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An article on BBC news today informs us how we should all embrace a new test of phonics for children at age 6 as part of ensuring all children learn the phonics system systematically and early. This post is not a comment on phonics though, but rather on the terrible state of education amongst… our education ministry.

Schools Minister Nick Gibb said: “There is no doubt we need to raise standards of reading. Only last month we learnt that one in 10 boys aged 11 can read no better than a seven-year-old.

So the scandal here is that 1 in 10 boys reads well below the average seven year old. Indeed Nick Gibb is not clear whether he means the average 7 year old or one very special 7 year old, but I suspect if the latter, the numbers would be much higher than 1 in 10.

What is wrong with this statement though?

In brief: “There is no doubt we need to raise standards of reading” does not follow from the statistic we are given. Indeed, it should be entirely unsurprising that a significant proportion of boys lag their peers by this amount.

The reason for this is that in the population of all 11 year olds, there will, as in so many things, be a distribution of reading ages. That distribution ought to follow the bell shaped curve of a normal distribution, with the mean reading age being at the 11 year old mean, but notably with 10% of boys lying a little over 1 “normal distribution” from the mean (see graphic).

So what is wrong with this picture?

Well if you raise reading standards for all and by the same amount for all then all you do is move the means! In particular if all children get better at reading then the average 7 year old after the intervention may now read as an average 8 or 9 year old. The average 11 year old may also improve to the level of the average 12 or 13 year old (although as most improvement comes early, it may be that the means now are closer together). If the spread of results remains unchanged, because you improve results for all, then you would expect that you would still have 1 in 10 boys reading at the ability of the average 7 year old.

To be clear, you would not expect ANY improvement in that statistic. Indeed you might in fact expect it to worsen, as you expect the means to move closer together!

In other words, a worsening trend on that statistic could be a sign of success!

Of course, the tests can be standardised. You could call the average 7 year old attainment now as “level 7″ and not move the average ad standards improve. Then you could judge success of improvement against the level 7 baseline as well as a level 11 baseline. But that is not what the minister said, and it is not clear he understood why what he said was wrong. And this is from the education Minister!

Going wth the raw averages, the best ways to ensure no significant numbers of boys read at the mean 7 year old level, and thus achieve your education targets are:

1. Separate the means. Improvement is hard, but we can hold back 7 year olds instead. If we do not teach them to read at all until they are 7, then their mean reading age will drop, but their rapid progress thereafter should ensure that no 11 year olds read at the level of the average 7 year old.

2. Reduce the spread. That is, concentrate on the poorer readers and hold back the better ones and try to homogenise the group. One would hesitate to suggest this may be a reason why me might insist every child be forced to learn through phonics!

The percentage of A grades at ‘A’ level rose sharply again last year as the number of candidates hit an all time high. The most stunning rise was in the percentage of top grades at A level mathematics, reaching an amazing 43.5% as the new “more accessible” syllabus settles in. Not surprisingly many are suggesting this is just dumbed down.

To be fair, Mathematics was a hard ‘A’ level, and there is an obvious danger that if an ‘A’ level is too hard, that people will opt for easier subjects. But the pendulum may swing the other way, when we are approaching the point where half of all entrants for the exam get the top grade!

I have updated the graphs I have created over the past weeks with the results announced today. This first graph shows the ever increasing pass rate plotted against the number of candidates. We see here that the argument that those who do badly at AS level are not taking the A2 exam is getting more and more tired, as the number of candidates taking A2 reach a new high.

But this next graph, updated for 2006 shows the most alarming trend. More people are getting grade A than any other grade, and the histogram of grades which was more or less normall distributed in 1992 now looks as if it is anything but a normal distribution, as results are so strongly biased to the top grades that anything below grade C is now largely irrelevant.

So finally, my grade comparison chart, updated for 2006. Remember that grade boundaries prior to 1992 are estimated, and so use this graph with caution. But look up the year that you took your ‘A’ levels and you can now “convert” them to 2006 rates.

I wrote some posts about A Levels last year. This was amongst them:

My third post on ‘A’ level standards, and this time the issue is a report carried by the BBC that schools are ‘letting down UK science’.

