has education funding increased?

[plodder]

In reply to your two direct questions:

I don’t necessarily think that easier exams mean a decline in standards if more people get higher grades. That might easily represent a rise in standards. All easier grades represent is a change in the way things are measured, not the thing itself.

I don’t think education spend per pupil is a reliable metric over time if schools change the things they spend money on over time. For example, the 10 or 12 SEN kids at my school spend all day every day in a shed pretending to learn how to mend old motorbikes. An older friend who had calipers on his legs spent his school years in an isolated classroom with kids with Down’s syndrome. Lots of things have changed that might increase spend but would be difficult to pick up in a chemistry exam.

[plodder]

I’d also be interested to know how infrastructure spend is accounted for in “spend per pupil”. My school was falling apart, we were taught in portacabins with buckets on the floor to catch the leaks from the roof. The windows froze in the winter etc. If those portacabins were replaced with a modern building, it would cost millions, but you’d still have exactly the same teacher, teaching materials, children and exams.

[Gfamily]

Anecdote alert.
When I was about to go to secondary school, we still had the 11+, which selected which pupils would go to the Grammar School, with the very highest achievers going to the County Grammar.

I'm not sure if the exact proportions going to each, but I understand it works have been about the top 16% going to the Grammar, and the top 4% going to the County Grammar.

My two older brothers went to the County Grammar, where the expectation was that they would go to 'top universities'; and indeed they usually got a handful into Oxbridge each year.
The class sizes were small, so they had two streams, but it was noticeable that the lower stream (and their teachers) knew they were the 'lesser' cohort.
Such that probably half the lower set didn't continue after their O levels. Given that these were pupils who should have comfortably been at the top of the Grammar School stream, they were definitely failed by that 'old' system, that was considered to be an exceptional school.

In terms of 'standards', you need to consider what an education system should be achieving, because they was plenty wrong with the old one.

I went to a church comprehensive, while several of my friends went to the Grammar School (they'd got rid of the County Grammar by then). During our O level year, my friends were appalled to hear that I was expected to sit 8 academic O levels (having taken English Language the year earlier) - they did 6 plus an optional 'British Constitution' O level that nobody cared about.
This was in the 70s.

[sheldrake]

In reply to your two direct questions:

I don’t necessarily think that easier exams mean a decline in standards if more people get higher grades. That might easily represent a rise in standards. All easier grades represent is a change in the way things are measured, not the thing itself.

Yes it might, and I'm happy to carry on digging. Have you noticed that in UK STEM degrees the material that used to be taught in a 3 year degree is now taught over a 4 year master's degree, with the first year significantly repeating material that used to be learned during A-levels ? I've sat with people who did physics degrees in the 80s looking at modern syllabi and they confirm that their 3rd year subjects are now often being taught in year 4.

Doesn't that suggest to you that the students arrive with less mastery of the material than they used to ?

I don’t think education spend per pupil is a reliable metric over time if schools change the things they spend money on over time. For example, the 10 or 12 SEN kids at my school spend all day every day in a shed pretending to learn how to mend old motorbikes. An older friend who had calipers on his legs spent his school years in an isolated classroom with kids with Down’s syndrome. Lots of things have changed that might increase spend but would be difficult to pick up in a chemistry exam.

If spend increases and quality decreased (I know you still want me to demonstrate that decrease more), wouldn't that suggest to you that the money was not being effectively spent regardless of how the spending had changed ?

[plodder]

Evidence needed for the first point, across a range of subjects (some of which are broader than they were in the 80s which might account for the change in material).

Your second point about spend needs to account for when infrastructure spending takes place, which in the UK tends to be “far later than it ought to have been”. If a school is built in the 1960 and not refurbished until 2010 then the refurbishment money hardly shows a rise in per pupil spend from 1961 to 2010.

[sheldrake]

Evidence needed for the first point, across a range of subjects (some of which are broader than they were in the 80s which might account for the change in material).

