has education funding increased?

[Allo V Psycho]

Is it really discriminatory that private schools do a better job of teaching A-level chemistry & biology on average?
I'd hate to think that there were people with significant policy influence who thought the right answer here was to try and put handicaps on the private school kids or just accept less knowledge from the state school kids. Surely the only sane response here is to improve state education?

I could probably reasonably say that I was a person with policy influence, for what it is worth.

Is it really discriminatory that private schools do a better job of teaching A-level chemistry & biology on average?

Yes.
If the goal is to recruit those candidates who are best able to fulfil the needs of the health care professions, and better candidates are selected against, on the basis of extraneous factors, for the benefit of worse candidates, then that is discriminatory.

And yes, in principle, it could arguably be societally just to adapt entrance standards on the basis of backgrounds, so that candidates of equivalent performance capabilities in the future were admitted. Subtracting two A Level grades from private or selective school candidates would work psychometrically.

There are two major reason why I do not favour such different initial entrance tariffs on a population basis. The first is that we do not admit populations, but individuals. And there is no way of determining whether any given individual has been unfairly benefited or discriminated against. The second is that, as discussions on this forum have indicated, assessing 'background' is very difficult.

As far as improving state schools goes, that is beyond my individual power, and beyond the power or remit of medical schools. But medical schools are not therefore absolved from attempting to address the problem.

My solutions have been to identify promising candidates from challenged backgrounds, by a number of metrics. then the task is to give them the opportunity bring out their abilities before selection. Examples are programmes such as those of Pamela Garlick at Kings and the Southampton BM6 programme.

I should emphasise that this is not merely intended for the benefit of the individuals. Health care delivery benefits from the presence of individuals from a diversity of backgrounds, and even medical education is the better for such diversity. The same is true for students with health challenges. For instance, I have admitted a student in a wheelchair, in an old building with limited disabled access. Her classmates formed a cheerful support team to help her, guided by the student herself. I think they will be better doctors for having seen a 'disabled' person first as a friend, colleague and peer, rather than a victim. The same is true for students from different ethnicities and backgrounds. We are not doing such candidates a 'favour': we are benefiting, first the educational programme, and second, health care delivery.

Do you think a fairer but still objective test than A-level results could be devised?

Yes, certainly.



What do you think 'fair' means? And what do you think 'objective' means, as applied to A-levels?

edited: reconsidered.

[Allo V Psycho]

double post: tired.

AvP

[dyqik]

Knowledge of history, the english language and maths in the young. Decline of difficulty of A-level questions.

Those aren't measurable objective quantities.

[dyqik]

Why is it necessarily subjective? Comparing child progress amongst like-for-like social backgrounds is possible in an objective way.

No, it's not. There's dozens of factors, measured mostly subjectively, that combine differently in different places.

Please give an example of factors that have to be measured subjectively.

Home life stability.
Amount of English spoken in the home.
Most special needs statements.
Amount of assistance with schoolwork available at home.

[sheldrake]

The presence of special needs statements and parental place of birth/first language would not have to be assessed subjectively for this kind of analysis. I think you'd do well enough using socioeconomic background and parental marital status for the others. We'd be dealing with large numbers.

[dyqik]

The presence of special needs statements and parental place of birth/first language would not have to be assessed subjectively for this kind of analysis. I think you'd do well enough using socioeconomic background and parental marital status for the others. We'd be dealing with large numbers.

You aren't at all clear here what you are talking about.

What are you assessing? In what granularity?

[bolo]

What are you assessing?

Your willingness to continue engaging with him.

[plodder]

To summarise: if we pick an arbitrary length of time for our comparisons, disregard schools vs education funding, fail to correct for the complexities associated with socio-economics and bias and don't define our metrics we can say categorically that all we need to do to get back on top of the educational perch is give our useless lefty teachers a bl..dy good kick up the arse.

I can't see anyone disagreeing with that, it's so painfully obvious it hardly needs saying.

[sheldrake]

Knowledge of history, the english language and maths in the young. Decline of difficulty of A-level questions.

Those aren't measurable objective quantities.

First three are. Last one is more debatable, but universities have certainly been adjusting their courses and entry criteria as they've observed high A-level grades not signify the level or preparation and subject knowledge they used to.

[sheldrake]

The presence of special needs statements and parental place of birth/first language would not have to be assessed subjectively for this kind of analysis. I think you'd do well enough using socioeconomic background and parental marital status for the others. We'd be dealing with large numbers.

You aren't at all clear here what you are talking about.

What are you assessing? In what granularity?

Assessing educational progress between age checkpoints for different demographics to diagnose where funding would be best spent and check that the funding is having the desired effect.

p.s. We're not disregarding schools vs educational funding plodder. Keep up

[plodder]

I think perhaps you're asserting that you're taking this into account without sharing any evidence to support your assertion. To recap, the concern is that because cuts have been made elsewhere schools are taking up the slack. Free school meals, for example.

[sheldrake]

I think perhaps you're asserting that you're taking this into account without sharing any evidence to support your assertion. To recap, the concern is that because cuts have been made elsewhere schools are taking up the slack. Free school meals, for example.

No, I'm asserting this because the stat I cite since the early 1980s is for overall educational funding, not just school budgets.

[dyqik]

The presence of special needs statements and parental place of birth/first language would not have to be assessed subjectively for this kind of analysis. I think you'd do well enough using socioeconomic background and parental marital status for the others. We'd be dealing with large numbers.

You aren't at all clear here what you are talking about.

What are you assessing? In what granularity?

