Thread 25 Starmer - Cheers for a falling out among thieves

[DuncinToffee]

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https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5338688-thread-24-starmer-casting-the-net-wider?

We badgered and badgered our physics teacher for a trip to Sellafield, when the visitor centre was opened. Too far, sadly.

Don’t want to make you well jel @PickAChew , but I went to the Sellafield Visitor Centre with my Dad. A man ignored the No Cameras rule and there was some low level, uneasy, very British insistence from the undercover security guards, who we hadn’t realised were on the bus, that he hand it over for the film to be removed. I remember my Dad muttering “Just look out the window, never mind all that” to me. It’s now legendary among our family holidays as Threatening Dystopian Trip To Windscale.

I went for a job at Sellafield for my sandwich year. Didn't get it, but would have to have lived in a BNFL run hostel in the middle of nowhere.

You need to squish up a lot because my cat arse is joining you all!

Now if they were offering all schools some tech packages for free …….

We once had a day trip on board hms Manchester while it was still in service. I remember teen me asking how many nuclear warheads it was carrying and being politely told it was top secret.

Be discerning. Ds1 grammar school pta raised enough in a year for a new minibus. The year after they provided a state of the art computer lab, fully kitted out.

Ds2 and dds school could barely afford paper.

I was year 9 when I first did SATS - I swear I remember us being the first year to do them. I’m sure it was about the same time A* was introduced for GCSEs?

It was 1994!

This was late 80s and a big thing was made of us being a very, very lucky school to have been specially chosen to trial a system that was was going to be used to check teachers were teaching us what we needed to know. It was a Q then multiple choice tick box answers. I don’t recall any longer written answers being required, in fact I’m sure they said A Computer was going to mark them so we had to be careful to make the precise mark needed. I love an exam in silence and not having to show my workings out in Maths (I just did a random selection of answers for the Maths paper). The only other thing I remember is the beauty of alphabetical order meaning I was sat near my Crush, who wore red socks in blatant and thrilling disregard of the Black Socks For Boys rule.

O Levels, A/O levels, A levels and BSc(Hons)
thus far.

And a CSE Arithmetic they threw in to keep their stats in.

I just had a Google to prove to myself I wasn’t imagining things! KS3 SATs were introduced in 1998, so it makes sense that early trials should have been in about 85-86ish. I didn’t sit them when they were generally introduced, so I don’t know if they retained the multiple choice format or not. It was all quite ‘American’ in a way.

I did my O-levels in '86 and some classes in some subjects took the 16+ which were a precursor to the GCSE.

The science KS3 SATs at the end of the 90s had a few multi choice questions (you wouldn't believe how hard it was to coach unconfident kids into just choosing one, even if they had gone blank) but mostly questions that you had to answer in sentences. The papers were tiered and to get level 5 or 6 you really had to be tackling the non-multiple choice questions. As with GCSE, there was a lot of exam technique involved. eg for a question awarding 2 points, 2 facts are needed.

And, of course, 3 points were awarded purely for the blessed spg.

Yes I googled too.

I remember sitting them in year 9 and that must also have been a trial.

I have memories of it being a sheet and you marked a b c or d with a pencil for the right answer (like how I did my driving theory test in 1998!).

We had to mark clearly iirc because it was scanned afterwards.

I do r think I’m making it up - I’m definitely not re driving test!

Horrible news about the plane crash in India

Awful. So many people dead.

Horrendous.

Terrible news.

Meanwhile, this isn't the real story. The real story is the US not knowing about it.

The plane crashed on to a doctor's hostel. Just awful.

Absolutely dreadful news such loss of life very tragic.

There are reports that one person has survived the crash, which seems incredible.

None of us is the thread police, but too much chatter might get this thread pulled ?

It was just mentioned on 6 music news so it's information that is in the public domain.

Yes awful. Read it at lunchtime and followed the Sky news news thread.

It’s been on the BBC site for about five hours now.

I wouldn't have posted if I hadn't heard it from a reliable news source, Jane.

I fear I have been misunderstood ..

Obviously you can't ignore a fucking huge plane crash. However I was (possibly too subtly) suggesting this may not be the thread for any loose speculation as I see one has already been pulled.