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Used to use the nag me, but I have since switched to the ATR Tracker service. Allows much better control of your ‘stable’, where you can put a sentence or two beside each horse, which is very useful if you track numerous horses and cannot remember why you tracked it in the first place. You can also set the number of runs before the horse is removed from the ‘stable’, which I find useful so I am not being constantly e-mailed.
One advantage nag me does have is it e-mails you the day before rather than over night as ATR does, though this is of little inconvenience.
Both services do basically the same thing, just a matter of personal preference (both are free)
Just made the Racing Post website
http://www.racingpost.com/news/horse-ra … 61907/top/
An impressive feat by anyone’s standards, and a great training performance, congratulations in order for all concerned
Does anyone know if Riverside Theatre will be running in this?
Henderson said he’s ‘very unlikely’ to run, as he’s not yet fit (if I remember correctly)
Fear not, Dusty, for in 40 years time you’ll probably be berating prevailing standards, too.
It’s that long since I first conducted job interviews, and I well recall being appalled at the standard of English and Maths, even then.
With today’s technology, students are bound to be better informed than we ever were, as there’s more information at their fingertips now than in the largest Uni library then, so small wonder exam marks have improved commensurately.You know, I probably will, and I hope there is some young whippersnapper to argue with me
maybe grades are inflating, but I believe that students are not necessarily working harder, but working smarter. What i mean by this is that there is now a wealth of revision material on the internet and in books, so students can revise from that, then test their knowledge on past papers that can be found easily on the internet, so for a motivated student, revision is easier.
There’s no "maybe" about it. Grades ARE inflating and it’s an absolute racket.
It sounds like I did my exams at a similar sort of stage to Paul Ostemeyer. I certainly didn’t have the luxury of doing soft coursework to count towards a large part of my grades. I certainly didn’t have the option of plagiarising my essays from the internet, having parents or teachers knock them into shape and then having the luxury of keeping resubmitting the work or retaking any exams until I finally got it right.
I sat an exam based on revision and all I could cram in and regurgitate in an exam situation to a strict timetable, without the knowledge in advance that it was impossible for me to fail, no matter how appalling my grammar, spelling or punctuation.
If I didn’t come up to scratch on the day, I failed. That’s the point of an exam.
If you seriously believe that a pass rate of 97 per cent and rising, or whatever it is these days, is a realistic reflection of the abilities of young people, you are being sadly deluded. As I say, it is in everybody’s interests for people to continue to be deluded. There are votes and public sector jobs in it.
As I say, nobody wants to admit that they are being conned. Young people may be working hard but they have a virtually cast iron guarantee that they cannot fail. That was not the case in the days of the old GCE, O Level and CSE. It’s like backing horses with huge bets, knowing that you can only ever win and can only ever keep getting bigger returns.
I was hopeless at maths at school. I wasn’t deemed up to O Level so I did a CSE. Despite working hard and being given one-to-one extra tuition after school by the teacher, the best I managed was a CSE Grade 2. Needless to say, because it wasn’t an O Level, employers wouldn’t be interested in it. It’s a fact of life.
I don’t think giving me a guaranteed much higher mark, as I would no doubt get today, is fooling anyone. I didn’t make the grade in maths and I had to accept I wasn’t good enough at it. Why fool people? I would have passed with flying colours today. My grade would be two or three grades higher than the lowly E that I at first managed in O Level maths.
It’s very sad that young people are being conditioned to believe that "working hard" for something you are guaranteed to pass, along with the rest of the 97 per cent, is somehow acceptable.
As I say, nobody these days wants even to accept that it is happening. Social engineering is producing a generation of illiterate, barely numerate, A grade students who have been made the victims of a huge con that the exams they are taking are somehow taxing, mentally stretching and valuable.
Never mind challenging me to look at exam papers that I could crib the answers for on the internet and retake until I got the "correct" grade. Come and look at the barely literate graduates I work with and see the appalling standards of their written work. Come and see whether an English graduate of today can even spell or knows what a gerund or adjectival phrase is. What I see is the norm these days. These are supposed to be the better educated ones. Goodness knows what the textspeak-writing others who are not graduates are like. You, of course, won’t be able to see that there is even a problem, though.
