Guilt Free Railing 17

[WouldBeGood]

Happy New Thread, Railers!

I'm railing about the fact that despite covid hmrc have the staff to decide I am not paying enough tax but due to covid they dont have the staff to explain to me how they worked this out ..

I am getting sick of covid being an excuse for everything

And yes I agree the universities need to get back to f2f teaching.. the problem seems to be that there is no clear directive from the scottish government regarding universities and I dont think anyone in the university wants to be the person who steps up and says right lets do this in case they cause a major outbreak

Its just time to move beyond all this if buts and maybes .

That's appalling for students.
I was really struck by DS' student friend being unhappy about online classes. This is a student who won more than one school academic prize several years in a row in the subject he's doing at uni. He's been doing very well at uni. If one of the most able students is finding it hard going ......

It's rotten the English unis and schools more or less went back to normal in September.
Our secondary kids are stuffed in masks that don't do anything and uni students have become recluses when they should be having a blast.

Where and when will it end, fingers crossed the papers start to increase pressure as its really not right- esp when it's making little difference to covid figures.

Yes. Closing the attainment gap my arse.

@frasersmummy

I'm railing about the fact that despite covid hmrc have the staff to decide I am not paying enough tax but due to covid they dont have the staff to explain to me how they worked this out ..

I am getting sick of covid being an excuse for everything

And yes I agree the universities need to get back to f2f teaching.. the problem seems to be that there is no clear directive from the scottish government regarding universities and I dont think anyone in the university wants to be the person who steps up and says right lets do this in case they cause a major outbreak

Its just time to move beyond all this if buts and maybes .

@frasersmummy Tax is my field of knowledge if you want to send me a DM I'll see if I can help you.

HMRC have confirmed they'll not issue late filing penalties as long as your SATR is submitted by end of February. Interest runs from 1 Feb though.

It's not just the experience the students are having now. It's going to affect their future too.
Relative is involved with medical education, from the nhs side.
They were dealing with group of 2nd yr medical students recently who have had almost their whole course so far online!
There are loads of labs, dissections, clinical skills for future nurses, doctors, radiographers, physiotherapists etc which are STILL being taught online!
We run the risk of whole groups not reaching the level necessary to graduate in a few yrs time.
Never mind the concern of those of us who may need to be treated by them
The universities need to be told by Gov that this is not acceptable

Definitely not closing the attainment gap despite dropping standards for all pupils. Who knew that less deprived pupils might have access to more support at home during lockdown? So lockdown reduced standards for everyone but it increased the attainment gap more.

With medical students it is even more of a worry and other subjects where the human interactions are key. Students should be increasing their social skills with types of people they may never have come across in their own social circles. Whilst in IT or whatever this might not impact too much, it's vital for people who will need to be engaging appropriately with people from all walks of life who are in a vulnerable situation in terms of their health.

I have actually just written an email to Chris musson from the sun I'm so pissed off. There is no attention on Scottish unis at all.

My course by design can be taught fairly well remotely and it's not a medical course or anything but the benefits of face to face should not be ignored. 2 hours f2f in semester 1. None in semester 2 now.

I don't rate the sun but he seems to be one of the ones asking the difficult questions.

Colleges too lots of them cut the place numbers because of social distancing.

Just so unfair that kids are treated like this. They will end up with a nation of recluses who have lost their confidence going out and seeing other people.

@Lockdownbear

It's rotten the English unis and schools more or less went back to normal in September. Our secondary kids are stuffed in masks that don't do anything and uni students have become recluses when they should be having a blast.

Where and when will it end, fingers crossed the papers start to increase pressure as its really not right- esp when it's making little difference to covid figures.

My niece is at Leeds and she has no in person classes this term, so has gone back home.

The college situation is a disgrace @Lockdownbear
I know couple kids who dropped out because their course was 100% online.
They were 17 and if they had gone back to school for S6 they would have been in person teaching with no social distancing but because they were in college it was deemed unsafe🤷🏼‍♀️

It’s so rubbish for all the students.

As for the magic masks, even the BBC was reporting that there is no evidence at all that they work- no shit, Sherlock!

Hopefully the media will see sense.

Yes I think that's the issue @BlameItOnTheBlackStar
The colleges snd universities and even individual depts have all been allowed to interpret the guidance as they see fit.
But I certainly think with medical subjects Gov should be taking more of an interest or we'll have staffing issues in the future if students cant graduate

There’s a really interesting thread on Twitter about the difference in attitudes to risk amongst white and blue collar workers (it’s in the US). People who are used to taking risks within their jobs, such as construction workers, are much less concerned about the tiny risk that Covid presents to them, whereas college professors, for example, are terrified of dying from the equally tiny risk of Covid because they face far fewer risks daily.

I work with clients in the construction industry @WouldBeGood and can confirm! They never really did working from home to any great degree. After they were allowed to reopen as critical workers they just went back to normal as much as possible.

Meetings in tiny unventilated rooms every single day. It blew my mind at first, as I moved from a company that isn't reopening their offices until September coming!

On unis, DH has been marking first semester exams for a first year undergrad course. This is the 4th or 5th year he's done it, so he's seen a wide range of student abilities and so on over his time. He's been tearing his hair out because this year is a disaster... they're really struggling to pass a huge proportion of the year group, and even those who have passed are only just passing - only about 10% have got As, whereas usually it would be about double that. It's not just his teaching because there's a group of them doing the course, and it's not just the online nature of the teaching/ exam because last year (Sept 20 entrants) also had online teaching - and more of it too... this year they've at least managed in person workshops/ tutorials.

