matgb | If Boris were God? (Reply)

Reasons to love Boris pt xvii:

What would you do if you were God for a day? CHRIS LANDONIS, Hackney

I think I would try a bit harder to prove My existence to Richard Dawkins.

Actually, that's not why I love this article. It's this:

Are education standards slipping in Britain? RICHARD MORRIS, Luton

Slipping! How could you even suggest it? Every year, comrades, our children are getting better and better at passing exams! Every year we produce more A*-C grade tractors from the Red Star plant! This year an amazing 43.5 per cent of candidates got an A at maths A-level, and guess what the proportion was 40 years ago, when far fewer people took maths A-level? It was only 7 per cent! Now you do the maths. Oh, all right, I'll do it for you. That is a staggering 620 per cent improvement by our young geniuses. Let me enter the usual political guff about how hard everyone has worked, and let me congratulate them on their grades. But if too many CVs read like a man falling off a building then the A is useless as a tool of differentiation, and that is why some universities are calling for a pre-U exam to replace A-levels, and that is why there is increasing interest in the IB. We have all connived in the fiction that our kids are getting brighter, because that conceals the growing gulf in attainment between much of the maintained sector and the grammar schools/ independent schools. The result is that the market has, inevitably, asserted itself, and in a way that is socially regressive. Which schools, after all, are going to have the resources to prepare their pupils for these new specialised university entrance exams?

My CV does not read like a man falling off a building. This is partially because I was a lazy git at school (plus ca change), and partially because they do seem to be making things easier. Teaching to the test, rising tuition standards, lowering exam standards? Bit of all three?

David Cameron is a Whig, and Boris is a LibDem in disguise. Albeit a LibDem Capitalist on the David Laws wing, but still, I like the bloke.

Now, I had a plan for the evening. What was it? Oh yeah, install Wordpress for my replacement journal home. Write up the review of the Doctor Who DVDs involving both Andy Hamilton and Jason Connery (nope, he still couldn't act)? Nah, Trevor's World of Sport is on...