Thanks, DHG, you’ve just perfectly illustrated the simplistic basis on which some commenters on this blog assess the situation at issue.

Sorry to have been the inadvertent cause of your state of shock, but before I retired some years ago I taught A level physics and mathematics at Further Education colleges. I hope that helps.

“What mess”

You made 6 posts to say the same thing and most of them were muddled.

I’m shocked that someone who has a DEGREE IN SCIENCE cannot answer a GCSE level question on biology.

Even more shocking is that you claim to be a physics teacher in a school, and in most schools that would mean you take general science lessons so should have good knowledge across the 3 science subjects.

I knew the answer to that from GCSEs 15 years ago and I am no scientist and my job is not to teach children science.

“the fact that Gove *did* answer the question on atoms and ions when he got up to reply to Balls.”

If only children sitting GCSEs were allowed to confer with their colleagues before answering questions as Gove did…

I responded above, no. 44.

Neil again: “I’m not sure you answered it; it looks like you merely restated it using slightly different words.”

Okay, let’s spell it out a different way:

By your statement just quoted, if a question on a GCSE paper asked for the students to multiply 64 by 1.1 using a calculator you couldn’t say whether that was an easy question in principle, and if they were asked to factorise the quadratic expression 6x^2 – 13x – 28 (i.e., six x squared – 13x – 28), you couldn’t say if that is a hard question for a GCSE candidate.

What mess? In no. 44 I answered your points one by one. As I’ve already pointed out, the confusing later postings came from the fact that the system was malfunctioning, and not putting up my posts, so I tried several attempts and then they suddenly appeared later. (Sunny has told me that the spam function was malfunctioning.)

“You said the first question was easy – even though you yourself as someone with a degree level education in a science subject did not know the answer – …”

What relevance has the fact that I have a physics degree to my not knowing the one word answer (the name of an enzyme) to a current question in a biology paper? Does a very simple question on Latin grammar in a Latin exam cease to be easy because someone who has not studied the subject is unable to answer it?

You finish by writing, “Gove couldn’t answer them. Point well made”, despite the rebuttals to that point above (see nos. 30 and 50), including the fact that Gove *did* answer the question on atoms and ions when he got up to reply to Balls.

Wading through all that mess was difficult – it seems communication is not your strong point. I can’t believe you are a teacher!

You said the first question was easy -even though you yourself as someone with a degree level education in a science subject did not know the answer – solely because children probably learnt it on their course. The logical conclusion to that is to be “hard” a question must test knowledge children haven’t learnt on their course.

“You don’t say where the question comes from, but I’ll presume it is pre-1985″

You’re right. That shockingly easy question came from a 1985 O level maths paper. More here http://education.guardian.co.uk/gcses2000/story/0,,358622,00.html.

“they would be one of the early questions in the paper that enabled even poor students to pick up some marks. Of course questions in the old papers were graduated so that the easy ones were first, and the harder ones came later. So those are easy questions, and no one at the time would have said otherwise”

Do you think this could also be the case for the anecdotes of “easy” questions showing evidence of “dumbing down” Gove loves to dig out?

I don’t understand how- other than blind partisanship- you cannot appreciate the point Balls was making which was about the ridiculousness of Gove’s argument rather than that the three examples he chose were fiendishly difficult.

“Are you really saying that Balls revealed Gove’s intellectual bankruptcy by posing elementary exam questions to him while making the absurd assertion that they were “really hard”? Sounds more like an own goal to me”

Gove couldn’t answer them. Point well made.

However this is a response to Neil:

cjcjc wrote that the fractions calculation “can be done in the head in a few seconds”

Neil responded: “Not by your man, though.”

Neil: It says something about your mindset that you can only apparently think in terms of “your man” and (presumably) “my man”, rather than consider the point made by cjcjc, to whom you are responding, on its merits. cjcjc said nothing in support of Gove, just made a straightforward statement to the effect that the mixed fraction calculation was actually very easy.