The only thing they can narrow it down to (and this is reflected in student comments too) is that they just haven't done proper exams before, and also have much lower basic knowledge/ skillset in general techniques that they should have learnt at higher level. This is the cohort that would have had higher and advanced higher years disrupted, with the faff of the teacher-assessed work being fed into algorithms, reduced curriculums, constant class tests on what they've learnt that week and so on. It seems to mean they're not able to take that knowledge further, combine sections of teaching into a more complex problem and so on. Even the language of the formal exam questions seems to have thrown them, whereas they've been coping fine with the more informal workshop questions on defined topics. This just wasn't something that he and his colleagues had considered would be an issue, so hadn't done any special exam prep stuff, beyond what they would usually do.

They obviously don't think it's fair to make so many students pay to resit/ retake the year for something that really can't be seen to be entirely their fault. So they are putting on extra basic classes to cover bits of the syllabus that seem to be a black hole, and do work on "exam thinking" . But it is true that having 2 years of disrupted education has affected the students, at least in his subject. And it's not even something "important" like medicine or dentistry... I really wouldn't want to let medics with huge holes in their knowledge/ understanding loose on the general public.

@ResilienceWanker

On unis, DH has been marking first semester exams for a first year undergrad course. This is the 4th or 5th year he's done it, so he's seen a wide range of student abilities and so on over his time. He's been tearing his hair out because this year is a disaster... they're really struggling to pass a huge proportion of the year group, and even those who have passed are only just passing - only about 10% have got As, whereas usually it would be about double that. It's not just his teaching because there's a group of them doing the course, and it's not just the online nature of the teaching/ exam because last year (Sept 20 entrants) also had online teaching - and more of it too... this year they've at least managed in person workshops/ tutorials.

The only thing they can narrow it down to (and this is reflected in student comments too) is that they just haven't done proper exams before, and also have much lower basic knowledge/ skillset in general techniques that they should have learnt at higher level. This is the cohort that would have had higher and advanced higher years disrupted, with the faff of the teacher-assessed work being fed into algorithms, reduced curriculums, constant class tests on what they've learnt that week and so on. It seems to mean they're not able to take that knowledge further, combine sections of teaching into a more complex problem and so on. Even the language of the formal exam questions seems to have thrown them, whereas they've been coping fine with the more informal workshop questions on defined topics. This just wasn't something that he and his colleagues had considered would be an issue, so hadn't done any special exam prep stuff, beyond what they would usually do.

They obviously don't think it's fair to make so many students pay to resit/ retake the year for something that really can't be seen to be entirely their fault. So they are putting on extra basic classes to cover bits of the syllabus that seem to be a black hole, and do work on "exam thinking" . But it is true that having 2 years of disrupted education has affected the students, at least in his subject. And it's not even something "important" like medicine or dentistry... I really wouldn't want to let medics with huge holes in their knowledge/ understanding loose on the general public.

Sad to read but makes sense. 5th & 6th year would usually prepare kids for higher education, both in ownership & the academics of it. These kids have missed so much

Sorry and do clarify I have friends & fa,ily who are teachers. They've worked so hard so agree this is it due to teachers

@ChristmasPlanning

Sorry and do clarify I have friends & fa,ily who are teachers. They've worked so hard so agree this is it due to teachers

To clarify.......!

That's q good point about student lacking exams experience.
Remember some will have left after 5th year so disrupted NAT5s and Highers - never sat a formal exam ever.

Yes, that's true lockdownbear - though in his subject most do have 2 higher years though offers are made based on highers so the AH year is variable in its intensity!

It's definitely not the teachers christmas! They had to cut down the syllabus, and (in DHs experience) when he asked the students what was missing most schools seemed to have dropped the two same topics. Incidentally the hardest ones Which is fair enough, and in itself isn't too much of an issue... the unis can start the course at higher level instead and build from that - given this is an issue that will take a few years to "work through" the system (though some uni lecturers may struggle explaining things from first principles as well as high school teachers do) . It's just more intense for the students who may expect a slightly dossy yr1. But the issue seems to be that they haven't had practice in "thinking" at uni level - as you say, the last 2 high school years should be working to that, and that's been missed in the panic to get all the remaining topics done while remote teaching/ teacher-assessing/ catching up from time missed during isolations etc. The teachers have done great in teaching how to do particular problems (because question 19 in the exam is always an example of x!) but not in why it should be done that way, and how else it could be tackled and what exceptions there are. Because there wasn't time for that level of thinking.

That is going to have a real impact on kids coming out the other end.

Unis can plug gaps but only if they are able to get seeing students f2f. It doesn't matter the subject students are going to leave education half taught.

I find the uni thing particularly horrifying. Aside from the obvious impact on actual education, there's the huge loss of all the social and cultural aspects that go alongside it.

I went from a rural area to a university in a huge city and it was revelatory. It wasn't just the studies, it was the people, the books, the music, the films, the clubs, the parties. It was utterly, magically exciting and I learned so many new things about everything, I formed friendships and tastes and opinions that underpinned everything that came after.

I could honestly cry thinking of some poor eighteen or nineteen year old sitting alone in their bedroom in front of a computer. None of those experiences. And they will never, ever get that time back. You only get your late teens/early twenties once, your brain is changing fast at that age.

Was always a big concern that students missing out on core 16-18 skills would really struggle at university. And let's not forget - 30 percent of Scottish kids had additional support needs pre pandemic, goodness knows what the figure is now and what is being delivered.