Even the International Baccalaureate does it!

Following my recent perorations on the subject of GCSE and A Level Examiners abusing their positions as Examiners for personal and private financial reward at the expense of honesty, integrity and professionalism, I have been persuaded to ask the International Baccalaureate Organisation what their position is in this respect. After all, last week I found an IB Examiner offering his services in the UK in the same way that GCSE and A Level Examiners are doing.

Here is the letter I have just sent to the IB organisation in Switzerland:

Dear Sirs,

I noticed on a web site for a revision programme in the UK last week that IB examiners are offering their services as private tutors to candidates for your up and coming examinations.

That is, the people who are possibly setting but certainly marking candidates’ papers are teaching those very candidates how to pass the examination that they as examiners are directly involved with.

As a parent I am really concerned that anyone who is prepared to pay the examiners will benefit directly from their expertise and tips whilst anyone who does not or cannot pay, gets nothing.

What is the IB’s policy on this matter, please?

Yours etc

DW

Beware the Hob Nob

Be careful when singing along to a powerful song while eating a Hob Nob biscuit.

There's my first top tip in a very long time!

DW

A Levels are up for sale: part 3

If you are following this debate you will know that I wrote to Ed Balls of the UK government and was fobbed off by one of his minions. So I wrote an open letter to Balls and a follow up letter to the minion. Both of those letters can be found in this blog.

I let sleeping dogs lie for a few days and then did a bit of research. I was told that the Gordon Brown government and the Examinations Boards all have what they call "thorough systems" in place to stop what I am saying is happening: GCSE and A Level examiners teaching students how to pass their own exams in return for money.

This means that if you are prepared to pay an examiner to tell you or your child how to pass the examination that they might have set and might be marking, they will do that for you. In private. Behind closed doors. For the privileged few.

So, I tested these "thorough systems" by carrying out a simple google search ... here is a letter I have just sent off to Balls' minion:

Dear Helen,

I am well aware that you will soon simply consign my responses to your delete button. However, before you do that let me just demonstrate how ineffective your “thorough systems” really are. I have just taken a random sweep via a google search query through just a few Easter 2010 revision courses for GCSE and A Levels. I also included the International Baccalaureate for my own curiosity to see how widespread the examiner money grabbing mentality might be: I found what I expected to find but since you are probably not interested in the IB, I have not included my research results here for you.

1 Here is a page from the very FIRST revision course web site that I looked at: http://www.justincraig.ac.uk/easter_revision.php Scroll down the page and find this:

Guidance from the tutors, many of whom are examiners, on best practise exam technique

Did you see that? ... many of whom are examiners ...

It is a major selling point that some of the tutors on these courses are examiners.

2 Now from the fourth revision web site I visited: http://www.abbeycambridge.co.uk/subjects/easter-revision/index.aspx?pageid={4bd18459-3956-460f-9181-4fb073e57ae1}&tsi=1

Why attend Easter Revision?
... Most of out (sic) tutors hold further degrees; moreover, some of them are examiners in their subject.
Our courses aim to help you master examination technique and boost your subject knowledge.

Did you spot that: some of them are examiners in their subject ... and then they reinforced that by saying: Our courses aim to help you master examination technique and boost your subject knowledge.

3 Then there is the fifth revision web site I went to: http://www.mpw.co.uk/camb/easter-revision.asp?scW=1024

Here they say:

Our tutors are highly-qualified graduates whose experience at MPW has trained them to be particularly adept at building students’ confidence quickly and efficiently. Many are GCSE and A level examiners and are therefore attuned to the requirements and approaches of the various examination boards.

I don’t need to go on do I Helen as I have shown from a small sample that 60% of the providers of revision courses are using examiners as their face to face, behind closed doors, for personal and private financial reward, tutors. So, people who are prepared to pay for the privilege get access to the very people who may have set and could well be marking their own, their very own, examination scripts.

I don’t intend to give you any get out clauses here Helen and I do expect you to do something other than fob me off as you did with your original email last week.

What is happening is happening in spite of your supposed “thorough systems” and in spite of the Examination Boards’ protestations that it is not happening. One day this campaign that I am part of will hit home with a minister, MP or civil servant who will finally see that our GCSE and A Level system is rotten from the core. When that day comes, I sincerely hope that the many people who have been party to fobbing off the likes of me will resign en masse.

