This page represents only my own views, and not those of any university or other body.
Posted Saturday 25th January 2014 at 9.31pm
Schmatistics
This letter, published in the Independent, neatly sums up the current Government's attitude to statistics.
"It is unfortunate that in your editorial you placed such a strong emphasis on comparing the improvement in the number of students who achieved the English Baccalaureate in 2013 as against 2012.
It was not until September 2010 that the current Secretary of State introduced, as a measure of a school’s success, the notion of the English Baccalaureate. He did this with little or no prior warning and at a point when curriculum planning, staffing decisions and option choices for the 2012 examination cohort had already been made. Indeed, the 2012 GCSE cohort had already started their courses.
It is therefore no surprise that more students achieved the English Baccalaureate in 2013. For the 2013 GCSE examination cohort schools knew this was one of the minister’s chosen measures and they had the time to adjust their curriculum, option choices and staffing structures to reflect this. As a result more students, totally unsurprisingly, achieved this new measure."
Pete Crockett , Royal Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire
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