If you look at any normal university (Leicester or Sussex, say) at their physics degrees, they will offer BSc(Hons) that take 3 years and MSci or MPhys degrees that take 4. The ones that take 4 years are all marked as suitable for people who are interested in being a professional physicist or conducting further research. A good BSc used to be sufficient. What other kind of evidence would you like ?

Your second point about spend needs to account for when infrastructure spending takes place, which in the UK tends to be “far later than it ought to have been”. If a school is built in the 1960 and not refurbished until 2010 then the refurbishment money hardly shows a rise in per pupil spend from 1961 to 2010.

Do you have any reason to believe that infrastructure spending has significantly changed over time?

[dyqik]

Anecdote alert.
When I was about to go to secondary school, we still had the 11+, which selected which pupils would go to the Grammar School, with the very highest achievers going to the County Grammar.

I'm not sure if the exact proportions going to each, but I understand it works have been about the top 16% going to the Grammar, and the top 4% going to the County Grammar.

My two older brothers went to the County Grammar, where the expectation was that they would go to 'top universities'; and indeed they usually got a handful into Oxbridge each year.
The class sizes were small, so they had two streams, but it was noticeable that the lower stream (and their teachers) knew they were the 'lesser' cohort.
Such that probably half the lower set didn't continue after their O levels. Given that these were pupils who should have comfortably been at the top of the Grammar School stream, they were definitely failed by that 'old' system, that was considered to be an exceptional school.

In terms of 'standards', you need to consider what an education system should be achieving, because they was plenty wrong with the old one.

I went to a church comprehensive, while several of my friends went to the Grammar School (they'd got rid of the County Grammar by then). During our O level year, my friends were appalled to hear that I was expected to sit 8 academic O levels (having taken English Language the year earlier) - they did 6 plus an optional 'British Constitution' O level that nobody cared about.
This was in the 70s.

This still went on recently with GCSEs and particularly special needs students, and affects the use of exam grades as a measure (and league tables mean that exam grades are a target, as well as a measure). e.g. my sister, who has multiple related disabilities, took 5 GCSEs, alongside a GNVQ(?) type thing. I'm sure the extent is less in the new system though.

[plodder]

sheldrake: infrastructure spending is highly political and also tends to be the first hit in a downturn (and the first to pick up in a recovery). The academy / free school system resulted in loads of new infrastructure spend (funded from ????)

Just checked on google maps, and as far as I can tell my old school has knocked down the portacabin classrooms and built houses instead.

[Gfamily]

If you look at any normal university (Leicester or Sussex, say) at their physics degrees, they will offer BSc(Hons) that take 3 years and MSci or MPhys degrees that take 4. The ones that take 4 years are all marked as suitable for people who are interested in being a professional physicist or conducting further research. A good BSc used to be sufficient. What other kind of evidence would you like

Don't know about you, but in my day, anyone wanting to take further research would have been required to apply for funding for a MSc, which would have been far harder to get.
Today's integrated Masters allow the students to progress to a higher level without having to have a 'break'.
Not evidence of declining standards.

[plodder]

Well, I do actually have some sympathy with the idea that qualifications are less valuable than they used to be, if that's the argument, and that's of course a factor of the increased competition from far higher numbers of graduates.

But what I'd like someone to demonstrate is that graduates now know less than they used to, that the changes are due to school (what stage of school? Surestart?) not university, how quickly we should expect to see policy changes filter through to the real world, and the methods used to exclude bias from e.g. socioeconomics. This is really complex stuff and pretending it isn't by adopting a robust swagger ain't gonna cut it.

[sheldrake]

Don't know about you, but in my day, anyone wanting to take further research would have been required to apply for funding for a MSc, which would have been far harder to get.

That's not how it was in the mid 90s for people I knew.

Today's integrated Masters allow the students to progress to a higher level without having to have a 'break'.

