Making the grade in English

That 1 in 4 pupils fail to make the grade in English (see Telegraph) is not surprising if the evidence from one Buckinghamshire primary school is anything to go by. For some weeks now, displayed in the assembly hall, as if the school were proud of it, is the grocer's apostrophe in a verb. A painted poster proclaims:

"Africa need's money".

With teaching like this at primary level, we shouldn't expect improvements in English any time soon.

Working families

I don't support the recommendation that MPs' spouses don't work for them. It's normal and natural for families to work together, whether they be spouses or children. Watching the farmer's son helping on his market stall this week in the Aylesbury Farmers' market, the child was both learning, and contributing to his family's business, and to society in general. He could be proud of his contribution. I know that some MPs have abused the system, but bad cases make bad law, and this recommendation is one that ought to go, not be implemented. Let the spouses work.

Younger wives

Husband has just discovered here that having a wife younger than himself is good for him.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8325579.stm

Half term

It's half term so I'm nipping out this afternoon to watch the newly released film of the Fantastic Mr Fox. It's had some good reviews so I shall enjoy the treat with two young relatives.

Waving or drowning

Remember last week the news about the balloon boy family? For those of you who dismissed the family with the child not in a helium balloon as a trivial episode, Mike Todd found this cartoon to pull us up short:

http://miketodd.typepad.com/waving_or_drowning/2009/10/hello.html

Random thoughts

This ambulance driver blogs in a readable and amusing way. In this entry, he is complaining about working the night and the extra hour when the clocks go back.

He accidently let himself be booked to work that night and swears at his own stupidity. Oh dear! But he changes all the swear words into non-swear words.

I hate hearing swearing, and I loved reading the way he put it. In my head, I always understand the literal meanings, and hear aggression in the words, so the way he put it meant I read, not aggression, but his pent-up frustration that he'd done such a daft thing, but just the sort of thing lots of us would have done. I know I would have made the same mistake because my husband gave me a lecture last night on the meaning of 'Sunday morning'.

I hope it wasn't too bad a night for him.

Inefficient services

A colleague was telling about her young son having had several ear operations recently. He's all right but what she noticed with her manager's eye, was that for a twenty minute procedure they had to sit around in the hospital for eight hours. Of course, she's grateful for the care but surely they can organise people's work and lives better than that.

On a similar theme of how to use time efficiently, she explained that before her son was off school, she got some work for him to do at home. They spent only half an hour a day on it, but when he got back to school the teacher announced that he was right up to where the class was. How can it take five hours of class work to match thirty minutes of one to one work, she asks? Why should it take ten times as long to cover material in class as it does at home? No wonder some home educators seem to hot house their children. I do think that schools need more teachers and smaller groups more than they need extra expensive computer equipment.

My mother's birthday

It's my mother's birthday. May she enjoy it.

Guided tour to theorem country

What's a theorem? An assertion you can prove is true, at least that's what I'm asserting following yesterday's seminar at an Oxford University Continuing Education (OUCE) day.

If you've seen the web site Theorem of the Day, then you'll get a flavour of the day, created by the presenter, Robin Whitty. That web site is challenging though and so was the day. However, if you like thinking, and thinking in good like minded company, then you'd have enjoyed it too. The company included physicists, sixth formers, an eminent professor of biology, chemists, a member of the society of mathematics and her husband who had a PhD in maths, though not in the same area she hastened to assure me, and retired maths teachers.

Starting with some maths language and shorthand helped me remember some of the maths I used to know, and others in the audience were equally forthcoming with questions, which made for a relaxed atmosphere. Theorems covered included:

• Euclid's Infinity of Primes
• Ramsey's Theorem (I can see how to relate that to how many people you know)
• Contraction Mapping Theorem
  
• Hardy-Ramanujan Asymptotic Partition Formula - partitioning is so simple that you teach it to infant school children - it's how many different ways can you add up a number, like 5 is 2+3, and also 4+1, and 1+1+3 and so on
• Erdos-K-Rado Theorem on intersecting permutations - we got a bit confused on this one because Robin initially told us to think of Rubik's cube, but it isn't quite the same.
• The Robbins problem - I like Boolean algebra
• Morley's Miracle - that was an amusing story of a school teacher who discovered this by accident. If you tri-sect the angles of a triangle then at the intersections of the trisection lines, you can make the vertices's of a triangle. The miracle is that no-one ever noticed before Morley did, but then drawing a trisection isn't very easy.

We looked at the philosophy of maths - Are the truths of mathematics invented or discovered? A Canadian high school philosophy competition asked this question. The context, rules and winning answer can be downloaded from here.