Best wishes

DW

PS Chris Sivewright has been working on this campaign, to stop this inner rot, for even longer than I have. He chided me the other day as you might have seen by telling me to acknowledge the work of others. Fair point Chris and in my defence I told him that because of the work I do and the location of where I do it, I am largely working on my part of this in isolation and things happen as they happen. Whilst I wish I were part of a fully coordinated campaign I cannot be. I am glad, though, every now and again to tell people that I am not the only person fighting this campaign. In fact, thousands and thousands of people are ... whether actively or passively!

A Level Bunkum II

Following on from my open letter to Ed Balls (Secretary of State in the Gordon Brown Cabinet, one of whose tasks is to safeguard the UK's education system) I sent a follow up the following day to the poor minion who had been given the task of fobbing me off. Here is that response:

Dear Helen,

I have probably failed again with my previous and relatively extensive response to your email so here is the shortened version that really, really ought to make someone in Whitehall sit up and listen:

Principal, senior and other examiners for GCSE and A Level exams present revision sessions and seminars for personal and private financial reward. These sessions are usually held behind closed doors. The audience very commonly, though not exclusively, comprises candidates for the examinations for which the examiner is responsible. Why do these candidates PAY examiners to run these seminars? I wonder!

That this happens is a FACT. That your “thorough systems” are allowing it to happen is a FACT. For goodness’ sake can you get someone to stop this charade? Other examining bodies simply do not allow their examiners anywhere near their candidates and for very good reason.

Only in British schools is such a system allowed whereby the privileged few who are prepared to pay can be given unfettered access to the very people who have set and will mark and moderate the exam for which they are about to sit. If you can’t or won’t pay, you are excluded. This charade even transcends the supposed State School v Public School divide.

Helen: is that fair? Is that democratic? Is this a transparent and acceptable system? Or is it, rather, corrupt, unprofessional, demeaning and out of control?

I have spoken to a great many people on this issue and the ONLY people who are prepared to defend it are the very ones who are in a position to do something about it: you and your colleagues in Whitehall. Isn’t that very odd?

I really do expect someone rational to be given the task of resolving this issue and I have already passed along this latest correspondence to a senior educational journalist who has been following this story for several years now.

Best wishes

DW

(Watch out for the next posting ... part three)

Fran Williamson's web site

A few weeks ago a colleague and I were talking about my daughter Fran: Paralympic swimmer extraordinaire. He suggested that I write a book on Fran's life that would act both as a record and as a motivator. I said it was a good idea and that I'd think about how to do it.

Little did I know at that time that Fran was way ahead of me. Take a look at Fran's web site where you will see lots of fascinating stuff on ability, disability, achievement, motivation and more: http://www.fran-williamson.co.uk/young-disabled-people-in-cambridge.html

If you need a motivator, here she is!

DW

An open Letter to Ed Balls

As is my wont, I am crusading against corruption in the GCSE and A Level Examinations system. I have been carrying out this crusade for several years now. Evan Harris MP failed in this campaign. Linda MP failed in this campaign. Now Ed Balls who is Secretary of State responsible for this area has fobbed me off by passing my latest missive to a junior member of his staff.

Here is the latest ill thought out response from Whitehall. Firstly the reply to my latest attempt at rooting out this corruption and secondly my initial response.

Thank you for your e-mail of 9 January alleging corruption in the GCSE and A Level examination systems.  I have been asked to reply.

I note that you have raised similar concerns with the Department on a number of occasions over recent years.  The awarding bodies and Ofqual have thorough systems in place to manage any conflicts of interests inherent in the exams system, and we have previously shared details of those with you.  Ofqual have also previously looked at the concerns you have raised.  This being so, I fear there is nothing I can add to the previous correspondence with you from Ministers and officials.

Yours sincerely,

HB
QCDA, Ofqual and Exams Delivery

Dear H,

This will not go away just because you think this matter has been resolved several times. It has not. No minister, no MP, no civil servant has ever accepted that examiners from UK Examinations Boards ARE ex officio making money by holding private seminars with candidates for THEIR examinations in contravention of the rules of those boards and in contravention of ethics and professional behaviour.

