Young adults in England have scored among the lowest results in the industrialised world in international literacy and numeracy tests.
A major study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows how England's 16 to 24-year-olds are falling behind their Asian and European counterparts. England is 22nd for literacy and 21st for numeracy out of 24 countries.
Unlike other developed countries, the study also showed that young people in England are no better at these tests than older people, in the 55 to 65 age range. When this is weighted with other factors, such as the socio-economic background of people taking the test, it shows that England is the only country in the survey where results are going backwards - with the older cohort better than the younger.
>>84550 What TV Licensing do effectively amounts to psychological warfare. I'm pretty sure that if I were to do the things they do I'd be sent down for a long spell for harassment and coercive control. I can see why they do it, since any parent, Russian defector or White House journalist knows that threats only work if the victim believes they're credible, but ultimately this is a threat to exercise state power knowing it will not be followed through upon.
And don't even get me started on TV detector vans, which are either an outright lie, or, by any definition, an example of covert government surveillance.
>>84552 They used to be real, but haven't actually functioned in decades as nobody uses B&W CRTs anymore. These days they're just blacked out minibuses with a blinkenlights setup in the back. You know, the sort of thing Trading Standards would want a word with you about if you tried selling them as "detector vans".
I had a good laugh last time I got a TV Licensing threat letter. They'd sent me one of those things to announce they'd started an investigation, which they can do as they please, but then I looked closer at the bit where it had been "signed" by the guy in charge of investigations and realised it wasn't even done over by some guy with a biro to look convincing, they'd printed a "signature" in a different colour to the main text, and if you looked closely at the paper it was obviously done by a printer.
They'll have to get up earlier than that if they think they're going to scare me, once they start actually signing their letters or sending people to the door, maybe then I'll consider registering to tell them I don't have a telly and they can save their ink for people who don't get any pleasure out of getting bullies to waste their money.
You can build a working TV detector with a £10 RTL-SDR stick and a suitably tuned antenna. A skilled electronics engineer could build one using 1950s components as a weekend project.
The vast majority of radio receivers (that includes anything wireless) operate on the superheterodyne principle. The received signal is mixed with a signal from a local oscillator, which shifts the desired signal down to a lower frequency that is more readily processed. Older analogue TV receivers were inefficient and poorly shielded, so the local oscillator frequency leaked out and could be detected from some distance, especially with a highly sensitive receiver and an antenna with significant gain. High-gain antennas are highly directional, so it's simple to work out the direction of a transmission by steering the antenna and find its location by triangulation.
The cathode ray tube in older TVs also produces considerable amounts of RF energy. The electron gun at the back of the tube can only produce a single dot, which is steered around the screen using a deflection coil to produce the image on the phosphor. This coil operates at high voltage and is a modestly efficient antenna. Using a technique called Van Eck phreaking, it's quite straightforward to reconstruct the image being displayed on the screen from a distance based solely on the RF emissions of the deflection coil; this was a sufficiently practical threat that NATO developed standards for shielding monitors used to display classified data.
Modern digital TVs generally use direct-conversion receivers and have much better shielding, rendering traditional TV detection techniques impractical at anything but point-blank range; a TV detector isn't much use if it only works in the same room.
More generally, nearly all electronic equipment has some sort of identifiable radio frequency signature. Using that £10 RTL-SDR stick, you can ascertain all sorts of things about your immediate environment. A switched-mode power supply like your phone charger produces a distinctive square-wave at about 400kHz. A light switch produces a very brief but very wideband emission due to the tiny spark of the contacts closing. If you're attuned to it, you can hear how many cylinders a car engine has and how hard it's revving based on the radio emissions from the ignition circuit.
I doubt the vans were sensitive enough to detect which flat in a building (or even which house out of say five in a row) actually had the TV. I could be entirely wrong but I feel like such a sensitive piece of kit would turn out to be negative investment even if > 50% of people failed to pay their TV license.
Fantastically interesting post though, I learned a lot. Thanks lad.
Homing in on the precise location of a transmitter is remarkably simple thanks to the inverse square law. The strength of a signal changes with the square of the distance; if you move your receiver towards the transmitter, the received signal strength increases geometrically. Once you've picked up the signal, all you need is a handheld receiver with a signal strength indicator, an antenna that is somewhat directional and a pair of legs. You wave the antenna about until you've found the highest signal strength and walk in that direction. It's very much like using a metal detector. If you're just trying to confirm whether there's a TV in operation in a particular house, it's absolutely trivial. The equipment required is remarkably basic, even by the standards of the late 1960s.
Radio hunting is a modestly popular sport in some parts of the former Soviet Union, for depressingly KGB-related reasons.
>>84556 What else is this SDR thingy good for?
