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Lake Wobegon and Nineteen Eight-Four

26/8/2020

 
By John Considine
Over the last couple of weeks or so there has been plenty of media coverage of the predicted grades of students leaving second-level education in Scotland and England.  At times I wondered if I was in Lake Wobegon where all the children are above average.  It was revealed that the teachers grades for the class of 2020 were on average 12% higher than those achieved in the examinations by the class of 2019.  Does anyone think that the class of 2020 is on average 12% better than the class of 2019?

Attempts at moderating the grades were not well received and moderation was subsequently overturned.  I wonder how the teachers who returned relatively lower grades are feeling.  Possibly like players who try to stay on their feet, after being tackled/fouled in the penalty box, only to go unrewarded by a weak referee.  If we are in a similar position next year then expect those teachers to have learned their lesson.

It reminded me of another hard to believe 12% increase.  In 2011 we were informed of a 12.4% increase in Irish sporting participation between two editions of the Irish Sports Monitor.  The 2009 edition listed participation in sport at 33.5%.  The next edition of the Irish Sports Monitor was published in 2011.  Participation was listed at 45.9%.  There was also a whispered warning about collection methods.

That is a 12.4% increase over two years.  Yet on page 12 of the 2009 Irish Sports Monitor it said “participation rates in sport and exercise do not generally alter by more than around a single percentage point per year”.  At the time, it was my students who spotted the change.  It was part of a project on the government funding of sport.  I contacted the Irish Sports Council for clarification.  The clarification was like something one would get from an EU Commissioner accused of breaking Covid-19 guidelines.  I even invited my contact to talk to the class at a time of their choice.  Nothing doing!
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A couple of years later, the next Irish Sports Monitor is published.  The 2011 figure is revised downwards to 44.8%.  There was probably a genuine reason for this.  That said, I can't get the following sentence, from Nineteen Eight-Four, out of my head.  "Winston's job was to rectify the original figures by making them agree with later ones."

I have written previously about the strange bobble in the figure in 2015 (here).  But let us move forward to 2019.  The figure from the 2019 Irish Sports Monitor is 46%.  It was 45.9% in 2011.  Accepting a margin of error, it seems we can believe the numbers between 2011 and 2019.  In the absence of a flu pandemic was a 12.4% increase in two years believable?  It is about as believable as saying that the class of 2020 is on average 12% better than the class of 2019.
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