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Disturbing Admissions

Posted in Education, Maynooth with tags , , , on August 13, 2020 by telescoper

So, as the second day of Repeat Examinations at Maynooth University gets under way, students in the United Kingdom are receiving their A-level results. I’ve already heard a number of stories from friends and colleagues flabbergasted by the way some marks have been treated, so it all looks likely to be quite a mess. I have great sympathy for the students, for whom this has been an extraordinarily difficult year, and I hope the A-level fiasco doesn’t affect too many too badly.

My experience of over 30 years teaching in UK universities has convinced me that A-levels are not a very good preparation for higher education anyway and the obsession with them is rather unhealthy. Some of the best students I’ve ever had the pleasure of teaching came to University with poor A-level grades (for a variety of reasons).

In fact I’d go as far as to say that the entire system of University admissions in the United Kingdom needs to be overhauled. As I said in a post almost a decade ago:

…if we had the opportunity to design a process for university admissions from scratch, there is no way on Earth we would end up with a system like the current one.

Of course I longer work in the UK so there’s no longer a “we”, but the system in Ireland is not that much different, with the Leaving Certificate playing the role of A-levels for the vast majority of students.

As things stand in the UK, students apply for university places through UCAS before they have their final A-level results (which don’t come out until August). Most applications are in by January of the year of intended admission, in fact. The business of selecting candidates and making offers therefore usually makes use of interim results or “predicted grades” as supplied by teachers of the applicant.

In my (limited) experience most teachers systematically overestimate the grades of their pupils, which is presumably why so many of this year’s A-level results are being downgraded, but there are lots of unconscious biases at play here and I accept that some teachers may be unduly pessimistic about their students likely performance.

But the inaccuracy of predicted A-level grades is not the only absurdity in the current system. Universities have to engage in enormous amounts of guesswork during the admissions process. Suppose a department has a quota of 100, defining the target number students to take in. They might reasonably get a minimum of 500 applications for these 100 places, depending on the popularity of university and course.

Each student is allowed to apply to 5 different institutions. If a decision is made to make an offer of a place, it would normally be conditional on particular A-level grades (e.g. AAB). At the end of the process the student is expected to pick a first choice (CF) and an insurance choice (CI) out of the offers they receive. They will be expected to go to their first choice if they get the required grades, to the insurance choice if they don’t make it into the first choice but get grades sufficient for the reserve. If they don’t make either grade they have to go into the clearing system and take pot luck among those universities that have places free after all the CFs and CIs have been settled.

Each university department has to decide how many offers to make. This will always be larger than the number of places, because not all applicants will make an offer their CF. They have to honour all offers made, but there may be penalties if they under or over recruit. How many offers to make then? What fraction of students with an offer will put you first? What fraction of them will actually get the required grade?

The answers to these questions are not at all obvious, so the whole system runs on huge levels of uncertainty. I’m amazed that each year any institution manages to get anywhere close to the correct number, and we usually get very close indeed by the end.

It’s a very skilled job being an admissions tutor, but there’s no question it would all be fairer on both applicants and departments to remove most of the guesswork by which I mean allowing students to apply to University after they have got their results. But there is the rub. There are two ways I can see of changing the timetable to allow this:

  1. Have the final A-level examinations earlier
  2. Start the university academic year later

The unavoidable consequence of the first option would be the removal of large quantities of material from the A-level syllabus so the exams could be held several months earlier, which would be a disaster in terms of preparing students for university.

The second option would mean starting the academic year in, say, January instead of September. This would in my opinion be preferable to 1, but would still be difficult because it would interfere with all the other things a university does as well as teaching, especially research. The summer recess (July-September), wherein much research is currently done, could be changed to an autumn one (September-December) but there would be a great deal of resistance, especially from the older establishments; I can’t see Oxbridge being willing to abandon its definitions of teaching term! And what would the students do between July and January?

Either of these options would cause enormous disruption in the short-term, which is presumably why they have never been implemented. However, this year everything is disrupted anyway so there’s an opportunity to redesign the whole process. Delaying the start of the academic year until January 2021 would make a great deal of sense this year in particularly, though I think it’s a bit late to be doing it now.