You must have seen the articles The Times Educational Supplement over the last three years or so, you must have read Warwick Mansell’s recent book on this and related examination issues, you really must be aware that I am not a crank and that I really do have documentary evidence that no one in the government and civil service, including you now, is in the least bit interested in upholding GCSE and A Level standards.

You are wrong in your assertion that you have previously looked at my concerns. Read my letters maybe but investigated no. I have been fobbed off before with the most inane arguments. I have sent you PROOF that examiners are in breach of their contracts with the Examination Boards and PROOF that these Boards are turning a blind eye to them. All of this is in direct contravention of codes of conduct, codes of practices, statutes and goodness knows what else. Here you are fobbing me off again. It really won’t do. To be fair to some examiners, once it has been pointed out to them that what they are doing is wrong, they stop. Yes, truly: one examiner wrote to me with a profound apology and he took down pages and pages from his web site because of what I pointed out to him. He realised the error of his ways. In the meantime, however, his Examinations Board, in its foot stamping belligerence closed its eyes and said the examiner had done no wrong.

Your thorough systems cannot be so thorough can they when it is as plain as the nose on your face that examiners are walking all over them all of the time. As I type this I can guarantee that there will be advertisements in many newspapers, on websites and in mail shots at the moment in the UK advertising Easter revision courses. Many of those courses will be run by and on behalf of Examiners from the GCSE and A Level Examinations Boards that I am persistently complaining about. Go to your library and reading rooms, go online, check the mail arriving at schools and colleges all over the country. Find those advertisements and then tell me I am wrong.

For your information, I have worked in countries where corruption and academic dishonesty are rife. I am currently working on a World Bank project in one such country. I am here to attempt to install democratic systems that are founded on integrity, transparency and the rule of law. Don’t you find it ironic that here I am trying to teach people in undeveloped countries how to behave whilst at home, the OFFICIAL LINE is that flawed and corrupt systems are allowed there too?

I told Ed Balls on his twitter account that I will not simply go away and I will not. If I have to wait for this government to be dismissed I will. Shouldn’t be long now should it?

Thanks for writing anyway even if it was such a shabby, ill thought out and badly researched email.

Duncan Williamson

Not PVD: much more serious

I was whisked off to Dubai where they diagnosed a detached retina. By 6pm I had had an operation to repair it.

I have to say it is frightening to see one's eyesight deteriorating so badly and so quickly.

Impressive to see so many skilled people working in harmony.



Praise be!

DW
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Posterior Vitreous Detachment (PVD)

Oh bother!

four or five years ago I had what is called a PVD in my right eye: worrying to start with until the optician explained what it is, how it happens ... not serious.

Here we are again and there's another one happening as I type. Different part of the same eye and a bit more inconvenient this time as it's bigger than the previous one.

Talking to medics now and awaiting their final analysis of what to do about it.

DW

Billy, Billy, Billy Gates ... ReadyBoost. Pshaw!

Why does this man and his rubbish really get to me? I wonder how many blogs, emails and conversations EVERY DAY speak of loathing for this man and his useless Microsoft products and services?

Like a moron, a few months ago I let Windows Vista use a 1Gb flash drive for ReadyBoost. Oh! don't worry, it will speed up your system no end ... Well, I noticed no differences whatsoever: maybe it makes microseconds of difference to some things but not the differences that I thought were being offered.

Today, in my ignorance, I decided enough was enough and I would claim the flash drive back. I thought the best way to do this would be to reformat the drive: WRONG! Gates and his lunatics have done here what they have done so many times before. If anyone wants to interfere with MS, they pay.

Not only would my flash drive not reformat under any conditions, I cannot now even access it for any reason whatsoever.

Well done Bill Gates, come on down!

I really want to meet that man, I've got so many things to talk about: we go back decades. I really ought to throw all of my MS things away, go to Apple and start again. Why don't I do that?

DW

Read that Graph CAREFULLY

Everyone here knows that I find it difficult to respect a man who feels able to spend $1,600,000,000 on his own job interview expenses but even Obama needs some protection from the badly drawn graphs and charts. Even the Financial Times can get it wrong!

Here is a graph cut and pasted from yesterday's Financial Times:

How about the corrected version where the vertical axis is NOT chopped off just below the half way point ... no such a drastic change over the year is it?

