Westminstenders: In the Brexit Lane

[RedToothBrush]

I honestly couldn't think of a better starter to the thread than simply just this tweet

Robert Peston @ peston
We’ve got an official opposition tearing itself apart over antisemitism, the founder of the EDL running rings around the judiciary and a government negotiating a Brexit plan that its own MPs and ministers tell me is dead. When will we pull ourselves together, as a nation?

But don't worry, your blue passport will get you an extra special long wait at passport control. And no deal could lead to continued freedom of movement anyway. Something for everyone in there.

Dr Liam Fox @ liamfox
BREAKING NEWS: following ongoing UK government effort, Taiwan is preparing to open its market to British pork for the first time. The agreement is expected to be worth more than £50m to 🇬🇧 farmers over the next 5 years #FreeTradeUK #FoodisGREAT @UKinTaiwan

Another Angry Voice @ angry_voice
£50 million over five years you say?

Well that should easily offset the ... err ... £405 billion* cost of a "no deal" flounce out of the EU then

So @ JBLDN
Pork has been exported to Taiwan from the EU for years. The problem was that British standards were not high enough so British pork imports were banned. So now the U.K. has decided to meet minimum standards it’s allowed to export. What is your function?

The issue with maths is not can people on MN do it it's why can't the majority of 16 year olds do it?

It's not rocket science or advanced aerospace engineering, plumbers need to be able to use pi to work out things about pipes - I'm not a plumber btw

Among other things I teacher foreign 16-19 year olds and the average European student has significantly better maths skills than the U.K. equivalent.

This is not a FOM issue it's a we need to sort our education issue.

@Moussemoose
I work in telecoms/IT, none of the last 4 companies i ve worked for do apprenticeships, all employ some europeans.
When i first started in the late 80s, everyone was trained from the ground up, this is no longer the case, we are all getting old now! but still no youngsters coming through, degree educated in s/w design/security, yes but not the technician side.
Sure employers would prefer a local BUT they are nt willing to invest 2 or 3 years into a 18yo.
My partners 20yo son did A levels & a full time level 3 IT qualification, he has excellent maths and english, he cannot get a job in IT, its always "no experience" he works in a night club, looking after peoples jackets, he is also pro brexit.

I did say this is'nt the EU's and FOM 's fault but the UK has done sod all to limit its affects and neither has business, all they do is moan, without addressing they are the really cause with their short term ism.

I'll also say that business will push to continue to bring in skilled workers, so nothing will change.

As I said:
I should also say that engineers, electricians, plumbers and others also study subject specific maths, which is more advanced technically - but applied in a limited range of recognisable situations, and where skills are not necessarily transferable.
Of course that includes use of circle formulas etc. (Actually this is one of the things that most 16 YOs can actually do, as it's so often revisited at school.)

Business will push to bring in more workers from India & China - even cheaper

re allotments:
The quoted figure I've seen a few times is for self-sufficiency is around 5 acres per person – not per household; that probably allows for chickens / eggs, but not cattle.
Of course, it requires start-up capital, many hours of work each week and TIME to grow things.

Can the UK feed itself after Brexit?

Good analysis with pros & cons

http://www.countryfile.com/article/can-uk-feed-itself

The UK grows 61% of the food it eats, according to the National Farming Union (NFU),Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy at City, University of London, and DEFRA’s Agriculture in the UK paper (July 2017).
Government sources sometimes quote a figure of 75% but this excludes ‘non-indigenous’ items such as exotic fruit – bananas and mangoes, tea, coffee and spices – foods that cannot be grown (either at all or on a meaningful scale) in the UK.
< Excluding tea & coffee ? Riots in Leave & Remain areas alike if they run out ? >
...
To find the highest historical rates for self-sufficiency in Britain, you need to go back to the 18th century
...
Historic modern-day lows include the eves of the First World War and Second World War, when we produced only around 33% of our food