Anyone can work "smarter" if it’s impossible to fail and the work can be cribbed from the internet. Schools connive in this, again because inflated grades are in their interests for league table purposes and, ultimately, funding.Are you just ignoring everything I say? Because if you had read what I’d written before, you would know that coursework is not ‘soft’. It may have been soft in the past, and open to abuse, but they have tightened up massively now, with old style coursework being replaced with the new controlled assessments, that are done under timed, controlled circumstances with no access to the internet. Get your facts right.
I also sat an exam based on revision, what else am I going to base it on? I also sat it with the knowledge that if I didn’t get good enough grades, I wouldn’t be able to go to a good sixth form college or university. Pass rates are obviously increasing, but everyone knows what a good set of grades is nowadays, they have just gone up from ‘back in the day’, so to bring down everyone’s grades is a huge overstatement as well as demoralising.
How am I going to ‘crib’ answers from the internet? As I have said before, coursework is now done under controlled conditions, specifically to avoid students plagiarising from the internet.
Just because you want to make yourself feel better about your grades doesn’t mean you have to bring down everyone who has worked hard and got GOOD grades at GCSES, not just PASSED. That’s the difference nowadays, you don’t need to simply pass, you need to get good grades, and I think you need to understand that.
I guarantee that anyone who got Cs and Ds in their GCEs or O Levels all those years ago would get straight As or A*s now, with the same amount of knowledge.
It’s impossible to fail exams these days. They have been dumbed down so much that they are meaningless bits of paper.
The students might be kidded into thinking their exams are just as rigorous but they’re impossible to fail. If you can’t fail something and you automatically get an A, as young people seem to expect these days, what is the point of the charade?
It’s not their fault that they are the pawns in this charade but trying to pretend that the exams haven’t been dumbed down and the grades artificially inflated for political and social reasons is just crazy. Not only that, it’s plain dishonest. Nobody thanks you for pointing that out but employers and universities (sorry, unis) know. They have to do the remedial work with the products of the grade inflation.
There are vast numbers of students going to universities who should never be there because they just haven’t got the academic ability. The "all must have prizes" culture is to blame.You ‘guarantee’ this do you? What evidence are you basing this opinion on? Trust me, exams are not a ‘charade’, and they do not give out A’s, rather you are forced to work hard, and those that don’t are shown up on results day. Regurgitating what you hear on the news isn’t the best way to form an argument, and I think you should take a step back and maybe assess some of the evidence, take a look at the past paper I linked to in my previous post, and tell me they are giving away A’s. Feel free to look at other past papers, they are all available on the internet.
To call these exams ‘worthless bits of paper’ is insulting to myself, and everyone who works hard to achieve the best grades possible. You really ought to think before you write things, because if you knew anyone who did the exams and actually worked hard for them, you would not be saying this.
Do any of you do GCSE or A-level? I doubt it, and if you did, you’d know it isn’t a walk in the park. I had to do a tremendous amount of work to ge the grades i got at GCSE, and the amount of work to do at A-level is at least double GCSE.
In ‘my day GCSE’s did not exist there were two exams CSE or GCE O’ Level, with O’ Level being the "higher"of the two.
GCSE’s are a combination of the two, introduced when some idiot decided the poor children should not be allowed to fail and it was terribly wrong to have two different levels of examination.
O’ Levels were not easy and the norm was to do just five or six subjects or, if you were really good seven – it was impossible to do more. Whereas with GCSE’s it seems, if my nephews and nieces are anything to go by, nine or more seems the norm.
Also if I am not mistaken doesn’t GCSE also include course work as part of the assessment, I believe it counts for 60% – whereas with O’ Level (apart for a handful of specialist subjects) the exam counted for 100% of the grade.
When I took my A’ Levels only 18% of students went on to that level of education, now it is 72%.
Also it is impossible to compare grades now with grades which were awarded in my time. When I took my A’ Levels the top 10% were awarded an A grade, regardless of their marks, the next 15% received a B, the next 10% C, the next 15% E which meant 70% always passed. The next 20% were given an O’ Level at the subject and the lowest 10% failed, no matter how high the score.
The current system was introduced in September 2000
In 2007 independent analysis of marking and grading of A’ Level papers, comparing between 1988 and 2006. It found that students of similar ability were achieving on average about 2 grades higher in 2006 than they were in 1988. In the case of maths it was nearer to 3.5 grades higher.
Use of the AS system (in my day AS was actually a higher qualification than a straight A grade A’ Level) ensures students drop weak subjects, thus inflating final grades. Also unlimited re-sits are now allowed, whereas only one re-sit was allowed previously.