I don’t really imagine the Government is thinking of doing this but here are some suggestions of elements of a new admissions system:

  • Students to apply after receiving A-level* grades (i.e. implement 1 or, preferably, 2 above)
  • All university applications to be anonymous to prevent discrimination.
  • The identity of the applicant’s school to be withheld to prevent undue influence.
  • Teachers to play no part in the process.

*I don’t think A-levels are fit for purpose so here I mean grades of whatever examination replaces them.

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Examination Shenanigans

Posted in Covid-19, Education, Maynooth with tags , , , on August 12, 2020 by telescoper

So here I am in my office while the first batch of our repeat examinations gets under way here in Maynooth. They seem to have started correctly so I’ve taken a break to have a cup of coffee and catch up on the news.

I find that examinations seem to be making headlines in the United Kingdom. First there was a to-do and a hoo-ha in Scotland that resulted in school examination results that had been downgraded being upgraded again. The downgrading involved using some sort of statistical model to `correct’ teacher-assigned grades and coursework but this model apparently generated significant anomalies.

Then, not to be outdone by the Scots, the English government has announced that estimated A-level grades, presumably obtained by a similar process to that deployed in Scotland, were to be upgraded too. Or not. It seems they will get the original grades but be able to appeal the results.

Writing in today’s Daily Telegraph, presumably without irony, Gavin Williamson explains the decision not to upgrade A-level results automatically:

Increasing the A Level grades will mean a whole generation could end up promoted beyond their abilities.

Gavin Williamson wrote that. Gavin Williamson.

Universities in the UK receive A-level results a few days before the students in order to make admissions decisions, but this year the results students eventually receive may differ from those the universities got. I can imagine the chaos this is causing behind the scenes.

If I understand correctly the new `Triple Lock’ on A-level results means that a student’s grade will be whichever is the highest of:

  • their mock exam result;
  • the grade estimated by their teacher;
  • an A*.

(OK, I made up that last bit.)

Some people think this approach might lead to grade inflation, but I imagine the authorities are less concerned about that than they are by the prospect of getting sued.

Another issue with the downgrading/upgrading situation is that students who took the International Baccalaureate (IB) and have received algorithmic grades have not had their grades increased, which seems to put them at a disadvantage with respect to students who took A-levels and may cause them to miss out on UK university places.

Meanwhile, here in Ireland, we await the School Leaving Certificate results. These are not due until 7th September but I think the plan is to moderate them as in the United Kingdom. Delaying these results gives Ireland the chance to learn from the UK but whether the process will end up being any fairer here is anyone’s guess!

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On the Eve of the Repeats

Posted in Covid-19, Education, Maynooth with tags , , on August 11, 2020 by telescoper

I won’t deny that I was caught on the hop by Friday’s sudden announcement of a partial lockdown in an area that includes Maynooth but at least we’ve had a couple of working days to activate Plan B and get all the online assessments ready to replace the repeat examinations that were due to start on campus tomorrow.

Happily all the necessary supports were provided quickly over the weekend and I think we’re now ready to go, with the first paper(s) starting tomorrow morning at 9.30am. There will be several of these per day for the next week or so so it’s going to be a busy period supervising them (remotely) and then marking the scripts when they’re finished. At least we have now got some experience of these tests, having done these before (in May). There are also fewer candidates for the repeats than first time round so it should all be manageable.

When the repeat exams are all marked and the Exam Board finished, we should have a firm idea how many students are progressing to the next academic year so we can draw up plans for lectures and tutorials in September.

Apart that is for the first year, where we won’t know the numbers until September. That will cause a bit of a rush but I’m sure we’ll manage.

All of this assumes that we are doing on-campus teaching in September, which would require the local lockdown to have been lifted. If not we’ll have to do everything online, including tutorials. A ray of hope is that the number of new cases is just 35 today, down from 174 on Saturday, but we’ll have to have nany more days like that to feel secure. We’ll just have to wait and see.

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Not Returning to Campus

Posted in Covid-19, Maynooth with tags , , , on August 8, 2020 by telescoper

Well.

Having spent the day yesterday getting our return to campus sorted, the Government last night announced restrictions on the counties of Offaly, Laois and Kildare. Following that a message came round from the President of Maynooth University, Philip Nolan including this:

Following the announcement this evening, the gradual reopening of campus from Monday, 10th August will be paused. Staff who are working from home should, in the main, continue to do so. Staff who are coming on campus to do their work effectively may continue to do so, and in certain circumstances, staff may, with the approval of their Head of Department, return to the campus to work, where it is necessary to do their work effectively or prepare for the coming academic year.

