Bill Scott
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Bill Scott17 August 2020
Who regulates the regulators?
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...
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Bill Scott14 August 2020
Don't blame the teacher unions
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...
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Bill Scott11 August 2020
What use is Ofqual?
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...
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Bill Scott9 August 2020
Facing facts about climate change alarmism
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...
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Bill Scott7 August 2020
ESD LSD EE LFS DE GL EFS SSE ...
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...
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Bill Scott6 August 2020
Bath's 11 Principles
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...
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Bill Scott4 August 2020
Honing civil servant skills
I've been reading three letters sent recently to Teach the Future. Two came from the DfE (one from the office of the secretary of state himself, and the other from some obscure Baroness), and the third was from a bloke in...
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Bill Scott3 August 2020
Lomborg on Stiglitz on Lomborg
You might think that Bjorn Lomborg’s new book False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet would be in the UK news more than it has been, given how interested...
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Bill Scott31 July 2020
Caste not the first stone
Last week's Economist had a long article on the caste system in India – Hinduism's original sin. I read this with the sustainable development goals in mind, although the author(s) did not mention them. You can read the article here....
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Bill Scott27 July 2020
So, John Muir, human after all
It appears that John Muir (1838 – 1914) was not a perfect human being after all. Despite his huge contributions to conservation in the USA with lasting legacies to this day, it seems he was a product of his time. He...