I have a friend who'd been nagging me to get one but I didn't see much use for it.
Sage for /g/ bollocks.
SDR stands for Software Defined Radio - the hardware just hoovers up radio waves, with your computer doing the work of decoding them. An SDR can receive essentially any radio transmission within the frequency range of the hardware, which in the case of the cheap RTL-SDR dongles is about 22MHz to 1GHz.
That's of very little interest to most people, but it's a cheap and versatile entry point into the radio hobby. They'll receive FM and DAB radio, the ADS-B navigation signals transmitted by aircraft and most kinds of two-way radio (although not the encrypted TETRA system used by the emergency services). You can pick up radiosonde transmissions from weather balloons, maritime radio and navigation beacons. With an upconverter, you can also receive shortwave transmissions.
There are other, more capable SDRs available, some of which (like the HackRF One) are also capable of transmitting. Bear in mind that there is a considerable difference between what is technically possible with an SDR and what is legal. You can listen in on a local minicab company's radio system and steal their customers, but I wouldn't advise you to do so.
>>84611 I don't know the details, and I don't know how common it is, but a lot of minicabs I've been in recently have been running with the meter off, with a phone app doing all the work instead. The app runs up the charge, and can automatically bill the card. The driver can then pick his next job if one is waiting, or look at the board to see which part of town he might want to be in. Or, as seems to happen frequently in my case, get allocated the job and then go absolutely fucking nowhere for 15 minutes.
>>84549 >>84551 >>84550 I agree the letters are shite and could use a change in tone.
While they reiterate that watching without a licence is illegal, they should talk about the great BBC programming that your licence fee funds. Like public television does in the US when they do their pledge drives. Or maybe they could provide a breakdown of where your money goes, like the government does for your tax bill. God knows that is sorely needed so they can admit how much they are giving Jonathan Ross and the like.
>>84613 They could frame it as a way to vote for what you want to see on telly. British programming: it's locally sourced, supporting small businesses and not in the hands of EU or US political propaganda. That should appeal to everyone.
There's no evidence that grammar schools actually provide a better education once you correct for the effects of selection. Of course schools that only select the brightest students get better exam results.
White children are the least likely to achieve their potential between primary and secondary school, official data shows.
Official data released by the Department for Education (DfE) shows that white children are making less progress compared to their peers from all other ethnic groups by the time they are 16-years-old.
This year, the average Progress 8 score for white children in state schools was the lowest at -0.10, compared to -0.02 for mixed race, 0.45 for Asian, 0.12 for black and 1.03 for Chinese pupils. White children has the second lowest score for attainment, with an average of 46.1. Chinese pupils had the highest score of 64.2, followed by Asian children, while black children had the lowest. Both this year and last, children with English as a second language had a higher score for attainment and made better progress on average than native speakers.
The data, published yesterday by the Department for Education (DfE), adds weight to arguments that people with migrant heritage are more likely to drive themselves forward.
Some experts believe many ethnic minority families are more aspirational and have a better attitude to work than those in poor, white communities.
Sounds about right. We've had this (tedious) discussion before, but poor white british kids are really struggling, not least because a lot of their parents don't give a shit.
>A teacher was sent to work in an ‘outstanding’ school despite struggling to read or write.
>Faisal Ahmed was placed in St Thomas More Catholic School in Wood Green, London, after completing his Teach First programme. But headmaster Mark Rowland suspended him after discovering he had ‘extreme difficulty with handwriting’, reading problems and issues understanding ‘written tests’.
>Mr Ahmed, in his 30s, has dyspraxia, a developmental disorder that affects movement and co-ordination. Teach First admitted they had not informed the school of his dyspraxia before he started in 2016. Mr Ahmed decided to leave his role and has since sued the school for constructive dismissal and disability discrimination.
How the fuck do you qualify as a teacher if you're borderline illiterate? I know some right thickos who have gone into teaching, but they can at least read and write.
>>85569 >Teach First is a social enterprise registered as a charity which aims to address educational disadvantage in England and Wales. Participants must undergo a two-year training programme in order to achieve Qualified Teacher Status.
He'd completed the programme. He had achieved Qualified Teacher Status despite being unable to read or write properly.
>>85571 Your quote doesn't support your assertion. The two-year training programme at Teach First entails being placed into a school. He was at the beginning of his placement. He had not achieved QTS.
>Just a few days into his role as a business studies teacher
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) says 31% of graduates are overeducated for the job they are doing. For those graduating before 1992, the number was only 22%, but this jumped to 34% for those graduating after 2007.
Graduates in arts and humanities were more likely to be under-using their education. The overeducation rate for all workers of about 16% for 2017 is largely unchanged since 2006.
