Testing Testing

‘THERE are two ways to improve test results – one is to perform better, the other is to lower the pass mark.

Britain in 2006

The trouble about the first one is that it often requires a lot of hard work, and it is really not worth the time and trouble when the second option is so much easier.

So, we congratulate the Government for not wasting our money and our children’s time trying to improve their reading and writing skills, but instead fiddling the official figures.

The Telegraph says an official inquiry has backed its claim that the pass mark in English was lowered by seven points in May 1999 to increase the number of people meeting the required standard.

Such is the success of this scheme that there are claims that Alan Milburn, when he was Health Secretary, used a similar wheeze to boost the star rating of Tony Blair’s local hospital.

And, in the Times, we hear that the pass mark for speed cameras is also to be reduced, thereby increasing the number of us who will be fined next year to three million from only 1.1 million in 2001.

If the policy is a success, by 2007 there should be only three people in the whole country with valid driving licences, thereby leaving thousands of miles of open road to be enjoyed by John Prescott and his many Jags.’

Posted: 18th, December 2003 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink