Westminstenders: PreGrades (Minority Report comes to the UK)

[RedToothBrush]

In Aug 2020, London, DC's prototype 'PreGrades' launched from the education department stops plebs before they go to university, reducing the social mobility rate to zero percent. Social mobility is predicted using specialized mutated humans, called "Teachers", who "predict" grades by marking shit lots of course work and exams over a period of years. Would-be social climbers are knocked down in a computer algorithm which distorts reality and hits the disadvantaged hardest. Central government is on the verge of adopting the controversial program nationwide by applying it in all departments from the DWP, the Home Office, the Department of Health and the Department of Justice to predict benefit fraud, getting sick asylum seeking and crime before it occurs.

DC's vision of the future is based on excellence being genetically ingrained into the elite but he must sell this vision to the unsuspecting public in a series of public votes which rely on the idea of the 'undeserving'. Little do they know that they too will be the victims of this plan until a mysterious bug appears and only the wealthy and well connected are able to get hold of adequate PPE and they are no longer able to buy bog roll nor retire to Spain as they had previously and endless queues for pizza form near Kent.

Add global warming to the mix and living by the river is not a good idea

@Jason118

Add global warming to the mix and living by the river is not a good idea

That was Strummer+Jones point in the subsequent lines ...

'Cause London is drowning and I ...
I live by the river

yoikes
I suspect that the lack of Asian and EU students if there is a hard Brexit will take a LOT of pressure off the UK Unis over the next couple of years
and
by some miracle
a soft brexit is pulled out of the hat
the economic bounce will see your DS right

I suspect that the lack of Asian and EU students if there is a hard Brexit will take a LOT of pressure off the UK Unis over the next couple of years

Until they start going bust.

Apropos of which, I have to admit to being surprised that M&S had more than 7,000 staff to start with.

Unis are still free here in Germany
and if kids pass their final school exams - called "Abitur" - they get a place
I have found it less socially unequal than the UK, if anything

Too many Liberals are full of academic theories of what is "good" for poor people

• and frequently make things worse

They don't listen to lived experience of people who were poor
They think, from their comfortable mc lives, they know what is best for others

From bitter experience, I have come to despise Liberal parties, including the unscrupulous version in Germany, the FDP

All that 50% going to Uni has meant, is that a degree is now the minimum for so many jobs

• your CV is binned without it - so the other half who decided not to go are more excluded from a lot of jobs than they ever were before

My family are ardent Brexiters and Conservative supporters. Even they are struggling to justify or excuse this.

The exam fiasco was the final straw for PIL and work colleagues that are ardent Brexit, Boris, Conservative supporters. They are now getting quite worried about Brexit Four years too late but if they are a gauge of Tory grass roots then Boris Johnson is in for a rough ride.

The paid fees and means-tested grant was the fairest system

• it was the one system that gave a fair shake for the poorest

We should restore it
and then allow those who didn't get the full grant to take out a topup loan if they want

The mc are not scared of debt, whereas most poor people are scared off by it.

DGR
M&S employs / employed 78000 people
(page 39 here corporate.marksandspencer.com/documents/msar2020/m-and-s_ar20_financial-statements.pdf )

I thought Blair was the one who wanted 50% to go to University? He was also the one who didn't implement the very good Tomlinson report about education from 14-19 because of his commitment to the 'gold standard' of A levels.

Peregrina
I thought Blair was the one who wanted 50% to go to University?
Yup.
It was a stupid idea then and its even more stupid now.
He effectively abolished HNDs as well

I thought Blair was the one who wanted 50% to go to University?

Wasn't it Bush Jnr. who stated that he wanted everyone to be above average ?

Wasn't it Bush Jnr. who stated that he wanted everyone to be above average ?
Nah, Michael Gove

Universities have to be funded somehow and why should someone who hasn’t had the benefits of HE fund all those who have, via taxes? Yes I know society as a whole benefits directly from some degrees, but all of them? Also, the world now is very different from the world of the 1970s. While it would be nice to fully fund HE for all, how could this be done at the same time as widening access and broadening the number of HE pathways?

