The days of using pens and paper in exams must be brought to an end, the head of the country's exams watchdog, says today.
*sigh*
Isabel Nisbet, chief executive of Ofqual, said that if school exams did not go online soon, exam preparation "will become a separate thing to learning" for candidates brought up on computers.
She added that sticking to traditional writing materials would make GCSEs and A-levels become "invalid" for more digitally aware pupils.
Help, help, we're being oppressed by these biros!
Ms Nisbet, writing in today's Times Education Supplement, said she was concerned that technologically savvy pupils could take only "bits" of a "very small" number of GCSEs and A-levels on computers.
"They use IT as their natural medium for identifying and exploring new issues and deepening their knowledge," she said. "This cannot go on. Our school exams are running the risk of becoming invalid as their medium of pen and ink increasingly differs from the way in which youngsters learn."
I give up...
I though all that IT was supposed to make them better at stuff. Now we have an admission that it is in fact de-skilling them.
ReplyDeleteThe ability to write with a writing instrument (like the ability to add up in your head) will never be redundant, no matter how advanced the technology. We might have progressed from chisels to quills to fountain pens to biros, but the principle is the same.
Help, help, we're being oppressed by these biros!
ReplyDeleteCome and see the elitism inherent in the system!
I'll get me coat.
Surely txtspk rather than Txtspeak.
ReplyDeleteThere is something in this. I recall being called upon to do what amounted to a written exam using, shock horror, pen and paper in the early 1990s. I was amazed at the extent to which I had lost the ability to plan out an essay properly either in my head or using bullet points, after years of, well, just typing stuff straight off and then rearranging it into a sensible order using a text editor.
All very well until the system crashes & it all goes to Rat-shit ..
ReplyDeleteWhen they then dole out the pens & paper, they'll need a week to explain how to use them ..
Another fucking stupid idea ..
NEXT !!!
You missed the point Julia - it's all about equality, how to be equally stupid.
ReplyDeleteWe can't have those that are able to use a pen showing off - it will make those that can't feel like loosers and we can't have that.
This quango needs culling - they have overseen the decline in examination standards for the labour program and now they are continuing, Gove needs to delete them and let the universities set the exams and standards as they did in my day. Oh, and get rid of the mickey mouse degrees as well.
Expect a massive outcry from the unions - not, in this case, unreasonably.
ReplyDeleteThe logistics involved in providing a glitch- and tamper-free computer terminal for every year 11 pupil in the country would make even the most ambitious technician tremble, quite apart from the stupendous costs involved.
And then there's invigilation - there's not much a child can get up to with a biro and an exam paper, but hide him behind a computer screen with access to wireless technology and you have an invigilator's nightmare.
We already use laptops under special arrangements for pupils unable to write at length for medical reasons and the whole business is fraught with difficulty. The machine must be memory-wiped and certain functions disabled - spell-check, for one, the candidate must remember to back up at regular intervals and the work must, at the end, be tranferred from the computer.
All this, of course, assumes a cooperative candidate with no interest in vandalising an expensive bit of kit, and that there is no such thing as hacking and the vast and lucrative industry needed to protect against it.
Perhaps it's time to buy shares in educational computing...
Who could be surprised at the outpourings of this overpromoted "education" apparatchik? You only have to look at the Board of Ofqual (who, in theory, have some kind of control over her) to know that they are 100% behind the crap spouted for the last two generations, at least, by the educational establishment. The only major disagreement at board meetings is whether to serve croissants or biscuits at the tea-break (they decided "both" after an hour's discussion): meanwhile the next generation (like the two before it) are betrayed by this bunch of complacent dildos.
ReplyDeleteBut look at it the other way... The little dears will be able to cut and paste directly from Wikipedia into their work without having to print it out and copy it. Massive saving in time, labour and accuracy!
ReplyDelete:-)
Completely out of context, Captain Haddock said "When they then dole out the pens & paper"
ReplyDeleteWhich raises a very important point. Surely benefit forms are filled in with a biro?
WTF????
ReplyDeleteI mean, seriously, what the hell is going on?
How will these poor dears cope in the real world, where some of us still manage the old fashioned way. After seeing the story from Wednesdays Telegraph at Bishop Hill regarding us having to get used to an interrupted electricity supply in the near future, just how is society going to function when these "tech savvy" but illiterate and innumerate people are running the show?