Finally we had a discussion about whether computers 'do' maths. There's a Faustian battle between mathematicians: you have a choice between geometry and algebra. If we use computers, then we turn to algebra to compute rather than geometry that allows our intuition.

For example, someone had been presenting partitions from using the Pascal's triangle. At the end of the lecture, one person, Corteel, saw a bijection along the rth diagonal within the binomial expansion that matched the rth row of the partitioning - a computer couldn't have seen that!

I might go to another OUCE maths day - like the one next year on the history and consequences of calculus.

A bit ill and flowers

I had a bad night, and the day's not started too well. A cold has given me a cough, so I couldn't sleep well. Then, feeling rotten with sore glands in my neck and still bunged up, I tootle out for a little shopping:

1. On the newsagent's door is a notice 'back in 5 minutes' - so when did the five minutes start?
2. At the car phone warehouse I wait for half an hour to get served
3. At the library to return a book, person in front of me has to argue about whether her returns are overdue or not
   
4. In Superdrug to get some medicine I have lost my student card so can't have discount
5. Health food shop - they know me in there and give sympathy, but they've got no currants

I get home and find student card - things are getting slightly better.

We didn't notice anyone approach the house or heard the gate squeak, when ..

BANG BANG!

I know it says "knock loudly" on the front door, but we do jump when we're right next to it, not at the other end of the house.

But someone's sent me, yes me! Why me? a huge bouquet of flowers in the most gorgeous autumn colours with deep red roses, and a couple of tiny delicate white roses. So now with some paracetamol in me and some lovely flowers, I'm feeling a tad better. Thank you that someone - it was well timed.

Nappies

Disposable nappies are wonderful! When my children were born, disposables made life so easy compared to what my mother had had with terry towelling nappies. They saved heaps of laundry time, detergent and water, though it did seem a bit off to expect bin men to have to take away fouled nappies when poo had used to go down the loo.

This summer I did some nappy shopping for a relative. She required and I purchased:

• pull-up trainer nappies
• swimming pool nappies

Neither packet had more than ten nappies in, but the total cost was around £20! Twenty pounds! There are now lots of different kinds of nappies for different age ranges and different activities but they take an awful lot of money from the household budget. I'm sure that's relatively more than they used to cost. Are we paying extra for the differentiation of product?

A pregnant relative was discussing nappies. She tells me, that you can now get reusable nappies and such nappies adapt for the growing child, (like these?) so you can use them from birth to potty training. (I thought those used to be called 'terries'.) The problem is that she expects to go back to work, and how does a nursery cope with reusable nappies? It wouldn't be worth the expense of buying lots of reusable nappies if she then has to buy disposables for the nursery.

It's a conundrum and a quandary that I don't envy pregnant relative.

Buckinghamshire schools

Today children in Buckinghamshire schools take an exam, the 11 plus exam, results of which are taken as an indicator of whether they should go to a Buckinghamshire grammar school, or an upper school. It's a bit nerve wracking for the parents, especially if you know your child should go to a grammar, that they'd love it there, that they're really academic, but you also know that your child will be marginal, might not quite get the required score.

There are two tests, taken a week apart, but they are only verbal reasoning (VR) tests, not non-verbal reasoning, and not numerical. That means that if you've got a child who's brilliant at maths, or is dyslexic, or even bilingual, then a VR test might not show up their best academic ability. The child might have a vocabulary of 4000 words in English and 4000 words in Pushti, but if the VR expects 5000 words in English, and tests to that, then the child won't get the 121 that is the score for a grammar school.

However, Buckinghamshire allows other evidence through an appeal system. If the best of the two VR tests, doesn't come high enough, and a parent disagrees with the LEA assessment that the child would be most suited to an upper, then the parent(s) can appeal. Parents can bring in other evidence, whatever they think fit, that demonstrates a grammar school would be the more appropriate school for their child. That might be tae kwondo or ballet dancing certificates, school work, computer work, or a report from a suitable professional. Parents can also provide evidence to explain why the child didn't do well enough on the day of the tests, like had a cold, or asthma, or the school fire alarm went off.

A tribunal of three volunteers, independent of the LEA, assesses the evidence, consider the arguments, and make a decision that is binding on the LEA. I like that because there's the opportunity to use the measured evidence from the tests, plus the qualitative evidence that can take into account other unmeasurable evidence.

Today a relative takes the 11 + and another relative is taking the GRE. This site tells you that the GRE is for the graduate record examinations that also assess verbal reasoning skills, along with other skills that an undergraduate might have achieved.

Good luck to both relatives.