I've done some exam invigilation for GCSEs, in my time (not as a teacher, just an invigilator in my spare time), and thus taken the opportunity to check out the exam papers for a wide variety of subjects, including ones that never even existed when I was doing my A-Levels, even. (ICT? Well, there you go. Not quite as involved, as far as I can see, as the RSA qualification in computer use I did at night-school, back in the '80s, except for (/because of?) more WYSIWYGness to it. But is it supposed to be?)
Can't really comment on whether GCSEs have drifted down in quality, over the years, and I know that some of the Eleven-Plus exam questions people tend to quote from even further back in time are a lot more complex, but I don't rule out the possibility that there are just some things that modern children are intrinsically more knowledgeable about.
There's somethign to be said to pre-ordain what scores should gain what grade, and something to be said in ensuring that a grade level reflects the actual relative position in the entire student body (for that paper/amalgamated set of papers and coursework). I've often said that the "A*" (A-star) grade should have been done differently. Apply the Star-grade to (say) the top 10% of the all students, regardless of grade. Should there be something that causes a lot of top students to fall out of the 'A' grading, then it's possible that all A-class results are A*s, and some of the top B-class ones also become B*. Given that the most common thing that grades are used for is to compare same-year students for same-year entry into the next stage of education (mostly that's the A-Levels needed for University entrance, but...), then people can either adjust their expectations of "what letter they need from their applicants", or take a Star as indicator of being in that top 10%, regardless. (Maybe the top 1% could be given a Double-Star qualification.)
Further down the line, for CV (a.k.a. Résumé) usage, you could still trust that a C-and-above in English (or whatever you prefer) conveys an acceptable standard of reading and writing for the job you're going for, if they maintain consistency and don't mess about too much with whether they accept (or mark down) TXT-SPK spellings, etc. As there has been a big fuss about, for several years now (and that they're apparently going to be cracking down on, now). If it's not a straight-from-school employment situation (when you're likely comparing people from the same year anyway), any 'fule-nose' that an increase (or decrease) in maturity is going to happen almost unrelated to whatever grade of sub-degree-level qualifications is being proffered as a calling card by the applicant. Other work done/references and (for those that pass all the basic sight-tests of the application, who will be a small proportion anyway) eventually the interview will be the best resolver. (And I speak as someone who hates, and doesn't generally do well in, interviews.)
But, anyway...
Local Politics, US-style, always confuses me. The whole Welsh Assembly thing is probably on the lines of State Politics, when put upon a relative scale. (Wales, being pretty much a standard measure here for any large area of land within an order of magnitude or two, and not described in terms of "How many Belgiums", seems to be just a tad smaller than New Jersey, and virtually the same population as Iowa. Belgium would be somewhere between Maryland and Hawaii for area, Ohio for the population, it looks like.)
"Local Politics", for me, would be either regarding the exact identity of the local Member Of Parliament for the place that I live, or the three Councillors (usually just one of them, in turn, elected and requiring re-election/replacement in each iteration of electoral cycle) who represent me on the local Council. No Sheriffs, Coroners, etc. I don't think I
should be electing a law official (having a virtually arbitrary person chosen from (part of) the elected House shuffled into head the appropriate Ministry in the Government is bad enough). I'm not too fond of Mayors being elected. (We've already got a council, and a leader
within that council for whatever jobs need a figurehead, rather than a committee with at least some actual experts in the issues they're they're to "comit" to.)
And what interest do I pay to these people, and what interest do these people pay to me? Well, I live in a fairly definite 'safe' seat for a given party, and the current incumbent has been there (give or take boundary changes, in which he 'absorbed' someone else's seat area as well) for a while now. And, to be honest, I like him well enough to not mind this, although obviously those with a yen for a different party in (local) power are going to be upset (but then, by definition, they appear to be in a minority, at least when counting those who wish to actually
vote one way or another).
The councillors, OTOH, I really cannot identify with them. I know there's three of them, for the area this triumvirate has been voted in from, and I know that
theoretically they could be of all different parties (though I suspect that they're either 3/3rds one party or 2/3rds one and 1/3rd the other, if there was a blip in fortunes or a particularly wise/unwise choice as to who was placed up there to contest a certain seat), but I've got absolutely no idea who they are, as you can probably already tell.
I tend to suffer from "my vote doesn't make a difference"-itis, in this regard. Which I know is both accurate (my single vote is, of course, not the balance between one vote outcome and another) and also possibly also an attitude that may upset things (if they can persuade
me to vote differently (or, depending on my apathy on the day, at all), then circumstances are possibly going to persuade a lot of
others to do so. And so things may change.
Also, whether I've been out when they called, or not, I've
never had any representatives of potential electees (parliamentary or council) come to my door. Loads of leaflets. But leaflets are cheap. (If an environmental menace, if left unchecked.) I think everyone seems to recognise that I (or at least the kind of people who live in my kind of street in my kind of area) aren't really worth bothering for those extra few votes. They probably have better fish to fry and better targets to shoot for.
Oh dear, I appear to have straye from the originally intended drift of my response, and I've just realised how late at night it is. Let me post this as a place-holder (a PTW, perhaps) and then perhaps I'll try to reacquire my original purpose to reply in the morning. I can't say that the above is
not relevant, but it seems not to have developed, during the concoction of the prose involved, into the precision targetted post that I had thought I would be fashioning while putting my thoughts down on this 'ere bit of virtual paper wot I see in front of my eyes. Cor, love a duck, guvnor. In the meantime, it's open to comments, any of it that you find worthy of commenting to, so long as I'm not inadvertently aiding and abetting in the derailing of anything.
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Topic: Local Politics Thread (Read 4066 times)