‘Housing boom over’ as UK bank chaos grows

Britain’s house price growth will be halved next year as the global financial crisis exacerbates the impact of rising mortgage rates, according to Nationwide, the biggest mortgage lender.

After the dramatic bail-out of high street bank Northern Rock underlined the impact of the American ‘sub-prime’ mortgage crisis on Britain’s financial sector, Fionnuala Earley, Nationwide’s group economist, said she expected house price inflation to slow to around 3 per cent next year.

Panic in the UK (�1 billion in savings were withdrawn by customers from the Northern Rock on Friday due to concerns that the bank might go under) and a global financial crisis in the mortgage sector will result a rate of price growth for property of 3% per year after prices have already doubled in the last ten years?

Prices in Germany fell by over 3% in the last year without any concerns about sub-prime lending. This week’s Economist has an article about global property price changes.

I think property prices in the UK are going to drop substantially in the next 12 months, not rise by 3%. The Economist, by the way, thinks that prices in the USA have risen less steeply than in the UK – which makes this video even more thought provoking (scroll down after watching the video for more information about the prices):

Update: (2007-09-17): Interesting to read today, that Alan Greenspan, who has been advising Gordon Brown since he retired, is warning of difficulties ahead for Britisch homeowners in today’s Telegraph.

Spiderman to the rescue

John — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 15:20:23 +0000

From the Manchester Evening News a couple of days ago:

A VIOLENT thug attacking a shopkeeper never expected to come face-to-face with a superhero.

But as Gerard Smith went `berserk’ in a Manchester newsagents, passer-by Kevin Godin-Prior lifted his jumper to reveal a Spiderman costume and told him: “You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”…