A-level results today, GCSEs next week. No doubt they will be higher grades than ever, no doubt the arguments in the press will revolve around "are they getting easier?". No doubt we’ll have known nothing like it!
So the debate- are they easier, is the teaching better, are the kids getting more intelligent (as someone suggested this morning on breakfast news). Normally the alternatives are presented as 1 OR another OR another. the debate has a momentun because each has their case, each has sound reasons for holding to their view. That’s the trouble with dogma, it’s no timpossible that all sides are right. Does anyone consider the possibility that the exams are getting easier, easier because the kids are better taught and possibly more intelligent as well. So it is possible that all of those explainations are occuring at once.
Intelligence does go up when people are better fed, they also grow taller too. that brings me to my next question- are people better fed over the last 10 years? Could someone out there look into the range between the malnourished ( McDonalds) generation and the middle-class diet. I don’t want to hear about the rich-poor divide, I want absolutes. The poor are better fed these days too, it’s just that the wealthy are even more so. There is no gain in turning the discussion into a pseudo-marxist rant. As one woman on TV said this morning, the A-level’s results make up 4% of 18 year olds. A tiny drop compared to the vast majority, one fifth of whom are semi-illiterate ( apparently*).
Anyway, I’d better go into school to see my tutor group & get some materials to plan for the start of term. It’s going to be a perfect day – the weather anyway.
* why not look through the list of updated spaces, plenty of illiterates there- and that’s from a group of people who like writing!
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+thunder
Easy television. 
Micycle 