UK schools are letting down business by producing too few scientists, the Confederation of British Industry says.

Director-general Richard Lambert said bosses had “serious anxieties” …

Even universities had to offer remedial classes to science students to help fill gaps in their knowledge, [the CBI] added.

The CBI said the number of A-level students taking physics had fallen 56% in 20 years. In chemistry the decline was 37%.

Indeed this is all part of the current trend in ‘A’ levels, and perhaps part of the reason that ‘A’ levels seem to be getting so much easier – the harder subjects are being shunned by students.

In the following graph I have plotted the number of candidates for physics GCE ‘A’ level between 1992 and 2001 and then added the pass rates at grades A, A-C and A-E. I have also added (in green) the A-C pass rate for all subjects.

Notice the trend in number of candidates for physics is downwards (as the CBI have noted). The pass rates are increasing ahead of the trend for all subjects. This may indicate that the weaker students are primarily the students avoiding the subject, encouraging the improving trend.

But what does this do for UK science? Why are people shunning physics and other hard sciences? Could it be that GCSE has already failed these students? Before GCSEs replaced the old ‘O’ level system, students would choose from various sciences, typically physics, chemistry and biology. This was replaced with a generalist system where all science was taught together under a single GCSE that would count as two GCSEs.

Notice that we did not decide to amalgamate all language teaching into a “languages” GCSE. Neither did we sweep the rest of the subjects up under an “arts” heading.

So why did we do away with the various sciences at GCSE? Could it be because science is more expensive to teach? thus if we teach less of it, we can save money? Could it have been related to chronic shortages of physics teachers?

Whatever the reasons for the decision, it was wrong and it is failing children who consequently will not even attempt the science ‘A’ levels, and thus the talents of a generation of young potential scientists are being lost to the UK economy and culture.

It is time to return the traditional three sciences to the UK national curriculum.

Next week we are expected to be told that ‘A’ level exam results have improved for the 25th successive year.

Following on from my post last week, I have been collecting more data and extending my analysis of A level results. One of the points I made in my original posting was that since 2002, the new ‘A’ level syllabus and the split between AS and A2 ‘A’ levels has caused a definite jump in the figures. This jump in pass rate is presumed to be caused by the fact that weaker candidates who do badly at AS level will not go on to take the A2. This would be expected to go hand in hand with a drop in overall candidates at A2.

In this graph, it is possible to see this drop in candidates in 2002, but the numbers are picking up quickly and are not sustained. Meanwhile it is not only pass rates that jump in 2002, but also A grades. Take a look at this graph to see the effect.

If the jump in numbers passing were simply due to weaker candidates not taking the exam, then why is there a sudden jump in A grade candidates? It is possible that this jump is related to more people starting A level courses so that the candidates continuing to A2 are stronger as a population, but this seems unlikely.

We can see this same effect in the graph of all grades, which I have updated with data for 2002 and 2003 from the one I produced last week:

I have also updated the graph with estimated data from 1982 to 1991 and actual data from there on. The estimate was based on what data we have for 1982 and a (somewhat unsound) assumption that the years 1983 – 1991 showed linear trends. This graph is really a bit of fun, but if you took ‘A’ levels in the 1980s you can run your finger along from your grade boundary to the current grade boundary to “translate” your results to today’s values! If you took your ‘A’ levels prior to 1982, use the 1982 values, which were broadly similar for previous years.

Don’t read too much into this graph. The ‘A’ levels are different exams to what they were in 1982. Schools are different too, and people have much greater access to information. There may be plenty of reasons why grade inflation is happening, and those who did well or badly in the 1980s may have failed to thrive or exceeded their expectations if they were sitting the exam now.

What is unfortunate, however, is that with so many people passing at grades A-C, the other grades are largely suprfluous, and it is hard to distinguish the best candidates. In this, ‘A’ level is no longer the gold standard it used to be, which is a pity.

It is almost that time of year again where we in the UK go into a period of collective angst about rising pass rates in the A level exams being a sign of the dumbing down of our education system.