So we’re on hold for a couple of weeks (at least). That’s frustrating but not the end of the world. I don’t imagine we would have had that many people coming in over the next two weeks anyway.

On the bright side the recent outbreaks are very localised and there is a good testing and tracking system in place, which suggests they can be contained through isolation. On the other hand they are large clusters and it only takes a small amount of leakage to trigger a much wider spread.

Of more immediate concern is this:

Unfortunately, the restriction on travel means that it is no longer appropriate to go ahead with the on-campus resit examinations scheduled for next week. We will work with the colleagues involved and where possible we will replace these with online exams at the same times; where this is not possible, we will reschedule the exams at the earliest feasible time. We will of course continue to support our students in their studies in every way that we can.

Obviously we can’t hold examinations on campus if students can’t travel here from other counties. There is also a restriction of six on the number of people at an indoor event which would rule them out too.

Fortunately we have a Plan B and all these examinations will be replaced by online timed assessments. That means a busy couple of days next week – the exams are due to start next Wednesday (12th August) – but it is manageable.

I know a lot of people are angry about the new (partial) lockdown, especially pubs and restaurants. In my opinion the decision yesterday was inevitable given the steep increase in new cases (98 reported yesterday) :

Update: 174 new cases today (Saturday 8th August). Grim.

This growth is dominated by clusters of infections, mostly in meat processing works, in the three counties under lockdown. That includes 80 announced yesterday in the same plant. None of these is particularly close to Maynooth but the country boundaries are the only simple way of imposing local restrictions.

Serious questions do need to be asked, though, about how we got to this situation.

Outbreaks of Covid-19 in meat processing plants have been widely reported elsewhere for months, and Ireland does not seem to have learned from these. There are allegations that the plants involved may not have undergone proper inspections and that public health guidance has not been followed. The present circumstances could well be a result of negligence on the side of the businesses concerned and/or the government. These issues require urgent investigation to prevent possible occurrences elsewhere. If negligence can be demonstrated I sense a large number of lawsuits…

Let me just add one final comment. It seemed to me that the original return to work Roadmap, with five phases, was sensible and that it was working. I had serious reservations when it was decided to try speeding it up. If a carefully thought-out plan is working why change it on the fly?

The announcement of the accelerated Roadmap was interpreted by many in the general population as a signal that the Covid-19 epidemic in Ireland was over. Complacency set in and social distancing rules began to be flouted, especially among younger people.

I’m not saying this is the reason for the clusters in meat factories but it is probably behind the parallel increase in community transmission.

Now the Roadmap is paused and we’re behind where the original version would have put us. You can add impatience and complacency to the reasons we’re in this local difficulty.

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Returning to Campus

Posted in Covid-19, Education, Maynooth with tags , , on August 7, 2020 by telescoper

It’s been a busy day (so far) putting the finishing touches to return to work planning at the Department of Theoretical Physics at Maynooth University. We have improved the signage and decluttered the main corridor to allow the two-way system to operate.

We’ve also fitted the odd tensor barrier (that’s what the above thing is called) to prevent people wandering into offices uninvited contrary to social distancing requirements.

As well as all that I’ve received delivery of a selection of face masks, hand gel and disinfectant wipes.

All this is because the repeat examination period starts next week and we’re consequently preparing for the second wave (of examination marking) by allowing staff to come onto campus to collect their scripts, which most should be able to do from next week.

Update: owing to the recent increases in Covid-19 cases in Kildare Offaly and Laois, as of this evening, local restrictions have been imposed on these counties. As a consequence the return to work process has been paused and all repeat exams scheduled to take place on campus will be replaced by online timed assessments. Sigh.

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Implementation Guidelines for Public Health Measures in Higher Education Institutions

Posted in Covid-19, Education, Maynooth with tags , , , on August 6, 2020 by telescoper

Yesterday I was speculating out loud about where we go from here in order to return to teaching in September. Today I find that there’s actually a guidance document produced by the Irish Universities Association under the auspices of the Health Service Executive. The full document (PDF, 12 pages) can be found here.

The advice focuses on principles rather than practice and a lot of work will have to be done in individual institutions to translate the guidelines into working procedures, but it is welcome nonetheless. I encourage everyone involved in higher education to read it all.

