I remember how it was -- JR
Oxbridge to address inequalities in postgraduate education
It is foolish enough to enrol underqualified students into first degrees. Trying to get them into graduate degrees is an even bigger folly. Postgradute degrees are very demanding. Trying to get students who were mediocre performers elsewhere into such degree programs is really Quixotic
Cambridge and Oxford have announced a collaborative programme to widen participation across the postgraduate higher education sector.
The project aims to increase admission rates for students from underrepresented ethnic minority backgrounds, specifically in the area of postgraduate research and PhDs and DPhils.
The programme is funded by a grant of £800,00 from the Office for Students (OfS) and Research England (RE), which will be shared between Cambridge and Oxford.
The proportion of white students who continue into postgraduate education is currently higher than the proportion of students from minority ethnic groups, with the disparity widening at the doctoral level. Disparities are most significant for Black British, British Pakistani and British Bangladeshi students.
These trends mean that the academic sector continues to be dominated by white professors.
The project will see Oxford and Cambridge “develop and test a range of new admissions practices and systems designed to transform selection processes for postgraduate research.”
Selection model prototypes will be piloted, building on “world-leading inclusive recruitment practices” which will be tested in 16 departments across the two universities.
Professor Graham Virgo, Senior Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Cambridge, said:
“We are really pleased to be partnering with the University of Oxford, and delighted that this OfS/RE funding competition has brought about the opportunity to share data and current practice so openly. We feel this is indicative of a wider desire across the sector to collaborate to bring about transformational change in representation in postgraduate study.”
By 2025, The programme aims to decrease the ‘offer gap’ by half, and eliminate it completely by 2035. Four new posts will be created across the two universities.
Dr Katherine Powlesland, Postgraduate Widening Participation Manager at the University of Cambridge, said:
“We want to find ways to make admissions systems flex better – thinking imaginatively about pre-requisites, really interrogating the inclusivity of our systems, asking the right questions so we can spot and support the best talent – and also to think radically about innovative inclusive recruitment.”
She continued: “From the postgraduate communities of Britain’s leading research universities come the experts of tomorrow: the decision-makers and advisors on climate change, on educational policy, on social justice. We need these researchers to represent the widest range of lived experience possible, so that, ultimately, all voices can be heard and no perspective goes unseen.”
Cambridge also made a second successful bid and will also collaborate with University College London and City University to offer paid summer research internships to students from underrepresented ethnic groups.
Dr Powlesland added: “We also know there is a lot we could do further upstream to support ethnic minority students to make successful applications for postgraduate research study. We are delighted that, with the support of the Office for Students and Research England, we are also able to partner with UCL and City on a really exciting project to deliver undergraduate summer research internships.
“Cambridge will be offering at least 72 paid internships over three years to Black British, British Bangladeshi, and British Pakistani undergraduates as part of the collaboration. We are excited to be pushing for real change in minority ethnic representation in academic research.”
https://www.varsity.co.uk/news/22562
******************************************America’s falling standards in reading and maths predate the pandemic
“We can’t be competitive in the 21st century if we continue to slide the way we have,” President Joe Biden warned in October. Mr Biden worries in particular that educational attainment in America is sliding. Recently published scores, from tests taken just before the covid-19 pandemic, show how far.
As part of its “long-term trend” project, more or less every four years since the 1970s the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has administered reading and maths tests to a sample of American students aged nine and 13. There was no test in 2016.
The results of the latest, in January 2020, were not good. “This was the first time in the almost 50-year history...of the long-term trend assessments that we observed declines among 13-year-olds,” said Peggy Carr of the part of the Department of Education which oversees the NAEP. Average scores for this age group fell by three points in reading and five points in maths (see chart). (The scales run from zero to 500: a score of 150, for example, indicates ability to carry out simple reading tasks or cope with simple arithmetical facts; 300 denotes facility with “complicated information” in reading or “moderately complex” reasoning in maths.)
The scores of the nine-year-olds did not fall by any statistically significant amount. But when grouped by performance levels, the plight of struggling students across both age cohorts is more acute than the overall numbers would suggest. Between 2012 and 2020 maths and reading scores for worse-performing students fell by more than those of their better-performing peers, which were mostly stagnant.
Maths scores have been particularly slippery. While 13-year-olds in the 90th percentile saw little change in their scores between 2012 and 2020, scores for the tenth percentile fell 12 points. The maths gap between black 13-year-olds and their white counterparts, which in previous assessments seemed to be narrowing slightly, also grew. While in 2012 average scores for white 13-year-olds were 28 points higher than those of black students, in 2020 this difference grew to 35 points.
Explaining these trends is thorny. (Some commentators are so reluctant to use these tests to speculate on broader trends that they call doing so “misnaepery.”) Some studies blame the fallout from the financial crisis in 2008 for harming education. But there is no consensus on why things have not improved again. The results of the next set of long-term trend tests, due to be held in 2024, will reflect, among other things, the impact of school closures during covid-19. The current data show that many American students entered that difficult time already woefully behind their peers. And since maths is more difficult than reading to pick up outside school, the pandemic may then harm scores in that subject even further.
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Parents Furious After CA High School Announces 'All Gender' Locker Room
Wilson High School parents in Long Beach, California are furious upon learning that the Unified School District is planning to build a co-ed locker room where teenage boys and teenage girls will shower and dress together.
The district has pushed the gay agenda pretty heavily in the past, but an "all-gender" locker room was a shock to parents.
Measure E, as it is being called, will "create all-gender inclusive facilities" and "the instructor stated that it is created as 'a safe space for people who might be otherwise uncomfortable.'”
Wilson’s Assistant Principal Guillermo Jimenez announced the new locker room to parents via email:
Parents and guardians are invited to join a virtual community meeting on Tuesday, November 30 at 6 p.m. to learn more about the new aquatic center and inclusive locker room coming to Wilson High School fall 2023. Construction will begin next summer.
The Long Beach Unified School District’s inclusive facilities are spaces that serve students with disabilities, students of all gender identities and expressions, and students who desire privacy for any number of reasons. Wilson’s new aquatic center will feature an inclusive, all-gender locker room.
How does this not scream bad idea to every person on the school board? This opens the door wide for sexual assault and teen pregnancies.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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