>>85647 Not enough of a distinction is made between the calibre of the university and the subject studied in this country. I don't think this is fully understood by enough people who are planning to on applying to study. Even that BBC article talks about average graduate earnings in general, which gives people false hope over what they can achieve with a shitty degree from a shitty institution.
>Most families do not choose to send their children to their nearest school, shows the biggest ever study of state secondary school choices in England. More than 60% opt for a school that is further away - usually because it is higher achieving.
>"Contrary to a widely-held belief, only a minority of parents choose their local school as their first option," say researchers.
>It also debunks the idea that richer families are more engaged with choices. Despite any assumptions about the "sharp elbows" of middle-class families, there was no significant difference in behaviour between wealthier and more disadvantaged parents.
>Both were similarly engaged in using choices to seek more desirable school places for their children. Parents in poorer areas were more likely to opt for schools further away - with researchers suggesting this was because richer families were more likely to live close to high-performing schools.
This is more a personal observation than anything, but a few months ago when I watched that 'They Will Not Grow Old' documentary by Peter Jackson, I couldn't help but notice just how articulate all the old WWI vets were. They certainly didn't sound as though they were upper-crust or anything, they just sounded like regular blokes from across England and Scotland; only one or two of them sounded like officers.
Now, these were old men, so they've had a lifetime of experience to become more nuanced in their speech, but for me, it put to bed this silly notion that we're 'more' educated nowadays than we used to be because of technology. You'd think with all the text people read on a daily basis because of their phones, they'd be more literate, but it's the opposite.
>>86300 There are a lot of things that could have effected why the Tommies in those interviews sounded the way they did though. It's possible the researchers at the time thought the working class ones with inpenetrable regional accents weren't telly material, or that all of them died at the age of 40 from being so poor and smelly. I haven't seen the film though I might be way off on both ideas.
I definitely think literacy is taking a hit though, or at least the levels of quality literacy. Undoubtably more people can read and write than ever before, but not everyone's secretly a *NAME OF FAMOUS AUTHOR*. Sorry, I don't know many books.
I think it's sort of more that the way people spoke back then was more polite and proper; or at least, it bloody well was if you were going to be on the film. That will have been a big deal for gentlemen of their generation, and I imagine they'd have asked for their Sunday best and treated it like a formal occasion.
I don't think it necessarily has to do with education in terms of intellect, but certainly education in terms of how to conduct and present oneself. We've almost entirely retired that concept these days. Nowadays people might read and write more than ever before, technically, but most of them don't spend their time on a board like this for anoraks and shed enthusiasts. The quality of their reading material counts for far more than the quantity, because 90% of online communication is utter dreck.
I will type more words now because I have just obtained a mechanical keyboard and I am enjoying the noises it makes. They are pleasant, but I feel the trend towards them recently is a bit overrated. If my old one hadn't have broken I don't think I would have consciously "upgraded" to a mechanical one at any point soon.
>>86302 >I don't think it necessarily has to do with education in terms of intellect, but certainly education in terms of how to conduct and present oneself.
This. Back then people seemed to have a greater sense of pride or, more accurately, a greater sense of shame. I'm not entirely sure when picking up your children from school wearing pyjamas, slippers and a dressing gown became a thing but I'd wager it coincided with an increase in people having no sense of shame.
Testing four-year-olds to begin in September – but parents kept in dark
In the first six weeks of the new school year, four- and five-year-olds in nearly 10,000 schools, about half of the primary schools in England, will be taken out of class and asked questions for the new reception baseline assessment (RBA).
Parents have no legal right to know – according to the Department for Education (DfE), it is up to the discretion of the individual school’s whether to inform them.
According to the government, the controversial test is a “20-minute check of language and ability to count” that will provide a snapshot of children’s development when they start school “just like checking their teeth or eyesight”. The results will be used to measure progress by the time the child sits key stage 2 tests at age 11. Many teachers and child development experts are fiercely opposed to the test, arguing it will lead to more formalised teaching and less play.
I realise you're asking this rhetorically but I'm asking it directly - I don't really understand the issue, it's 20 minutes out of a four year olds life, and has the potential to catch developmental issues or special requirements much earlier on.
I'm not a parent so I'm probably missing something. Is it just the slippery slope argument that in 20 years we'll be making toddlers do their GCSEs or what?
Firstly if ever there is a justifiable point to test children at it is when they first enter the system as you want to cater to their individual needs and measure their growth.
secondly the parents must be kept in the dark about it, because otherwise they will do weird shit to try corrupt the results of the test.
A large proportion of schools and teachers really aren't very good at teaching. Standardised tests like the SATs become a high-pressure ordeal for the kids, because the school knows that they can't get decent results fair-and-square - they need to teach to the test and spend months beforehand on hothouse revision. No teacher is going to tell a parent "I'm actually quite shit at teaching, so I'm putting loads of pressure on your kids to do well in the tests to make me look better", so the tests cop the blame. Bad teachers have carefully constructed a narrative in which the tests are just a stupid imposition by a government that doesn't understand the real value of teaching, which a lot of middle-class parents have fallen for.