A key issue on everyone’s mind concerns on-campus teaching, so I have selected this paragraph:

This suggests that the social distancing between staff and students and between staff and other staff should be kept to 2m but the spacing between students in lecture theatres, laboratories, etc can be 1m with the proviso that students wear face masks.

Note however that there is a more general restriction that indoor gatherings should involve no more than 50 people. Unless some sort of exemption is granted for HEIs then this, rather than social distancing, may determine the maximum class size.

Allowing us to populate rooms with one metre spacing between students rather than two makes a huge difference to our ability to accommodate students in lecture halls and other teaching spaces, but even so the capacity of most teaching rooms will be much lower than normal. For example, the room I taught my first-year class of ~85 in last year has a nominal capacity of 90. With 1m social distancing that is reduced to 27; with 2m distancing it is down to 18. I don’t know how many students I’ll have next semester, but hopefully it will be more than 27! Assuming that it is, I won’t be able to teach them as a single group.

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Phase Four Postponed

Posted in Covid-19, Maynooth with tags , , on August 5, 2020 by telescoper

Yesterday the Irish government decided to postpone the last phase of its (already revised) Roadmap for Reopening and also make mandatory the wearing of face masks in shops. Phase Four was supposed to start on August 10th and was to include, among other things, the opening of pubs.

The reason for not proceeding with Phase Four is obvious when you look at yesterday’s  new cases graph:

(I keep updating the data here.

Note that the graph is logarithmic on the y-axes so the number of new cases is not large (currently averaging about 45 per day), but the trend is concerning; last week’s average was about 18. Most of the new cases are aged under 45 which perhaps accounts at least partly for the fact that the death curve is not rising: younger people are at lower risk of developing serious problems. The pattern of increasing infections but decreasing mortality figures is quite widespread across Europe, actually.

The recent cases in Ireland are occurring in clusters in particular locations. Of the 45 cases reported yesterday, for example, 33 were in County Kildare most of them at a single factory in Kildare itself (which has now been shut).

There has also been an increase in community transmission, though, which is perhaps even more dangerous than individual outbreaks.

It seems to me that pausing the planned relaxation of restrictions is a sensible thing to do at this stage. To open pubs now – which many continue to argue for – would in my view be extremely foolhardy.

I’m not sure what all this means for the new academic year which is due to start in September nor even the repeat examination period which are due to start next week but if cases continue to increase at their current rate it will severely impact our ability to return to on-campus activities.

 

 

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R. I. P. John Hume (1937-2020)

Posted in Maynooth, Politics with tags , , , on August 3, 2020 by telescoper

Very sad news arrived this morning of the death at the age of 83 of civil rights campaigner and politician John Hume. He had been suffering from dementia for some time, and passed away earlier this morning in a nursing home in his native Derry. In that sense his death was not unexpected but I know from my own recent experience that won’t make it any easier for his loved ones. Condolences to John’s wife Pat and their family at what must be a difficult time for them.

John Hume, a Catholic, espoused the Irish nationalist cause but through non-violence, which often drew the ire of extremists on either side. Being moderate can be a dangerous position when you’re surrounded by armed factions. He became leader of the SDLP and was a key agent in the peace process that led to the construction of the Good Friday Agreement, a fact that was recognised in 1998 by a share of the Nobel Peace Prize (with David Trimble).

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God” it says in the Gospel according to St Matthew. I wish more people – especially politicians – who profess to be Christian took that as seriously as John Hume.

There is a special connection between John Hume and Maynooth. He came here to St Patrick’s College initially to study for the priesthood. He didn’t pursue that aim but instead completed an MA degree in 1964 with a thesis on ‘Social and Economic Aspects of the Growth of Derry 1825 -1850’. Maynooth University recognises that connection with John & Pat Hume postgraduate scholarships and through the Hume building on campus.

John Hume was a man of great courage and integrity who dedicated his life to the cause of peace and mutual respect. He will be greatly missed.

I’ll end with a quote of his:

Ireland is not a romantic dream; it is not a flag; it is 4.5 million people divided into two powerful traditions. The solution will be found not on the basis of victory for either, but on the basis of agreement and a partnership.