This post was also uploaded to Duncan's Diacritical Discussion

DW

Online Scam Artists

A genuine and honest friend suggested a long time ago that we keep in touch via one of those social networking sites. So I joined. Nothing happened for a long time and me and the friend used the site now and again.

Recently, the volume of messages has increased and I have been getting messages from well known scam artists: they are usually in the Philippines or Ghana.

This evening a young man said he loved me and wanted to call me honey. I went along with it and as I expected he told me he was a student but his exams, yawn, were next week. Oh and misery me he didn't have any money for his fees. Yawn, yaaaaawwwn.

I asked him how much and he told me. So I suggested I pay for the whole term: hang it, make sure he doesn't suffer. It was four times what he asked for and when he asked me if I was sure I said it would be my pleasure!

He turned his cam on and he was half naked (top half!) and I asked him to do a bit of a dance for me and he did. Entertaining stuff and it showed that at least he was prepared to work for his money a little bit.

I stopped chatting to him and deleted him from my list immediately.

Don't fall for these lies. They are not students, they are not going to take an exam and they are not anything remotely resembling what they say they are.

Clown and of course he isn't going to get any money from me!

DW

JK Rowling known everywhere!

I am living and working in rather a remote place at the moment but this conversation took place this morning.

The decorators are in and one of them asked me, Are you British?

I said, Yes I am

He replied, I knew it. I knew you were British because you sound like Harry Potter!

I said, You'd better be careful and pretended to cast a spell in his direction. He then asked where my magic wand was!!

Great fun!

DW

Everything comes to he who waits!

Forty years ago? Fifty years ago? I can't remember but I do know one thing, I used to listen to a short piece of music on the radio and have longed to know what it was called ...

I THINK it used to precede the Today programme on Radio 4 all of those years ago. It doesn't last long. However, how does one hum or tra la a piece of music when one has no musical talent at all? If I tried to explain the piece of music to anyone they would walk away from me thinking that all plots had been lost.

Well, here I am minding my own business and letting my iPod meander down my 1,308 songs and tunes and when it got to this piece, I had to write and tell you Eureka:

Badinerie from Orchestral Suite No 2 in B Minor by JS Bach

THIS is the piece I fell in love with all those years ago and I recommend you find and listen to it now.

DW

Have YOU ever seen an Aeroplane with a Bathroom?

Apart from that aeroplane in the OLD Imperial Leather soap advert, that is.

This is the text of a feedback message I have just sent to the Mail Online:

I just read the story here http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1241773/Armed-police-storm-plane-Heathrow-Airport-security-threat-board.html and in that story they talk about airlines closing bathrooms on their aeroplanes and I was puzzled

Even when they are in the sky, some passengers have been told to remain seated for the final hour of flight time, with no access to the bathroom or overhead lockers and nothing on their laps, including blankets or pillows.

I am a very frequent flyer and fly on all sorts and sizes of aeroplanes and, to be perfectly frank, I have yet to see a bathroom on any commercial flight. I have even been on the Airbus A380 with Emirates, in business class, but even then there was no bathroom.

Please let me know where I can find a flight with a bathroom as I'd like to fly on it and use the bath: it would be a first for me!

DW

Follow your own advice laddie

I wish I had!

Just before he set off on a monster trip of the Far East, my nephew asked me for some advice. He wanted to know the best strategy for foreign exchange for his trip: he asked about taking dollars, traveller's cheques and so on. I told him, whatever you do DO NOT get your currency here in the UK.

As I was leaving Dubai I checked the rates there as I had a little bit of foreign currency with me. Why oh why did I not follow my own advice? I ran out of time and opportunity to change my money in the end although I did change a little bet at Dubai International Airport. The rate there was a bit worse than I would have got in town but I changed it.

Anyway, when I got to the bank here at home I found their rate was £:$ of 1.74 ... in Dubai the rate at the time I SHOULD have changed my money was £:$ 1.61.

Just imagine I was changing $1,000 ... in Dubai I would have got £621, here in Halifax I would have got £575, a difference of £46.

Don't do what I do, do what I say! What a clot I am!!

DW

Daisy, Daiseeeee ...

I find the gross over use of the word amazing extremely irritating and here is the latest.

On Radio 4 this morning there was an article on a woman called Daisy. I didn't hear the start of that article but the only thing missing from Daisy's persona was a speech impediment: that would have been a nap hand!!

