Coronavirus - those in China, and general discussion

[889]

But all those kids are now sitting at home studying. They don't want to go through that again.

[somethingfunny]

I wrote a post about how they couldn’t replace the gaokao, but I’ve changed my mind.

 

Each school ranks all its students based on the huge number of practice tests they’ve been doing and then they go down the list and award the score that position received last year.

 

The problem is that it would have to be transparent to prevent any bribing for a higher rank. And if it’s transparent you’d probably need an appeal process. And that’s where it starts to get difficult.

[889]

Is there data showing a strong correlation between practice and actual test scores?

[mungouk]

6 hours ago, Meng Lelan said:

In France the bac exams are canceled this year,

 

Yes, A-levels, GCSEs and Scottish exams also cancelled in the UK, and International Baccalaureate and iGCSE are cancelled world-wide too.

 

This creates a new problem of course — what you do when the results are used for university entry requirements.  In the UK they're looking at coursework grades, predicted grades, and teachers' evaluations and they will award the certificate based on those with no exam taking place.

[somethingfunny]

5 hours ago, 889 said:

 

Is there data showing a strong correlation between practice and actual test scores?

 

 

Correlation between mock test score and actual test score? Probably not that strong. 

 

Correlation between class rank in a mock test and class rank in the actual test? Probably much stronger.

 

So you just tell a high school that they’re going to get exactly the same scores they got last year, but they’ll be awarded according to current position in the class rank. One advantage China has here is that ranking kids in a year group is fairly common practice.

[anonymoose]

2 hours ago, mungouk said:

This creates a new problem of course — what you do when the results are used for university entry requirements.  In the UK they're looking at coursework grades, predicted grades, and teachers' evaluations and they will award the certificate based on those with no exam taking place.

 

I actually think this is terrible. There's this thing in school (at least there was at the school I went to) where teachers reward you for effort rather than results (like giving the loser a participation trophy). If you find the classes easy and unmotivating, and hence don't put in as much effort as the teachers would like to see, regardless of your results, you will be punished for it.

 

This will inevitably favour those who work hard, even if they don't get good results, and disadvantage those who do well even without having to work hard.

[Lu]

In the Netherlands, there are two 'end of school level' exams: one at the end of primary school, one at the end of secondary school. The one at the end of primary school determines what level secondary school you can go (there are four difficulty levels). There is talk about cancelling these exams this year, and admitting students to school levels based on the recommendation of the teacher. Problem is that this is proven to be problematic: teachers have prejudices, students from a disadvantaged background (parents with low education and/or foreign background) tend to get lower recommendations from the teacher. Cancelling the exam would mean these students would have no way to prove themselves.

 

There is also talk of cancelling the secondary school exams, but that is less of a problem. (Or just a problem for individual students, but not systemic.) Diplomas would be awarded based on the exams taken by the schools themselves throughout the year, so students will have had opportunity to prove they know the material.

[ChTTay]

2 hours ago, anonymoose said:

There's this thing in school (at least there was at the school I went to) where teachers reward you for effort

When was this though?

 

Teachers pretty much get given a rubric for a piece of coursework that all that work is graded to. If you don’t hit specific criteria then your grade sucks, regardless of how hard you worked.

[anonymoose]

4 minutes ago, ChTTay said:

Teachers pretty much get given a rubric for a piece of coursework that all that work is graded to. If you don’t hit specific criteria then your grade sucks, regardless of how hard you worked.

 

Perhaps things have changed, but at least in my day, there wasn't much coursework for most subjects (depending on the subject, of course, and which examining board). But coursework is a joke in its own right anyway.

[ChTTay]

9 minutes ago, anonymoose said:

but at least in my day,

So quite some time ago then 

[mungouk]

An interesting, though rather bleak, short documentary on life in Wuhan during the lockdown, filmed by two vloggers who live there. 

 

Wuhan: Life Under Lockdown (23 mins)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000gj5f/our-world-wuhan-life-under-lockdown

 

(VPN required if outside of the UK; doesn't seem to be on YT at the moment.)

 

Plenty of Mandarin dialogue with English subtitles, if you want to listen out for CV-19 vocab words.

 

 

[ChTTay]

This cartoon about sorting foreign trash ?

 

Hopefully Xenophobia doesn’t go much further than stupid online stuff. 

[AaronUK]

removed

[suMMit]

What do you think about the big crowds over Qingming this past weekend ie. Huangshan? I wonder if we're looking at a second outbreak.

[somethingfunny]

On 4/5/2020 at 1:19 PM, anonymoose said:

I actually think this is terrible. There's this thing in school (at least there was at the school I went to) where teachers reward you for effort rather than results (like giving the loser a participation trophy).

 

No, this isn't true.  I mean, it may have been true for your particular experience, but in general most high schools in the UK do multiple completely objective measures of pupil performance every year for the simple reason that it is the most accurate way to judge performance in end of school public examinations.  So, the "teacher's pet" might get all the house points, but they certainly won't come top of the two or three mock GCSE exams they do in their final year before the actual GCSE exam - it's just not how it works.

 

And seeing as teacher predicted outcomes will need to be based on this data, your teacher's perception of your effort will be completely irrelevant.  This is irregardless of the established fact that, actually, effort is the one of the main determining factors in outcome.

[anonymoose]

2 hours ago, somethingfunny said:

most high schools in the UK do multiple completely objective measures of pupil performance every year for the simple reason that it is the most accurate way to judge performance in end of school public examinations

 

If teacher predicted outcomes are based solely on objective measures such as mock exams, that is one thing. But I don't think mock exams are necessarily an accurate way to judge performance in end of school public examinations either. As the students had no way of knowing that their mock exam results would be used in this way, there are likely some students who did not put as much effort into their mocks as they would have for the real exam.

[Flickserve]

Hong Kong has seen eight days of no community transmissions. There's a plan for lifting restrictions next week. Wearing of masks is greater than 95% compliance. 

 

The few reported cases are those persons who have come from overseas into Hong Kong and therefore effectively shielded from the community.

[suMMit]

Anyone know what the current situation is like in Harbin?

[ChTTay]

Can’t tell you about Harbin. 
 

I can say Beijing lowered the threat level recently. One result of that is if you leave Beijing and go to another low-threat city when you come back to BJ you don’t need to quarantine again. A step in the right direction!
 

Another change (as of today pretty much) is that some more central apartment complexes have now started letting delivery people in, ayi’s and guests etc. I’m sure this will filter out elsewhere as time goes on. 
 

Despite having the health app in place and available for foreigners to use I have yet to be asked to use it in order to enter anywhere. I was asked to scan a phone company one to prove I’d been in Beijing for 14 days once (in Chaoyang) before the threat level was raised. I know that all Chaoyang based malls and restaurants did need it when they had the highest threat level. However, as that’s now been dropped I’m not sure it’s still used.  
 

Things like gyms and football pitches have been opened then closed a bunch of times. I’ve seen some gyms are re-re-opening now. My own gym is within an apartment community (but not my own) and it remains closed.

 

My friends brother down in Shenzhen has said everything is back to normal there pretty much. Gyms open, can move freely, normal restrictions into apartment communities etc. Another friend in Yinchuan has been leading a fairly normal life for weeks now. Just temp checks and masks. Otherwise everything is open and running as normal. 

[arreke]

When do you guys think China is going to allow foreigners to come back to China?