Anyway, (i) the question wasn’t designed to be worked on in the head (ii) you have no idea whether Gove could have answered it, given pencil and paper and a couple of minutes. (And please don’t come back with the response that Gove couldn’t answer the three questions. I’ve already disposed of that claim that more than once above.) (iii) even if Gove couldn’t recall the procedure for solving a simply mixed fraction calculation 25 years after doing it at school, so what? What matters is the Secretary of State for eduction thought that that simple calculation was “hard” for school students who had just completed a two-year GCSE course.

Sevillista wrote:
> Is, for example, the following an easy question or a tough one that 12 year old used to do in their sleep in say 1985 before Labour dumbed exams down?

>“1. Calculate the exact value of i) 4 – 1.67; ii) 0.4 x 3.5?

>Seems fairly tough for a 16 year old? Or an easy exam given by a Government determined to dumb down standards?Your point is irrelevant for the reasons I state above (the point was the intellectual bankruptcy of Gove’s usual tactic of using anecdotes to “prove” something).<

Are you really saying that Balls revealed Gove's intellectual bankruptcy by posing elementary exam questions to him while making the absurd assertion that they were "really hard"? Sounds more like an own goal to me.

Douglas Clark:
>Am I the only adult to admit that the first two questions were a bit beyond me?<

No, if you look above you'll see I was perfectly happy to acknowledge that I don't know the answer to the first question. Having been a physics teacher, the second posted no problem (except that Balls got it slightly wrong: "fluoride" when it should have been fluorine). In fact I'm rather surprised that Gove was able to answer it when he got up to speak!)

But you have hit the nail on the head. Why should a 42-year-old man be expected to recall something he had studied some 25 years before at school (even assuming he had –he probably hadn't come across the enzyme/fat-stain question before)? The question is, to repeat yet again, were those "really difficult" questions for sixteen-year-olds who have just completed two year course in the respective subjects?

Public resources are scarce in these times, in case no body here has noticed.

Britain’s education system is fine for children in affluent families, which can afford costly non-maintained schools, and for the academically able headed for good class degrees at Russell Group universities in highly marketable degree subjects. But it is not satisfactory for the majority at school – as should be clear from the links posted above – and that is what we need to worry about IMO, not least because poor achievement at school affects later job prospects and relates to Britain’s relatively poor record in business productivity compared with peer-group countries.

Nothing prevents universities and employers from applying their own assessment methods if too many applicants are presenting with top class GCSE grades. But, as Warren Buffett comments, exam grades shouldn’t be the main, let alone the only, criterion for selection.

Btw all this stuff about dumbing down school exams and degree class inflation is all very flattering for someone who graduated nearly 50 years back with an excellent degree.

“The problem with our education system, as I always say, is that too many people are leaving with good grades and it’s impossible for future employers, universities etc to tell who the brightest are.”

“Overall less than half of pupils (47.6%) achieved five or more grades A*-C, including English and maths.”

You seem to be making the assumption that it’s a choice between solving underachievement or stretching the brightest pupils. If so, that’s rather unambitious.

Both sets of pupils matter equally, as do the children in the middle. I had three years of teaching to tell me that those near the C/D borderline matter more than other pupils. It’s not a message I want to hear outside either.

>“1. Calculate the exact value of i) 4 – 1.67; ii) 0.4 x 3.5?

>Seems fairly tough for a 16 year old? Or an easy exam given by a Government determined to dumb down standards?Your point is irrelevant for the reasons I state above (the point was the intellectual bankruptcy of Gove’s usual tactic of using anecdotes to “prove” something).<

Are you really saying that Balls revealed Gove's intellectual bankruptcy by posing elementary exam questions to him while making the absurd assertion that they were "really hard"? Sounds more like an own goal to me.

Mark M.: An article in the Daily Mail did point out the error.