< Current examples >
Cheese 80% UK 20% EU
Beef 80% UK 20% EU
Tomatoes 45% UK 55% EU
Broccoli 45% UK 55% EU
(Source: British Retail Consortium)
...
Food import figures
•79% of the food and drink we import comes from the EU
•11% is from countries granted Most Favoured Nation status, such as the USA, China, Brazil and Australia.
•9% comes from bilateral agreements with countries such as Canada, Norway and Chile.
•1% from Generalised Scheme of Preferences (lower than WTO tariffs), such as India, Ukraine and Iran.
....
Can we become self-sufficient before Brexit?
“The beef farmer’s adage is that it takes three years from conception to plate.” Raymond Meurig, NFU
< same timescale for US or Oz beef etc >

UK would run out of food a year from now with no-deal Brexit, NFU warns

Farmers’ union says supplies would only last until August of each year if Britain had to be self-sufficient

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/aug/07/uk-run-out-of-food-no-deal-brexit-national-farmers-union

Food security in Britain is in long-term decline, with the country producing 60% of what it needs to feed itself,
compared with 74% 30 years ago, according to figures from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).
...
Research showed 7 August 2019 (1 year today) would be the nominal day that Britain would run out of food if it were asked to be wholly self-sufficient based on seasonal growth, the NFU said.

To quantify the costs of companies storing food, instead of JIT:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/26/stockpile-food-no-deal-brexit-dream-on

“Part of the reason people keep less inventory is that it reduces the amount of money you need to operate.

If you increase the amount of stock kept in reserve from a few days’ worth to a few weeks’ worth,
businesses across the sector would need five to 10 times the working capital they do now.”

The issue with maths is not can people on MN do it it's why can't the majority of 16 year olds do it?

I'd suggest the answer lies in another question : How many parents can do the homework their kids bring back ?

The issue with maths is not can people on MN do it it's why can't the majority of 16 year olds do it?

I think part of that reason is that 11 year olds are given questions of a similar level to the ones borntobequiet posted upthread - which are meant for FE. Funnily enough - the majority find them extremely difficult. But if they can't answer them they are deemed a failure. And the threshold for passing adequately is rising steeply (there was a particular gem, once, whereby the majority of schools were expected to do better that average in their SATS results - or else face consequence... perhaps no one ever explained to Gove what an average was).
We ask too much of our children, and then the system writes them off as underachievers. Because there is the school of thought that children need to know exactly where they are and what they need to do to improve (or you know - the teachers could be responsible for knowing that - and plan accordingly ) children know they are failing.

They have turned themselves off and declared 'I just can't do maths' way before they ever get to secondary. Not because they can't actually do maths - but because the maths they are asked to do is too hard for their age group. The following 5 years up to GCSE are just hours spent in a classroom not listening because they 'know' they can't do it. It's a cumulative effect and it begins way before the GCSE years.

Things have got worse since 2010 - but this goes back a long way. Which as DG points out - means parents can't help with their children's homework - and become complicit in the 'well it's only maths - maths is hard' mindset.

Obviously plenty of children do manage to do well - despite our terrible curriculum - but the rate of struggling and failure is enough that is has an impact on society - and therefore the mindset of society. People who can add up and take away quickly in their heads get treated with suspicion - or marvelled at like they are the new Stephen Hawking.

And this is not any criticism on the teaching itself. Teachers absolutely kill themselves trying to get children engaged - trying to make maths fun, trying to build children's confidence. But they have to teach the curriculum - and the curriculum is ridiculous.

Until we fix it - so that maths is age appropriate at primary and children are able to head off into secondary happy and confident, with the basics firmly fixed in place, where they are taught - by experts - the more complicated parts of maths, then we will continue to have this problem.

At the moment - we have to cover so much that children simply don't have time to nail the basics before they are forced to move on. We are having to teach algebra and how to multiply fractions to children who are still counting on their fingers to add up to 20. And this is all in primary. There is just no need for a ten year old to know how to multiply a fraction - unless they're really really into fractions and want to learn on their own time.