Since 1982 the A level pass rate has risen every single year, and whereas only 68.2% of candidates passed in 1982 (grades A to E), the pass rate was 96.2% in 2005, and we are moving ever closer to 100% – if you sit the exam, you pass it.

However, that is not the whole story. I obtained figures from the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority web site for 1992 – 2001, and also 2004 and 2005, and produced the following histogram:

You can see the gradual improvement of grades from 1992 onwards, but there is a sharper improvement for 2004 and 2005, even allowing for my two years of missing data. This is explained by the introduction of the A-S level, because now those who should not be entering the exam are being weeded out before they take A2. It is therefore not surprising that there is a sharp improvement for those years, although it seems likely that the same general improving trend is continuing.

Government and those with an interest in the A level system argue that the year on year improving trend demonstrates rising standards. There may be some truth to this – or at least it may be that technology such as the Internet has provided students with much greater access to information than before, and has thus allowed improved educational attainment. However it is noteworthy that other exams such as the International Baccalaureate do not demonstrate this improving trend. It is also not reasonable to suppose that even with an improving ternd, there would not be the occasional year when pass rates would actually fall, or at least rise imperceptibly.

No, it seems much more likely that what we are seeing is grade inflation.

That does not mean that (a) A levels are easy. They most certainly are not. Nor that (b) the harder A level was more desireable. It may be that a 96.2% pass rate is actually more desirable than an exam that failed a third of the people that took it.

The problem lies with attempting to use the results to make judgements about the academic abilities of students. With 23% of all students taking the exam now getting a grade A, how do you discern the top class students? And how do you compare a student now with a student 25 years ago?

Unfortunately neither the QCA nor any other body has accurate figures prior to 1992. Consequently I have made some extrapolations based on the 1982 figures that we do have, and assuming a rather simplistic steady rise between 1982 and 1992 I have estimated grade boundaries for all of these years. The resulting histogram is here:

Now you can look at this chart and make the rather bold (if not entirely sound) assumption that, say, a grade B in 1985 would be a grade A now. If you took your exams in the 1980s, you can convert them to new currency! (If you got straight As in the 1980s, then this will be particularly accurate!)

Now pass rates are rising year on year, but it turns out that A grades are rising even faster. There is something quite interesting going on here. Look at this third histogram I have produced, this time comparing the spread of grades for three different years:

Notice that in 1992 the spread of grades, whilst slightly skewed, is broadly what one might expect: a normal distribution. The mean grade tallies with the mode and median, so that by each type of average we see that grade D is the mean/mode/median average. This is what one might expect from a mixed ability age group going into these exams.

But notice the trend – increasingly the mean and mode averages are being squashed towards the higher grades, with more and more students achieving As, Bs and Cs and fewer and fewer achieving lower grades.

This is problematic, as the division between D and E becomes increasingly irrelevant, and it becomes harder and harderto recognise which students have really achieved the gold standard in this exam.

But it is only fair that I add some caveats. Not all subjects show these trends, and at least part of the uplift in grades can be attributed to students choosing subjects in which they are more likely to do well. Grade inflation makes it hard to tell good candidates from the best candidates, but it does not necessarily indicate a falling in the standards on the exam paper itself.

So tell me what you think. Is this analysis flawed? Should I add in other graphs (e.g. number of candidates, or the uplift in pass rate?) Have I misrepresented the facts here? Please leave comments and I’ll try to take this analysis further.

“In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government ought to be instructed…No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.”

Noah Webster (Preface to the 1828 edition of Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language)

When it comes to Church schools, it seems that some atheists can’t help but tie themselves up into some unfortunate knots of inconsistency.

A case in point this morning on BBC News 24′s coverage, where they invited two people into the studio to attack the Church school system (notably without anyone to defend the schools against their attack). One of the invited guests was a rather shrill woman of the type that really ought not to be invited onto programmes seeking to inform rather than entertain.

It seems that this woman was an avowed atheist who is annoyed that when her children reach secondary school age, they will not be allowed to go to a Church school on account of the fact that they are being brought up as vehement atheists, by their mother’s own admission.

Why should she care? Well it turns out that whilst only 18% of school places in England and Wales are in Church schools, such schools occupy 44% of the top 200 schools in these countries. Thus this woman wants her children to benefit from the better faith based schools in her area.

