The Three Rs v PhD in Text Messaging

[Diego_Sideburns]

Two out of five Oldham pupils will start secondary school this year with poor reading, writing and maths,

 

http://www.oldham-chronicle.co.uk/news-fea...standards-at-11

 

but I bet they’re OK when it comes to TXT.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8184536.stm

 

[rudemedic]

How's your Urdu, Hindi, Bengali, Polish etc. Diego. Considering that 25% of Oldham's population is from an ethnic minority I'm not totally surprised about this. I would imagine that somewhere round 30% of Oldham's 11 year olds the come from backgrounds where the origins aren't from an English speaking country. These children are unlikely to be bought up speaking English in the home so why should they have to abide by the same standards as the other children who have years on them in terms of speaking English. That plus the fact that tests should really be designed so a certain number fail them (usually about 5%), otherwise what's the point in testing them, means that you can make such damming statistics look fairly ordinary when it comes to towns as ethnically diverse as Oldham.

 

(If they had said that 40% of Oldham's 11 year olds bought up in English speaking houses had failed at least 1 SAT then I would be a little bit concerned).