Balls saying that the ‘3 3/4 minus 1 2/5′ was hard was astonishing to me. Sure, it’s a little awkward if you try to do it in your head, but GCSE students have a pen and paper. It has just taken me 20 seconds to get to the answer, showing my working and with a dodgy pen.

I’ll let Ed off for his fail on fluorine/fluoride because he probably misread his sheet (hell, he struggled so much with his last joke it fell on its face) but thinking that a question is hard when it that takes less than 30 seconds to do with pen and paper, well, it’s no wonder he thinks the exams haven’t been dumbed down, he’d probably still be on the front page struggling with his name after an hour.

No, Neil, the issue in question is, is that a “hard question” in an examination for 16-year-olds who have just completed five years of mathematics in secondary school.

Sevillista: You wrote:
“So GCSE exams should examine students on whether they have learnt things that they have not been taught on their course?”

Eh? What on earth are you talking about? The point at issue is whether the questions read out by Balls were “really hard” for sixteen-year olds who had just completed courses in the relevant subjects, nothing else.

“Any exam is easy [if] your definition of easy is ’something that has been covered on the course’.”

Again, what on earth are you talking about? What has this to do with a consideration of whether the three specific questions (which of course would have been dealt with on the respective courses) were “really hard” for school students who had just been studying the subjects for several years.

“Is, for example, the following an easy question or a tough one that 12 year old used to do in their sleep in say 1985 before Labour dumbed exams down?

““1. Calculate the exact value of i) 4 – 1.67; ii) 0.4 x 3.5?

“Seems fairly tough for a 16 year old? Or an easy exam given by a Government determined to dumb down standards?<

You don't say where the question comes from, but I'll presume it is pre-1985.

Of course those are easy calculations. Assuming that they come from a pre-1985 paper, they would be one of the early questions in the paper that enabled even poor students to pick up some marks. Of course questions in the old papers were graduated so that the easy ones were first, and the harder ones came later. So those are easy questions, and no one at the time would have said otherwise. All this is evading the issue here, namely that Ed Balls said that the simple mixed fractions question he quoted was a "hard question", which is nonsense.

"Your point is irrelevant for the reasons I state above (the point was the intellectual bankruptcy of Gove’s usual tactic of using anecdotes to “prove” something)."

Are you really saying that Balls revealed Gove's intellectual bankruptcy by posing elementary exam questions to him while making the absurd assertion that they were "really hard"? Sounds more like an own goal to me.

Correct me if I’m getting it wrong but the Conservatives are already committed to retaining an all-ability examine at 16 – however named – and to continue with comprehensive schooling: an option of reintroducing selective grammar schools was explicitly dismissed by Cameron.

That last is hardly surprising when quite a few of the remaining 164 maintained grammar schools are achieving better or as good average A-level results than highly prestigious and very costly fee-paying schools. I mean, who wants to pay annual school fees of £15,000 (day school) to £25,000+ (boarding) when the maintained grammar schools can achieve better results at much lower cost and despite worse teacher-pupil ratios?

Remember this call by the OFT three years ago?

“The Office of Fair Trading has found that, during the period from 1 March 2001 to June 2003, 50 fee-paying independent schools (each a Participant school, together the Participant schools) infringed the prohibition (the Chapter I prohibition) imposed by section 2(1) of the Competition Act 1998 (the Act) by participating in an agreement and/or concerted practice having as its object the prevention, restriction or distortion of competition in the relevant markets for the provision of educational services.”
http://www.oft.gov.uk/advice_and_resources/resource_base/ca98/decisions/schools

Ouch.

@8, what the hell d’you think Gove was trying to do? (clue: it was childish point-scoring)

Clue: I don’t care for Gove, either.

fluoride. And we love kids for knowing stuff we have forgotten, or never knew, just in case the brain police are around….

i) Name the type of enzyme that digest fats

ii) Explain how a flouride atom can change into a fluoride ion.

Dunno.

Maybe the latter is by losing an electron, but I’d take a bit of a rain check on that..

Kids, don’t ya love them?

Not by your man, though.