August 2020

What should we make of this humungous sum, which is BP's trading deficit for the second quarter of 2020?  Many who long for peak oil will no doubt rejoice, although BP's shareholders might not be amongst them.  NB, I am...

I read – in the Sunday Times – with incredulity that some 72% of US universities and colleges hold segregated graduation ceremonies.  They are not described as such of course; Brown uses "Blackalaureate" to dignify this disgrace to Enlightenment values....

Wikipedia has a helpful list of English Education ministers down the years.  There have been 36 (so far) in my lifetime.  This is an average of 1 every 2 years.  It is a not a job to linger in. Many...

Clearly I am not the only one who's baffled as to how the government got into this terrible Ofqual-sized mess over A levels. The fatal error was to scrap exams.  Not all countries did this; so did the secretary of...

A week ago, Roger Taylor, chairman of Ofqual, wrote in the Sunday Telegraph that "Calculations of grades by Ofqual was the fairest possible way to award marks. Basing grades only on teacher assessments “would create a perpetual unfairness between this year’s grades...

I've heard much comment recently to the effect that if only the teacher unions had not been so bloody-minded, students would have been back in school for some time.  But this surely this is a category error. Teach unions' main...

It's exam results season so there's a lot of nonsense in the air.  Here're a couple of quotes to get the pulse rating before Thursday's A level results come out: Roger Taylor, chairman of Ofqual, wrote in the Sunday Telegraph that...

How many of the following do you think are statements of demonstrable fact (or at the very least, are reasonably arguable): Humans are not causing a “sixth mass extinction” The Amazon is not “the lungs of the world” Climate change...

What our troubled world needs most right now is obviously more meaningless educational jargon to add to the already full bran tub.  Happily, at our hour of greatest need, TEESNet pops up to deliver.  The jargon in question is Learning...

The University of Bath has agreed eleven Climate Action Framework principles through discussions with staff, campus trade unions and the students’ union [SU].  These principles will guide how the University conducts business and inform the development of its next steps to meet...