This is just the right wing argument. I’ve never agreed with it. The British are very much influenced by UK/US right wing ideology.

France and Germany manage free unis - pass the end of school exams bac/abitur and you’re in. X% drop out in the first year which is a kind of self-selection.

One for DGR.

There's something peculiar and visceral in the English psyche, and it's a Bad Thing.

And that's a terror - a horror - an almost pathological primeval reaction - to the thought that someone, somewhere might just be getting something for "free". I give you Mrs Thatcher and free school milk.

@TheMShip

One for DGR.

Is that an Access database I see before me? Or an Excel spreadsheet ?

Access????

(Runs screaming from thread.....)

@yoikes

Access????

(Runs screaming from thread.....)

With macros in VBScript !

Oh - DGR and paying twice. DH is a high earner- we don't talk about it, but for most friends it must be obv.
Anyway we were at a dinner party everyone there would be comfortable by anyone's standards. the subject of the NHS came up. My DH and I really believe it needs reform - but not American style, that's it's there as a safety net. That companies are encouraged to provide health insurance (many do) so things like knee replacement etc are done on health insurance for those that have it, those that don't- they have the (nhs - which is properly funded) - wealthy pay for GP appts. It's basically what NZ has , which is nowhere as wealthy as the UK. Anyway the argument against it was - but that means we would have to pay twice, once in taxes etc. To which DH response is " we are all wealthy by most people standards it's right we pay twice" - you would have think he had take a dump on the dinner table . Most are still out friends - but most would steer away from those kind of convos with us.....

Argh.....!

3 days. 3 whole days of my life on a bloody ms access course many moons ago...

QBE grids can just fuck off.

Mentioning Access? DGR that's just mean!

"it's right we pay twice"

Good for MrL
It's about fairness towards fellow human beings,
but also self-interest, not wanting a future that had your gc living in armed enclaves for the upper mc and super-rich

www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014 Article

"Beware fellow plutocrats, the pitchforks are coming"

The British English have been infected over the last few decades by the US horror of paying for something that helps other people,
especially poor people

France and Germany manage free unis - pass the end of school exams bac/abitur and you’re in. X% drop out in the first year which is a kind of self-selection.

In France, a huge number drop out after just a few weeks (although a fair number return for exams because they lose their grant if they are absent at those: they hand in a blank script and sign the attendance sheet. Some get very angry when they are told the rules prevent them from leaving before an hour is up. Some sleep until they can go. A colleague of mine saw a student knitting during an exam.)

A huge number fail, sometimes after their 3rd attempt at first year. In my department, we have a 20% pass rate in 1st year, and pass rates of around 50% in second and third years.

It's not self-selection, it's selection after entrance.

It was decided in 1985 that 80% of a year group should pass the Bac, and that is what then happened, but not because education massively improved...

As the entrance criterion for French university (not for Grandes Ecoles, or other selective HE establishments which the political elite and their kids attend, and not for medecine) is simply passing the Bac, that huge rise in the pass rate had a knock-on effect in universities.
The system worked better when 30% passed the Bac and the other 70% had a whole range of other options, including vocational degrees, apprenticeships, etc., but it is now seriously flawed.

96% passed the Bac this year: imagine being in the 4%. We are bracing for an influx of seriously unprepared 1st years, many of whom just won't pass.

And I have few illusions about what the 10 000 "places" for the extra students will look like, given how massively underfunded and understaffed French universities already are and are due to remain. We already have 40 people in our tutorials, and fewer than half the permanent staff needed to teach them.

The objective of X% of the population getting a university degree is linked to the Lisbon strategy. The target was for 40% of 30-30 yr-olds in EU countries to obtain a university qualification. That dates to 2009, but the original Lisbon strategy was set out in 2000, which may be why Blair is considered responsible for the target in the UK.