Daisy seems to be someone who pans for gold in rivers. She was married in the highlands of Scotland in a place where all of her guests, fellow panners, could pan for gold the day after the wedding. Good for them.

BUT I heard Daisy saying that many people in Scotland panned for gold a couple of centuries or so ago and then some of that gold ended up in the crown jewels of some Jock King. Daisy said with rising, excited, inflection, that incorporating that gold in that King's baubles was amazing! Why on earth was that amazing Daisy?

People pan for gold. People find gold. People do various things with the gold they have found such as

• sell it
• keep it for themselves
• turn it into jewellery

NONE of those objectives is amazing.

I don't suppose Daisy will read this and I don't want to write and ask her what was so amazing because she will undoubtedly write back in a bilious manner.

Here is a picture of Daisy I have just created:

Eeesh! New programme now and the very first guest said that even walking round her garden when it is covered in snow is amazing. WHY is it amazing?

From www.dictionary.com:

• a⋅maze –verb (used with object)

• 1 to overwhelm with surprise or sudden wonder; astonish greatly.
• 2 Obsolete. to bewilder; perplex.
• –verb (used without object)
• 3 to cause amazement: a new art show that delights and amazes.

DW

Don't Even Like Kids!!

I was walking down the road this afternoon when a couple of boys on the opposite side of the road threw a snowball at a man about 50 yards in front of me. He turned round and looked at bit angry so I pointed over the road and snitched on the kids!

He let me catch up to him. I said there were two boys thinking they were clever ... he said, kids, never liked 'em!

Having noticed that he was wearing hiking boots, winter clobber and was carrying a ski pole, I said he looked set up for a long walk. In rather a dejected voice he replied that he was killing time! I asked, what does that mean? He said he was supposed to be going home to Penzance but his wife had broken her ankle. He said they were out in the snow yesterday and as his wife came towards him, she went over on her ankle and it broke!

I asked if she was in hospital and he said it needs pinning but they can't do it before Saturday and they're stuck here for another two weeks.

As we got to my bus stop we parted and I wished him well and he wished me a happy new year!

Nice chat all brought on when two boys threw a snowball at a complete stranger!

DW

Ed Balls and Michael Gove ... where are you?

In October, before I went on a two and a half month trip away from home, I wrote to Ed Balls and Michael Gove in relation to the cheating and corruption inherent in the GCSE and A Level Examinations system.

Balls is the Minister responsible for education and Gove is his Tory shadow.

The problem I have been campaigning on for a few years is a real one and I have presented a lot of hard facts and evidence of cheating and corruption and yet two MPs and various civil servants have been happy to turn a blind eye to what is happening. I have even been threatened with legal action by one Examinations Board who then had to slink away from their position when they realised they had tried far too hard to bully me into silence.

These wretched people who are presiding over this abuse of position and privilege have to be hounded out of office and in the case of Gove, prevented from getting into office. Neither of them has replied to my letters.

I need a Tiananmen Square moment to get these people out into the open and this corruption solved and stopped.

DW

Liar Liar

The great thing about the internet and living in the UK is that I can say what I want, within the law and within the realms of decency, truth and so on.

Let me note that the Tories have openly admitted that they have started their general election campaign. We were treated on day one to the sight of a number of ne'er do well Tory politicians trawling the country as they seek to persuade us that we should vote for them.

The film Liar Liar sprung to mind: we should all watch that film again with the general election in mind.

I like the idea of the three week general election campaign and really resent the Tories, or anyone for that matter, deciding that we need to suffer their perorations longer than that. The two YEAR Obama campaign was far too much to suffer and we don't need that here.

DW

Cluedo? Clueless more like!!

So Dima and I settled down to play a game of Cluedo last night. Neither of us remembered how to play so we read the rules and set off.

We set up the board, the cards and the characters and although we didn't initially follow the rules properly we soon got up to speed.

In the end Dima decided he had all the evidence he needed so he said he wanted to make his accusations:

• the rope
• the kitchen
• Miss Scarlett

OK, we turned over the cards in the centre of the board:

• the rope ... good!
• the kitchen ... very good!
• the dagger ... Doh!

How did that happen? I have to confess that I had sorted out and selected the three cards to go in the middle!

Clot

DW