I don't agree that they progress to a higher level, the syllabus at most universities just seems to have shifted back a year so that year 1 repeats a lot of preparation they used to get at A-level.

[dyqik]

Evidence needed for the first point, across a range of subjects (some of which are broader than they were in the 80s which might account for the change in material).

If you look at any normal university (Leicester or Sussex, say) at their physics degrees, they will offer BSc(Hons) that take 3 years and MSci or MPhys degrees that take 4. The ones that take 4 years are all marked as suitable for people who are interested in being a professional physicist or conducting further research. A good BSc used to be sufficient. What other kind of evidence would you like ?

Oh dear.

The breadth of undergrad physics has increased. What's taught on 4 year courses is more than used to be taught on 3 year courses, and has added fields like biophysics, soft matter physics, data science, etc. There's also significantly more teaching of transferable skills, and epistomological things like philosophy and sociology of science, which are important subjects to modern practicing scientists and didn't even really exist 40 years ago.

Also, there are significantly more skills required to start physics research than used to be the case. Programming, data science, etc. Nowadays there's at least a year of part time taught classes at the start of a PhD course in the UK, and PhD courses have also been extended. The problem is more with what used to be considered adequate rather than the standards of incoming students.

Throughout that period, becoming a professional physicist outside the UK system took many more years anyway. In the US, you were and are expected to do 4 years undergrad followed by 2 years of taught classes before you start doing research. That's not changed over that period, and people coming out of US high schools are perfectly capable of starting a UK undergraduate degree. It's just a different system with less early specialization, which is something the UK system has moved towards as well.

[dyqik]

Ignore this.

[sheldrake]

But what I'd like someone to demonstrate is that graduates now know less than they used to

I think I can show people arrive at university knowing less. I don't know if they leave university knowing less about their subject. I can find lots of articles about their standards of spelling, general historical knowledge etc.. declining.

[dyqik]

But what I'd like someone to demonstrate is that graduates now know less than they used to

I think I can show people arrive at university knowing less. I don't know if they leave university knowing less about their subject. I can find lots of articles about their standards of spelling, general historical knowledge etc.. declining.

I bet you can find those articles written in the 1950s as well.

And the one by that ancient Greek philosopher.

[Gfamily]

Don't know about you, but in my day, anyone wanting to take further research would have been required to apply for funding for a MSc, which would have been far harder to get.

That's not how it was in the mid 90s for people I knew.

Anecdote

Today's integrated Masters allow the students to progress to a higher level without having to have a 'break'.

I don't agree that they progress to a higher level, the syllabus at most universities just seems to have shifted back a year so that year 1 repeats a lot of preparation they used to get at A-level.

Opinion

[sheldrake]

But what I'd like someone to demonstrate is that graduates now know less than they used to

I think I can show people arrive at university knowing less. I don't know if they leave university knowing less about their subject. I can find lots of articles about their standards of spelling, general historical knowledge etc.. declining.

I bet you can find those articles written in the 1950s as well.

And the one by that ancient Greek philosopher.

Perhaps. But if none of this can be objectively assessed, why bother ? We can both be right in our own little worlds.

[sheldrake]

The breadth of undergrad physics has increased. What's taught on 4 year courses is more than used to be taught on 3 year courses, and has added fields like biophysics, soft matter physics, data science, etc. There's also significantly more teaching of transferable skills, and epistomological things like philosophy and sociology of science, which are important subjects to modern practicing scientists and didn't even really exist 40 years ago.

I know you're a working physics researcher. Many of the fields you mention above would be options though (as before). Do you disagree that there's a lot of A-level standard review in the first year, more than there used to be ?

[dyqik]

The breadth of undergrad physics has increased. What's taught on 4 year courses is more than used to be taught on 3 year courses, and has added fields like biophysics, soft matter physics, data science, etc. There's also significantly more teaching of transferable skills, and epistomological things like philosophy and sociology of science, which are important subjects to modern practicing scientists and didn't even really exist 40 years ago.