I give up...
Setting up PC equipment for these sorts of exams is a colossal pain, mostly because of how most education PCs are set up to start with. The most cost-effective way of setting a PC up is to have it networked, able to contact the internet to pull down antivirus updates and software updates as it starts up, and using a local server for user authentication. The key thing to note here is that by default, PCs expect and require a network link.
ReplyDeleteThis is obviously a huge plagiarism and cheating risk, due to the ability of the user to look at the internet.
So, you have to effectively put an entirely new image of software onto the units before the exam, and also go through and adjust the BIOS of each PC so that USB pen-drives don't work (but the keyboard and mouse do) and the CDROM is disabled.
Then when the exam is over, you have to reverse the process. Rinse, lather, repeat for EVERY SINGLE EXAM, because a school won't have enough kit to put up two lots of PCs.
You cannot even just stick a one-time build of Linux running something like KDE Kiosk on it to lock the little darlings out of anything risky, because most of them will have trained on things like Microsoft Office and will get all confused if they have to deal with similar but slightly different apps like Openoffice or similar.
Really, the best way to do things is to stick with old-fashioned pen and paper, and point out to the little buggers that crap handwriting is going to get them marked down, as is sloppy layout and similar. Teach them to write and to plan essays on the fly like every other generation did, because this then tests general intelligence quite effectively along with manual dexterity and the ability to learn.
So when the rolling blackouts arrive thanks to the morons who think CO2 is the biggest climate catastrophe to hit the planet since the KT asteroid impact, how are kids going to perform lessons, do homework and sit exams etc?
ReplyDelete"I give up..."
ReplyDeleteYou give up? You should be here on the chalk face...
Students get EMA (for now, anyway) but they do not use the cash to buy pens. The free money is used for video games and DVDs. If there is a task in class which requires a pen, Unless I supply them it wouldn't get done as they never have one.
But they all have the latest phones (which are used to text the person next to them during lesson despite, curiously, a ban on them in the class room) so I suppose it makes sense that they should do their work on a mobile phone.
But if I know my students, they will miraculously 'lose' or 'forget' their mobile phones if they are needed to provide txt-answers. In which case, I expect the college will have to supply them to enable them to do the work...
"I though all that IT was supposed to make them better at stuff. Now we have an admission that it is in fact de-skilling them."
ReplyDeleteSpot on!
"Surely txtspk rather than Txtspeak."
Quite so, I never did get the hang of texting.
"All very well until the system crashes & it all goes to Rat-shit .."
Good point!
"...it's all about equality, how to be equally stupid. "
And eliminating difference. The progressives don't really like true diversity, do they?
"Expect a massive outcry from the unions - not, in this case, unreasonably.
ReplyDeleteThe logistics involved in providing a glitch- and tamper-free computer terminal for every year 11 pupil in the country would make even the most ambitious technician tremble..."
Indeed, as Dr Dan Holdsworth points out, it's an immense and expensive undertaking. I wonder if she's aware of this, and this is a sneaky ploy to increase staffing?
"Surely benefit forms are filled in with a biro?"
The govt does have a computerisation agenda. The former IR (now HMRC) is pushing online tax returns hard.
"How will these poor dears cope in the real world..."
We've seen how. Badly!
"Teach them to write and to plan essays on the fly like every other generation did, because this then tests general intelligence quite effectively along with manual dexterity and the ability to learn."
ReplyDeleteAll of which seems to be slowly, and steadily, vanishing...
"So when the rolling blackouts arrive thanks to the morons who think CO2 is the biggest climate catastrophe to hit the planet since the KT asteroid impact, how are kids going to perform lessons, do homework and sit exams etc?"
Another good point!
"Unless I supply them it wouldn't get done as they never have one.
But they all have the latest phones..."
They still will even when EMA is phased out.
"I never did get the hang of texting."
ReplyDeleteNo need: do what I do. I write all my text messages in correct, continuous English prose, complete with punctuation and capitalisation as necessary. With a decent predictive text function, I can do that just as quickly as someone who has to hit a key three times just to get a single letter. Plus it drives the kids mad.
I don't quite go as far as "Thank you for your esteemed of the 4th inst.", but I could if pushed.
The only bit of txtspk that I like is 'orly?' for 'oh really?', which makes me laugh every time I see it. I loathe the use of U and 4 and my kids know not to try me with them.