But what is she arguing? That such schools should not be allowed to select based on the faith of the families entering them! She (and others who commented to the programme) essentially think successful faith based schools should be removed from our system and that we should have a totally secular system, as they have in the U.S.

The inconsistency lies here: when considering whether it was the faith based teaching or backgrounds of the children in the school that contributed to the school’s success, the argument made was that it was neither, but rather that the schools were selecting the best pupils by interview, and that the teaching was no better than in non faith schools.

Now this is an interesting point. Because if this argument is correct, and that the schools – despite being higher placed in league tables – are providing no greater improvement on their pupils than secular state schools, then this woman will not benefit her children by sending them to these schools.

And that is the inconsistency. If this woman really believed that faith based schools conferred no advantage on the children who go there, then she would not be annoyed that her offspring would be ineligible for entry.

Leave the faith schools alone. They were the foundation of our education system, long before the state got into the education business, and this is why we have these Church schools.

I don’t suppose it is a universal truth, but as a guiding principle I think there is something to be said for the thesis that crisis is required to bring about genuine and radical change.

Why should this be the case?

Well very often when we are involved in an endeavor, we are involved with others and we develop a process that is comfortable. This builds up an internal pressure that sustains the process unless the external pressure to change is so great that it causes the process to collapse.

I think we can broadly apply this principle. In our churches we do things a certain way. I knew one church which had a youth group meeting. The oldest member of the youth group was in his forties, and the youngest was 23. The group had grown older together, and they had just gone on and on with their comfortable process – year in and year out, without thinking that maybe that group had outlived its purpose.

We can see the same in higher education, where lectures are still a major means of delivery, despite the fact that they are the type of delivery students claim to least enjoy, and from which students may gain the least benefit (unless delivered in some manner that broadens the educational offering beyond a simple discourse by someone in front of a very large class).

We can see the same in politics, where we are caged in the same tired old systems, choosing between two sides of a Janus faced political elite. (For some reason I always think of lizards when I write political elite… Douglas Adams has a lot to answer for!)

We can see it in our personal lives perhaps. Certainly in my own, the times when I have made the most radical changes in my ideas, beliefs, attitudes and such like have been in the response to crisis. Something that caused me to set aside beliefs held because they were comfortable, and made me come face to face with issues I had previously ignored.

In particular, many years ago I held to some beliefs – and most notably the belief that I knew better than the vast majority of Christians on certain things – because I was encouraged to think that way by someone. The crisis that caused me to realise that this person’s own faith was defective caused me to take a long hard look at my own.

It is only when the external pressure is great enough to overcome the internal pressure we have generated to remain the same that we are forced to change.

So what do we do? Manufacture crisis? Probably not the wisest of moves, but we can embrace it when it comes.

On a personal level, perhaps we should also attempt change daily, so as to avoid the need for crisis. If we could ensure our internal pressure to settle down, sit back and not change never built up, it would not take a crisis to change us.

And then there are those things over which we may feel we have little control. There is the Church service that hasn’t changed format since 1924, or the bible study which no one wants to go to, because two people always take it over to discuss single versus double predestination – and have done for the last 20 years.

There is the political system that will not change. The party that will not die, or the coalition that has run local politics for a quarter of the century. We cannot change these things, but a crisis – when it comes – will change them. And it will change them quickly.

The question is, what will we do when the crisis comes? Can we plausibly foresee a crisis, and know what we must do if we want to bring change for the better?

Robin Hobb wrote an excellent series of books about the “Farseers” based around a character known as “the catalyst”. This character either precipitated crisis, or else it followed him around in the magical manner of such stories. But in these stories it is the White Prophet who (with the benefit of knowledge of the future) uses the catalyst to jump the world from the rut it is in into a new rut, which brings about improvements for all.

We don’t have the benefit of knowledge of the future, but we can know now how we would see the world to be a better place (whether on the global scale or the very local scale). We can also predict some crises, simply because they are inevitable (eventually). If we put these together, we too could seize the opportunity of crisis when it comes, to see genuine change.