I know you're a working physics researcher. Many of the fields you mention above would be options though (as before). Do you disagree that there's a lot of A-level standard review in the first year, more than there used to be ?

I'm not sure of the exact detail as I don't teach A level and 1st year.

However, it's been the case since at least the mid-90s, and probably much earlier, that the first year reviews A level material, in order to teach it in the appropriate formalisms for further extension, and also to cover potential differences in style and material between different A level physics courses.

[Gfamily]

The breadth of undergrad physics has increased. What's taught on 4 year courses is more than used to be taught on 3 year courses, and has added fields like biophysics, soft matter physics, data science, etc. There's also significantly more teaching of transferable skills, and epistomological things like philosophy and sociology of science, which are important subjects to modern practicing scientists and didn't even really exist 40 years ago.

I know you're a working physics researcher. Many of the fields you mention above would be options though (as before). Do you disagree that there's a lot of A-level standard review in the first year, more than there used to be ?

There will be a lot more students with different access paths than previously, including those from overseas.
Going back to a common baseline should be good practice.

[sheldrake]

The breadth of undergrad physics has increased. What's taught on 4 year courses is more than used to be taught on 3 year courses, and has added fields like biophysics, soft matter physics, data science, etc. There's also significantly more teaching of transferable skills, and epistomological things like philosophy and sociology of science, which are important subjects to modern practicing scientists and didn't even really exist 40 years ago.

I know you're a working physics researcher. Many of the fields you mention above would be options though (as before). Do you disagree that there's a lot of A-level standard review in the first year, more than there used to be ?

I'm not sure of the exact detail as I don't teach A level and 1st year.

However, it's been the case since at least the mid-90s, and probably much earlier, that the first year reviews A level material, in order to teach it in the appropriate formalisms for further extension, and also to cover potential differences in style and material between different A level physics courses.

First year Physics at Birmingham uni wasn't A-level review in 1993.

[sheldrake]

The breadth of undergrad physics has increased. What's taught on 4 year courses is more than used to be taught on 3 year courses, and has added fields like biophysics, soft matter physics, data science, etc. There's also significantly more teaching of transferable skills, and epistomological things like philosophy and sociology of science, which are important subjects to modern practicing scientists and didn't even really exist 40 years ago.

I know you're a working physics researcher. Many of the fields you mention above would be options though (as before). Do you disagree that there's a lot of A-level standard review in the first year, more than there used to be ?

There will be a lot more students with different access paths than previously, including those from overseas.
Going back to a common baseline should be good practice.

In most of the articles I've read so far, the overseas student are often better prepared than the UK students of today.

[Gfamily]

I know you're a working physics researcher. Many of the fields you mention above would be options though (as before). Do you disagree that there's a lot of A-level standard review in the first year, more than there used to be ?

There will be a lot more students with different access paths than previously, including those from overseas.
Going back to a common baseline should be good practice.

In most of the articles I've read so far, the overseas student are often better prepared than the UK students of today.

Anecdote + objective measure of 'often' needed.

[plodder]

First year Physics at Birmingham uni wasn't A-level review in 1993.

Anecdote alert - but I know some people who were caned off their boxes during their A levels, who went to sh.t schools, and who frankly didn't have a clue what was in the full A-level physics syllabus at the time. This was reflected in their grades.

Did you get straight A's in your A-levels, sheldrake? That would give you the perspective to assess your <cough>, erm, choice of a physics degree at Birmingham.

[dyqik]

Most of this discussion so far wouldn't earn a C a in GCSE Humanities, when I took it, by the way. No discussion of sources, no discussion of reliability of and potential biases in sources, no synthesis of a position from multiple sources with conflicting biases.

Also, why are we discussing exam results and difficulty in traditional academic fields as the measure of comprehensive secondary education? That seems to be making a very big assumption about what education is for.