I'll admit to being one who would have struggled at 16 with the maths questions above. Not because I can't do maths but because there is a lot of text to wade through to figure out what the question actually is. I'm quite capable of translating a real world problem into maths (it's my day job basically) but word heavy exam problems press every dyslexic button in my head and make me panic.

DS starts school in September so we haven't got as far as homework yet. From talking to my SiL & MiL though (who both work in primary schools) it sounds like there is a massive problem with maths teaching at primary level. Which sounds like it's mostly due to a large proportion of primary school teachers not being that confident themselves in how to use and manipulate numbers. So they teach kids that it's hard

@jasjas1973 - you do need to be a reasonable size to run an apprenticeship scheme - in IT at least all the majors have strong schemes (ey, accenture, capgemini etc) BBC, facebook, airbus are other examples.

The apprenticeship levy applies to firms with more than a £3million payroll bill - meaning there is a strong incentive to provide apprenticeships.

i suggest the issue is more the lack of interest in IT - i was at a 6th form careers session in june - the business/accounting sessions had 30+ students at each of 3 sessions, the IT sessions had a total of 11 students.

IBM also has a very strong apprenticeship scheme. I worked earlier this year with a 20-something agile delivery manager who'd gone straight from school to IBM and already had several solid years of work under his belt.

Farmers’ union says supplies would only last until August of each year if Britain had to be self-sufficient

If we needed to ration food how would it work I wonder? Growing up hearing stories about rationing during the Second World War I’d always assumed all food had been rationed with far and equal shares for all. I was shocked to discover, for example, that meals in restaurants were not rationed. So those who could afford to eat out were able to do so without handing over coupons.

And that's before getting into how lengthy word problems are a barrier to children's mathematical capabilities. Children who struggle to read are often perfectly able to do the division and multiplication aspect of the question

I noticed that when doing a Primary observation prior to a PGCE. If children can't read with some confidence by 8 their chances in education are compromised, because so much of the curriculum involves reading and writing.

I left school in 1969 after A levels. A good half of the class went into teaching. In those days you could get in with 5 O levels, one of which had to be English. No mention of Maths. I think it might have been 1975 when they started to require Maths (not sure). Now my generation, those who stayed the course, have all but retired in the last 10 years. but it meant that there were 40 years or so when a primary teacher may not have had any maths knowledge worth talking about. Then we wonder why the parents of today's children can't do their childrens' maths. (Obviously many teachers did have more knowledge than that, but it was so hit and miss.)

Sorry fair and equal

If we needed to ration food how would it work I wonder?

Especially with increasing awareness of dietary connections to chronic health issues ... coeliacs, Chrohns, lactose intolerance ....

I never understood why everyone hated algebra. I always liked it and found it relatively easy. Plenty of other things in maths I disliked.

Re IT I'm not surprised but thats a lot to do with the quality of IT being taught in schools.

MIL was teaching A Level IT up until a couple of years ago. She could barely use word and excel and certainly couldn't do any programming. She didn't do social media either. I don't know what the fuck what on the curriculum and in the exam but she generally got good results from her students. They must have been getting a qualification in something far less useful than media as a result cos it would have been bloody useless in 2014. It was about 20 years behind the time!

Its quite shocking to know how poor her knowledge was. I don't know how it would possibly aspire anyone to have a career in IT.

As a rule DH has found that IT graduates are totally crap. He very rarely recruits them. Most developers who are in any way good have mostly self taught.

There are exceptions but he's been very unimpressed at the quality of IT people who have actually studied IT.

We do have a major problem with how its taught in the country. Whats being taught is massively behind the current technology.

I'd seriously argue that the only way that IT can be taught is through apprenticeship in the workplace. That relies on large companies investing in it. What you find is too often is good staff too stretched doing day to day work to be able to give apprentices any quality time to do it. Companies can't recruit and retain quality staff either. Instead they resort to contractors at extortionate rates which they fail to pay regular staff (the economics of this have always baffled me. Its ridiculous why they aren't paying in house staff better). Plenty of contractors can earn in six months what they would if they were employed directly by the same firm.