And another:

All conflict is about difference, whether the difference is race, religion or nationality The European visionaries decided that difference is not a threat, difference is natural. Difference is of the essence of humanity. Difference is an accident of birth and it should therefore never be the source of hatred or conflict. The answer to difference is to respect it. Therein lies a most fundamental principle of peace – respect for diversity.

Rest in peace John Hume (1937-2020). Ar dheis Dé go raibh a h’anam dílis.

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Time, Money and Guidance in Higher Education

Posted in Covid-19, Education, Maynooth with tags , , , , on July 27, 2020 by telescoper

There was a welcome announcement last week of a package of supports for further and higher education institutions and students in Ireland to cover costs incurred by third level institutions during the Covid-19 pandemic and enable further and higher education students to return to college this September.

There wasn’t much sign of any help at all coming under the previous Government, so this is perhaps a sign that the new Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science might be a force to be reckoned with in the new administration.

If this funding is to achieve its aim, however, it will have to reach its targets very quickly. The new academic year is to commence at the end of September, which is just two months away. The slice that is intended to go directly to students to help them buy laptops or tablets can probably be spent quite quickly, but the money intended for colleges and universities to buy equipment will take much longer to filter through.

Speaking for myself, as Head of a Department of Theoretical Physics I’d say we desperately need better video equipment for both live and recorded material. At present we have no lecture capture facilities at all in any lecture theatres. We also need graphics tablets to help lecturers show mathematical working via remote means. There is likely to be a big rush for this sort of thing between now and September, and no guarantee we will have it in time for the start of lectures.

You might well ask `why don’t you buy this stuff now?’. The answer is simple: I haven’t got the money!

Things are even tougher for schools. Here there is another big support package on the way, this time of €350 million to allow them to open at the end of August. Getting kids back to school is obviously important not only for their education but also to allow their parents to return to work. However, the time available to prepare all the things necessary is just a month, even shorter than it is at third level.

Among the funds being made available is €75 million for `building works’. I’m sure that investment is very welcome, but can it do anything between now and the end of August? It’s actually rather difficult to spend money that quickly if due process is followed. Just look at how the UK government has squandered tens of millions on phony contracts, such as the £12 million it blew on a Covid-19 tracing app that never worked.

On top of that 1000 new schoolteachers are going to be provided. Will they be recruited in time?

Another announcement to appear last week contained guidance for further and higher education on returning to on-site activity in 2020. This guidance has been interpreted in the media in a rather unhelpful way, causing many of my colleagues to go into a panic. This, for example, from the Irish Times:

Physical distancing rules of two metres will apply on college campuses from September in a move which will severely limit the ability of universities to hold lectures and graduation ceremonies.

A strict requirement of 2 metre distancing at all times would indeed severely reduce the capacity of lecture theatres, but if you look at the guidance it is considerably more nuanced than this. The real problem with this guidance is that it is so vague. We can only hope we get something a bit more concrete soon so we can plan for September. Alternatively we could just wing it. All of it. At the moment this seems the only viable strategy.

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Reading Finnegans Wake

Posted in Literature, Maynooth with tags , on July 25, 2020 by telescoper

Doing my bit to support local businesses as they come out of lockdown I decided to order a book from the excellent independent bookshop on Main Street. You can’t browse there yet but you can order books for collection.

I went to collect my order yesterday. I was worried that they might be struggling for business but the place was chock-a-block with packs of school books ready for collection ahead of the new school year.

I picked up this bit of light reading:

I disagree with people who say that Ulysses is a difficult read, but Finnegans Wake is certainly a challenge. The lady in the bookshop said “Good luck with it!” as she handed it to me…

Alfred Hitchcock once claimed that “puns are the highest form of literature” and one of the features of Finnegans Wake is the constant stream of puns (in different languages). It seems that almost every sentence contains some form of double meaning too. Finnegans Wake may be hard going but it’s very playful, not only with linguistic meaning but with the sounds that words make, which can be delightful in itself independently of what they’re supposed to mean.

I’ve always thought of Finnegans Wake not so much as a novel but as as a very long poem to be read out loud. Indeed here is a strange but fascinating clip of Joyce himself reading an excerpt. Note the attention he pays to the rhythm:

I’ve set myself the target of reading 10 pages a day, which means it will take me a couple of months to finish it. I’ll try reading some bits out to myself, though I can’t do the accent…

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