I think the decline in standards is also exemplified by more and more Universities setting entrance exams to back up the A’ Level results.
Finally there are far more "soft" subjects at A’ Level than there used to be. For example there are now nine different "Art and Design" A’ Level subjects, as well as, to name a few, "Critical Thinking" ,"Film Studies", "Dance", "Drama" and not forgetting the ubiquitous "Media Studies" – yet surprisingly there are only two Mathematics, A’ Levels whereas there were at least five when I took my A’ Levels.
There are still two different types of qualification, I don’t know if you have ever heard of the BTEC? it is the lower qualification of the two, so those who the GCSE’s do not appeal to can take that.
As I have said before, I don’t think (most) GCSE’s are easy, maybe I’m just an idiot, but I think coursework, especially under the system now used, where it cannot be re done until next year, and must be done under controlled, timed circumstances, is much more pressurised than a straight exam, and the amount coursework counts for, or whether it is done at all, varies greatly from subject to subject.
More people taking education further than required can only be a good thing in my eyes, and maybe grades are inflating, but I believe that students are not necessarily working harder, but working smarter. What i mean by this is that there is now a wealth of revision material on the internet and in books, so students can revise from that, then test their knowledge on past papers that can be found easily on the internet, so for a motivated student, revision is easier.
No one with any ambition (at least at my school) takes the soft subjects you mentioned. To be honest, they are soft, and the top Universities almost spell out that if you take them, you will most likely not be given a place.
Do any of you do GCSE or A-level? I doubt it, and if you did, you’d know it isn’t a walk in the park. I had to do a tremendous amount of work to ge the grades i got at GCSE, and the amount of work to do at A-level is at least double GCSE.
I feel I did well at GCSE, and to hear people constantly say how easy it is to get an A* is more than a little undermining and very annoying.
Now, I do not know how hard it was ‘back in the day’, all I know is that it is a lot of work to do now, and for people to say it is easy is ignorant and frustrating for those of us that have done well.
http://www.ocr.org.uk/download/pp_09_ju … 724_01.pdf
see how well you do with that.
Well, to give you some information on how RS is taught at the moment (having done the GCSE), you learn about most religions in the first couple of years, but for the last two – three years, the school picks two religions for you to focus on (in reality, you don’t even look at any other religion during this stage).
The whole course is actually pretty interesting, as you are not taught that Christianity is fact, far from it (from a CofE school), and you learn mostly about beliefs of the different denominations about issues like abortion, or life after death.
While I don’t think it should be compulsory to GCSE level, I think it should be compulsory before then, as it has given me a good base of informations about relgions, and I would encourage anyone to take it to GCSE (though not A level, that’s ridiculous
)Rubi Light for me, as long as he’s none the worse for that fall I think he has a really good chance as he’s a cut above these.
Fair enough HGM. I don’t know if you saw the interview with BG but I got the very strong impression that he feels the horse wants a serious hold-up ride, even after experiencing today how well the horse ran on.
I suspect that if the horse travels as well as he hopes, he’ll try and hold on to him till well after the last in CH.
Exactly what I thought following the interview with him, don’t know if agree exactly with what he was saying, but I really respect him as a jockey, and if he thinks that’s what should be done, who am I to question him?
Shaping up to be a really exciting Champion Hurdle (aren’t they always?).
Definitely agree with you regarding Rubi Light. 5/2 on Ladbrokes is a great price in my eyes
Looks a good race for a monday meeting at Plumpton.
At the prices I have to say I fancy Maringo Bay. On his sole start over fences he was a close third to two quality horses – Mamlook and Tullamore Dew. The latter has been racing in very good company, while Mamlook has won the Chester Cup as well as Grade 2 over hurdles (has also won more recently).
As mentioned before he did give Invictus a good beating at Ffos Las in February, and while he rather faltered at Aintree following that, I think that can be forgiven when considering how good the competition was that day.
Gift of Dgab is probably the one I fear the most, given his extremely easy win at Limerick, however he is under a penalty and probably didn’t beat that much that day. Indian Duadaie is next best, with some smart form over hurdles.
While the lay off is a worry, I think Maringo Bay should go well at a nice price
Agree it will be interesting to see Sizing Europe at two miles, however, I’d also be interested in seeing Gauvain if he takes up his place. He’d likely need some rain to show his best but he was a very impressive winner at the Open meeting and is a nice price.
Shame about a Finian’s Rainbow dropping out, but still a good race should the main race principals hold their ground.