The contractors because they have deep pockets attract the best staff. Everyone else now struggles to get anyone half way good. So the contractors are dominating the market.

The stupid thing is that these companies are spending a fortune to recruitment firms to hire people too. If they'd bothered to increase wages they wouldn't be shelling out so much to contractors or recruitment agencies!

Tbh I can't complain. This utterly nonsensical false economy is keeping a roof over my head.

HR departments and payrole really need to start treating IT staff differently to ordinary staff if they have any ambition in leading their fields. You can't if you dont have in house staff and your staff turnover of your best people is too high. You just get stuck with mediocre types who are just 'comfy' and turn up for work rather than are giving you a cutting edge. There are real problems with putting all IT staff within pay banding schemes - it does not work, as its a major barrier to retaining skills and the best staff.

DH has also had major problems at certain places he's worked where management have been incredibly resistant to changes in how IT is done. Working practices that were right ten years ago, just aren't today if you want to get ahead. This isn't hardware or expensive changes I'm talking about. Its the way you think about programming and to do with the speed things are processed. Again it comes down to people getting set in ways, and routines rather than moving forward. The internal politics is viewed as more important than the quality of what they are doing. Again a lot of this mentality of not liking people who are exceptional and trying to 'put people back in their place' comes into it. The stuff you get at school about being a swot continues in the workplace in the UK. We don't have an ethos which encourages you to be really good at work in a huge number of large organisations - its not something restricted to the public sector.

DH seems to have eventually found somewhere which does get it, and doesn't see him as a problem but the solution to positive change and is (currently at least!) supporting him.

We have an awful lot of BIG companies who will eventually get overtaken because of this mindset, and because they've traded on long term reputation and loyalty rather than being exceptional at what they do.

Unless we change this and how we teach IT we are going to get left for dust in not too many years, especially with a brain drain also in progress.

Structurally we are not thinking about IT in the way we need to. Good IT staff can support the jobs of lots of other workers, ironically. They don't necessarily mean a need for less workers. Just better ways of working.

When I was studying my degree ("real" IT, we had to build a bit-slice processor, and my final year project was to build and program an X.25 protocol analyser on an STD bus) most folk older than me who worked in IT had come from non-IT backgrounds. And they were damn good.

I can code a web page in notepad. Not one of the IT graduates I interviewed could, despite saying they were "web developers". Which seems to be a synonym for "has used Dreamweaver".

I have an extremely able but dyslexic DS. He is at University having done reasonably well at A level.
He has had 5 attempts at Maths GCSE and never attained more than a D grade.
He does have processing difficulties but a huge part of it is down to the way the questions are structured - long screeds of tales about people having to tile floors or distribute sweets.

He had no problems with Science or English GCSEs.

I work in IT and my background is Economics. When I started 35 years ago no one had IT degrees - my team mates had all kinds of backgrounds, degrees in French, English - many had no degree at all.

DGR that would not surprise me in the slightest. Kids taught to use a software package are not kids taught how to write a software package.

Its like 'graphic designers' who know how to draw pretty pictures but have no idea about print process or the differences of production for print verses web.

People who think they know what they are doing but lack the most basic knowledge and skills to actually do it in the real world at a professional level. Amateur doesn't even describe it.

You can't teach someone in the workplace from that starting point. They would be better knowing nothing at all, rather than thinking they know it.

I got into IT via a civil Service scheme. A very intensive 3 month cobol training course, a month on system design then straight into the job.
Where I learned all kinds of things from some amazingly talented people.

DH is severely dyslexic. He shames people with how good he is at maths. He can do it all in his head.

Being dyslexic certainly does not mean you are automatically shit at maths.

I would hate to think that people are out there believing they are shit at maths because they are dyslexic. That is certainly not necessarily the case.

If the way exams are run disadvantages dyslexic kids thats a totally different thing and should be picked up on by accessibility training in schools and examination boards.

Indeed kids who are dyslexic can often be better at maths, like DH is.