Assessing educational progress between age checkpoints for different demographics to diagnose where funding would be best spent and check that the funding is having the desired effect.

That's not an answer. What granularity are you assessing that at, and what are you doing to assess it?

What scale is "where funding would be best spent" on? Individual schools? LEAs, to the extent they they still exist? individual subjects?

[sheldrake]

You aren't at all clear here what you are talking about.

What are you assessing? In what granularity?

Assessing educational progress between age checkpoints for different demographics to diagnose where funding would be best spent and check that the funding is having the desired effect.

That's not an answer. What granularity are you assessing that at, and what are you doing to assess it?

What scale is "where funding would be best spent" on? Individual schools? LEAs, to the extent they they still exist? individual subjects?

Age ranges, demographics and subjects are all sensible possibilities.

[dyqik]

Assessing educational progress between age checkpoints for different demographics to diagnose where funding would be best spent and check that the funding is having the desired effect.

That's not an answer. What granularity are you assessing that at, and what are you doing to assess it?

What scale is "where funding would be best spent" on? Individual schools? LEAs, to the extent they they still exist? individual subjects?

Age ranges, demographics and subjects are all sensible possibilities.

The wide variability within each of those will render the exercise meaningless.

[plodder]

I think perhaps you're asserting that you're taking this into account without sharing any evidence to support your assertion. To recap, the concern is that because cuts have been made elsewhere schools are taking up the slack. Free school meals, for example.

No, I'm asserting this because the stat I cite since the early 1980s is for overall educational funding, not just school budgets.

I'm not even sure what "stat" you cited, but reports like this suggest that many complex changes have occurred even over half that time, eg early years funding, shakeups to FE, introduction of academies etc

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source= ... 0Kx6-OcyCh

[sheldrake]

I think perhaps you're asserting that you're taking this into account without sharing any evidence to support your assertion. To recap, the concern is that because cuts have been made elsewhere schools are taking up the slack. Free school meals, for example.

No, I'm asserting this because the stat I cite since the early 1980s is for overall educational funding, not just school budgets.

I'm not even sure what "stat" you cited, but reports like this suggest that many complex changes have occurred even over half that time, eg early years funding, shakeups to FE, introduction of academies etc

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source= ... 0Kx6-OcyCh

The statistics are in the report. I'm not sure why you think those changes render this invalid? Those are just reasons why the increased funding may not have been effective.

[sheldrake]

That's not an answer. What granularity are you assessing that at, and what are you doing to assess it?

What scale is "where funding would be best spent" on? Individual schools? LEAs, to the extent they they still exist? individual subjects?

Age ranges, demographics and subjects are all sensible possibilities.

The wide variability within each of those will render the exercise meaningless.

Why do you think that? Give me an example of how you think an incorrect conclusion would be drawn.

[dyqik]

First you'll have to tell me how your are measuring things, and how you are averaging individual results to schools and then averaging schools. Then I can give an example.

[sheldrake]

First you'll have to tell me how your are measuring things, and how you are averaging individual results to schools and then averaging schools. Then I can give an example.

I'd expect to use something like the SATs exams as the instrument to track pupil progress. Those results can be sliced in lots of ways as you're thinking about a funding case. By demographics, parental language/country of origin/socioeconomic class. If you sliced them to individual schools, the error in the small samples may be too large, but individual school would not be necessary at a policy level.

[plodder]

No, I'm asserting this because the stat I cite since the early 1980s is for overall educational funding, not just school budgets.

I'm not even sure what "stat" you cited, but reports like this suggest that many complex changes have occurred even over half that time, eg early years funding, shakeups to FE, introduction of academies etc

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source= ... 0Kx6-OcyCh

The statistics are in the report. I'm not sure why you think those changes render this invalid? Those are just reasons why the increased funding may not have been effective.

OK, I’ll stop now. You’re not engaging with the complexity.

[dyqik]

First you'll have to tell me how your are measuring things, and how you are averaging individual results to schools and then averaging schools. Then I can give an example.

I'd expect to use something like the SATs exams as the instrument to track pupil progress. Those results can be sliced in lots of ways as you're thinking about a funding case. By demographics, parental language/country of origin/socioeconomic class. If you sliced them to individual schools, the error in the small samples may be too large, but individual school would not be necessary at a policy level.

And what do you think SATs measure?

And how are you going to direct funding to the right schools if you don't break it down by school?

[sheldrake]

I'm not even sure what "stat" you cited, but reports like this suggest that many complex changes have occurred even over half that time, eg early years funding, shakeups to FE, introduction of academies etc

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source= ... 0Kx6-OcyCh

The statistics are in the report. I'm not sure why you think those changes render this invalid? Those are just reasons why the increased funding may not have been effective.

OK, I’ll stop now. You’re not engaging with the complexity.

Yes I am, I just don't think you're thinking about how to assess performance of a large scale program in the right way. Confounding factors aren't reasons to ignore the results. The confounding factors are things you learn from when you fail, not reasons to pretend there was no objective success criteria in the first place.

[sheldrake]

And what do you think SATs measure?

That is what I think SATs try to measure.

And how are you going to direct funding to the right schools if you don't break it down by school?

You could look at your results for given factors across the country and then apportion funding for each school based on how prevalent that factor was for them, rather than use an error-prone league table.

You could also trust parents to choose based on what they thought their particular child needed.

Even with an error bar, you may find some individual schools are significantly better or worse than expected for their demographics.

[JQH]

Decline of difficulty of A-level questions.

citation needed