Month: September 2020

The Tester Calls

(29 September 2020) Autumn arrives and the government state that all hospitality venues must chuck everybody out at 10.00pm, thus ensuring streets, buses etc are full of people. I am not sure how this assists “social distancing”; my uncertainty demonstrates my ignorance and the cleverness of the government and its advisors.

It is noticeable that there are issues around “Track’n Trace” (who sound like a 60’s light comedy act), which is needed to identify who requires testing. While it made sense (to the government at least) to build new testing capacity, rather than using all the labs around the country I reflected on the future.

Assuming we have not all succumbed to the disease and hoping those who refused the vaccine are regretting their decision there will be great over-capacity in testing facilities.

With this in mind and noting that early identification of a potential medical problem is often the best way to prevent it developing through early interventions there is an opportunity to use this capacity for a large cohort to have regular blood testing.

The simple point is that measuring blood over years not only trends in an individual’s health would be monitored but the large data set would be incredibly useful for research. I will write to Mr Hancock and share his reply.

Here is a picture of the police dealing with a curfew breaker.

Old Slide
Lucerna Magic Lantern Web Resource, lucerna.exeter.ac.uk, item 5145521. Accessed 29 September 2020.

Puzzled about Exams

(8 September 2020). I have been thinking about exams a lot recently-hard to avoid really. The fundamental problem is that the government appeared to have an obsession with “Grade inflation” i.e. if results are “better” they seem to assume it is because exams are getting easier rather than pupils learning more.  (This seems odd as in other areas of life improvements such as the population improving in health, or less children in poverty are seen as positive). They also consciously discriminated against clever pupils in deprived areas.

I reflect that this is because they (and previous governments) have never made clear what they expect from the exam system.

In any widely taken exam a decision has to be taken on how to set the grades. There are two choices.

  1. Norm referenced tests – For these a simple decision is made that, for example only 20% of candidates get an A grade (and so on throughout the divisions). This is honest and straightforward particularly as results are used for entry to further education and employment. It does, of course, mean that an individual’s grades are related to the quality of their cohort.
  2. Criterion referenced tests-For these a standard is set and the number who achieve a given grade is entirely based on their abilities. Thus, the numbers getting an A grade will vary but will reflect individual’s abilities and the input of teachers.

 I prefer the latter system though it should be clear which is used. Write to your MP about it

In the UK, typically, “A levels are currently neither fully norm-referenced nor fully criterion-referenced”. As parliament was told some years ago.

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200203/cmselect/cmeduski/153/15304.htm#:~:text=A%20levels%20are%20currently%20neither,fully%20norm-referenced%20nor%20fully%20criterion-referenced.

As a footnote I am also puzzled why there are five different commercial organisations offering GCSE exams (with a further two just offering A levels). To me it would make sense to have only one organisation setting exams as is common in most civilised countries. This is how I feel.

Unnecessary Plastic (2){update}

(8 September 2020) Following on from last week’s thought I got a rapid reply from the supermarket. Unfortunately, it missed the point. However, to be fair I wrote back and further explained the issue and I then got a rapid and helpful reply- see below

(Dear Mr Fraser,

Thank you for your response.

Yes, this makes sense and is a good idea in my opinion so I appreciate you bringing this to our attention.

I can certainly pass this on to our pricing team so that it can be considered for implementation should there be a review of process in the future.

I apologise that I did not grasp the concept initially and would like to thank you once again for your feedback regarding this).

We will see what happens.

(4 September 2020) Apologies for the silence recently- not only have I been dumbstruck by the news (all of it) I have also been away from my PC.

Undecided what to focus my thoughts on I happened to buy some baked beans.

On the shelves were single cans and six packs which were much cheaper per tin. ((Without panicking my readers, I am slowly stocking up for the Brexit chaos in January). The tins were    wrapped in (unnecessary) plastic. See below the discard.

Unnecessary wrapping

In the same supermarket there are many “special offers” for example on beer where buying four specified individual bottles gives a cheaper overall price. They often offer a “discount” if you buy six bottles of wine etc.

At the till the machines recognises these offers and applies the saving. So why do they wrap baked beans in plastic? I have written to the supermarket and will share my answer.

While we wait here’s a picture of me on my holidays.

Golf and knitwear make a perfect combination