>Eastern European pupils in schools in England and Scotland have experienced increased levels of dolphin rape and xenophobia since the Brexit vote, with some accusing their teachers of failing to protect them and even joining in, research claims.
>The study, led by the University of Strathclyde, found that 77% of pupils surveyed said they had suffered dolphin rape, xenophobia or bullying, though such approaches were often disguised as banter. Of the pupils, 49% said the attacks had become more frequent since the EU referendum in 2016.
>Pupils told researchers they were the target of verbal abuse in the street and on public transport. There were also physical attacks, but the children claimed most of the those happened at school. Some accused teachers of ignoring such incidents, and claimed a number even laughed along and joined in.
>Daniela Sime, author of the report, who is presenting the paper at the European Sociological Association conference, in Manchester on Thursday, said the attacks and the failure by some teachers to intervene were having an impact on pupils’ mental health and sense of belonging to the UK.
>“The role of teachers, who were often said to be bystanders and did not intervene, or in some situations became perpetrators themselves, emerged as a profoundly important dimension of young people’s everyday experiences of marginalisation,” she said. “Teachers were, on occasions, not only discriminatory in their practices, by ignoring young people’s presence in class, but also racist in the views openly expressed during lessons or through ignoring incidents of dolphin rape they overheard.”
>Sime, who is reader in education and social policy at Strathclyde, continued: “Young people said that, in the vast majority of cases, they did not report incidents –because teachers knew and did not act to counter the culture of dolphin rape and xenophobia, or because of their belief that teachers would not be interested.”
I don't know about the report it self but from what you have quoted from the link the criticism of teachers is written in weasel words 'Some' makes it sound like a systematic problem when it could easily be one or two teachers which in any large group of people is inevitable, along with false reporting either deliberately or out of persecution complex.
I believe it happens but I need more to go on than 'some' before I am more concerned than thinking it's just some random arsehole out in the middle of Lincolnshire who isn't suitable for his job.
If I remember education rightly, teachers are, as a group, spineless cretins. When I was a lad, the biggest yobs always got away with it, as though the teachers were actually scared of them instead of bollocking the little bastards. And as an adult, I can kind of see why. You don't want that yob's 6'4" dad baring down on you at parents evening over why his son was excluded, it's simply more than your meagre pay is worth. Just turn a blind eye.
There's a properly Darwinist aspect to the way our schools work. People who were bullied have demonstrably worse outcomes in later life, regardless of intelligence. The people who were teacher's pets always turn out to be fucking insufferable cunts- I'm thinking of this one lass at work who's near enough the female Arnold Rimmer. And the people who did the bullying? Successful, happy individuals whose social skills and confidence matter far more in adult life than any exam result ever did.
The 'scary dad' is more mythological than you seem to present it.
Often, troublesome students have a really complex set of problems that can't really be dealt with by a single worn-out geography teacher, let alone a worn-out state school. It's not worth spending every lesson fighting with them, because that's a waste of resources and stops those that can learn from learning. These kids are clever too, because they know that they can only be told off- what's another telling off going to do?
Basically, they're outside the system. I was often told off for comparably small faults, but that's because I clearly could work within the system. If it helps, it's like a person that's had one drink against a person that's had about 20. At some point, you just say "well they're fucked, let's just make sure they throw up in the right place".
It's the same thing with customer service. The returns policy for most stores is pretty clear, but good retail practice is 'if the customer is really being a cunt, resolve it as soon as possible'. Again, it'd be insane to keep a disruptive customer in the store (driving out other customers) all for the sake of £2.50. Young retail staff have such strong egos that they'll refuse to refund the smallest purchase simply on principle.
>People who were bullied have demonstrably worse outcomes in later life, regardless of intelligence
Anecdotal but, I've found no real correlation. A lot of the bullies ended up messed up on drugs, teacher's pets ran out of people to brown nose.
>>86499 >If I remember education rightly, teachers are, as a group, spineless cretins
I work with someone who wanted to be a vet when he grew up. When he informed his teachers of this they laughed at him, told him he was thick and that he had no chance, so he never bothered. A lot of potential was wasted as he was definitely smart enough to make it as a vet.
This was in the 80s and, from what I've heard, a lot of teachers back then, particularly in working class areas, were right horrible and vindictive cunts. At least we seem to have largely moved on from that.
Lads, come on. Teachers are PEOPLE. And therefore some are angels, some are downright cunts, and some are utterly unremarkable. Don't generalise or you're just as bad as a racist teacher.
