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7 minutes ago, virginton said:

Well no, because being able to write a coherent, critical essay under a strict time deadline develops an important transferable skill: just because it's hard to teach doesn't mean that it's any less necessary.

The only reason that students would be left at a disadvantage here is if teachers refuse to commit to giving them the same overall teaching time to complete the course as they would have provided students in any other year. If that ends up meaning teaching on a Saturday morning or during the February week as well then that's just tough. Whereas if the SQA ditched the critical essay requirement from the exam instead then students would in fact be permanently disadvantaged by universities and employers looking sideways at their diet qualifications that they 'achieved' in 2021.

Maybe in not expressing myself well here. I'll try once more. 

If there is not going to be an exam next year its important teachers know as far in advance as possible because skills that they will focus their teaching on to ensure the pupils pass as well as possible won't be as important as the content that will need to be completed to do whatever the SQA require in lieu of an exam. If for eg another novel is required, then the teaching time will have to go into that. Otherwise, pupils will be disadvantaged.

And yes I agree its a transferable skill, but only really if you go onto uni / a lifetime of arguing on football forums. A large proportion of kids won't use their critical essay skills that much after school. And higher courses are so tight you don't really have time to teach what would be nice to teach. 

Fwiw I was (relatively speaking) a skiving b*****d when I was a teacher and even I did after school study, February week supported study and Easter revision, so that would be nothing new for almost everyone. 

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18 minutes ago, Detournement said:

It's f**k all in a country of 60 million.

 

Similar to when Scotland had zero a couple of times it’s also pointless celebrating the figures at the weekend when they are recorded with such limitations.

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1 hour ago, madwullie said:

It comes into effect tomorrow. The point is the emergency powers aren't really required anymore because Parliament is sitting and can fix the legislation, as with most of the previous emergency legislation, errors have been discovered making difficult to enforce / issues with the law meaning changes have had to be made after the fact that would normally be fixed if it was given proper parliamentary scrutiny. Its verging on government by hancock's decree, not really ideal imo

Not that it really matters to us as its English only law, but it should be to everyone's concern that this govt are so readily getting into the habit of imposing law under emergency powers that aren't really required, that essentially restrict the liberty of citizens in pretty extreme ways (and firing them out on a Sunday night to become law in the morning) 

As for the teaching, I'm only talking about English - I don't know what other subjects' exams require of the students. I have taught higher on a number of occasions though, and the critical essay is absolutely brutal for the majority of students, and it wouldn't be fair to disadvantage this year's cohort by a) teaching them a skill that isn't required when whatever replaces the exam is what they'll need to cover to get a pass (or more importantly uni entrance grade) or b) teaching them that skill without the *certainty* that it will be required, which would impact on work rate / motivation etc until its confirmed it's (not) needed. Can't understate the amount of time needed to teach this particular skill - a scraping through higher class could need as much as 40-50% of teaching time /homework /after school study focused on this alone. 

That sounds excessive, given that it constitutes 20% of the final mark.

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A clip of Rory Stewart from March 12th has been doing the rounds on Twitter. Think of some of the fuckwits that have ended up as ministers in this government, while he was hunted as Boris obviously saw him as a threat.

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A clip of Rory Stewart from March 12th has been doing the rounds on Twitter. Think of some of the fuckwits that have ended up as ministers in this government, while he was hunted as Boris obviously saw him as a threat.



He’s pretty much the only Tory i’d listen to, im not saying i’d agree but he actually seems to be the only one with maybe a bit of decency about him. Probably why he got punted.
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He’s pretty much the only Tory i’d listen to, im not saying i’d agree but he actually seems to be the only one with maybe a bit of decency about him. Probably why he got punted.
With the caveat that he is a Tory, but he does give the impression that he would be a much more capable operator than the likes of Hancock, Shapps or Truss and several others. Can only think Boris knew that he wouldn't sit there and be a yes man.
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With the caveat that he is a Tory, but he does give the impression that he would be a much more capable operator than the likes of Hancock, Shapps or Truss and several others. Can only think Boris knew that he wouldn't sit there and be a yes man.

I did like a couple of things he said in the leadership debates about actually listening to the opposition and not being afraid to work with them on consensus issues. Essentially though I think he would have been to the Tories what Corbyn was to Labour.
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43 minutes ago, Flybhoy said:

I'm sure the 36 families will take great comfort in that.

It's shite for them, but they represent roughly 2% of all daily deaths.

There are around 1,600 other families today alone that were and will be unable to say goodbye to their loved ones properly too. Let's not forget about them, and how that must feel.

In terms of the Covid-19 outbreak overall, 36 falls very much into the bracket of "only"

Edited by Todd_is_God
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13 minutes ago, Todd_is_God said:

It's shite for them, but they represent roughly 2% of all daily deaths.

There are around 1,600 other families today alone that were and will be unable to say goodbye to their loved ones properly too. Let's not forget about them, and how that must feel.

In terms of the Covid-19 outbreak overall, 36 falls very much into the bracket of "only"

It falls into the bracket of only that low because the figures aren’t properly recorded at the weekend. It being used as a positive figure without that sort of clarification is at best misguided and at worst deceptive.

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