Cross country runs and cold showers again!

The problems are a mix of kids with mental health problems (naturally), school being utterly boring after the age of 14 for most kids, and the lack of nicotine. Nicotine being a mild antidepressant.

Raising the age of school leaving and the age at which kids can legally buy fags (which means they could get them from about 14 or 15) prevented this.

“Poor mental health has been blamed for school absence levels, which remain near pandemic highs five years on, with more than 20 per cent of children missing at least one day each fortnight last term.”

Maybe with parents working from home, they don’t care about the babysitting.

“These aren’t small effects either. A little absence quickly accumulates devastating impact: pupils missing merely 10 days more than peers have half the odds of achieving good GCSEs. They earn £10,000 less at age 28 on average, compared to pupils with near-perfect attendance.”

Bollocks. Utter bollocks. Correlation not causation. If I’d have missed my French, history, english lit and RE at school it would have made fuck all difference. Most kids don’t use any of their GCSEs. The minute you get your foot in a door of a company, that’s when your career starts. By 21, no-one gives a fuck what GCSEs you got.

My daughter’s prior all girls (public) school set expectations that others should treat you as you wanted to be treated, thereby reversing the golden rule. She no longer attends that school but the damage is done.

My sons’ (public) schools and daughter’s current school treat the non-academic curriculum as a long exercise in building character. Lectures, physical discomfort, trips away, sports, CCF. All very dull according to my boys but they are hard working, good company and understand they are responsible for their lives.

And it’s not about how many days of school you miss, it’s about WHY the days were missed. “Because I don’t feel like it” is a bad reason. “because I am bullied by entitled scum bags where no effective sanction is available as everyone should just be kind” is a better reason.

Otto @ 7.43, I agree 100% with the beatings but fear there could be a problem – it’s hard enough to retain teachers as it is……….

If I’d have missed my French, history, english lit and RE at school it would have made fuck all difference.

That’s your evidence-free belief, WB; but the correlation between a good basic education and positive outcomes in life is so strong that mere correlation can be ruled out. Look at shitholes with little educational provision. Average sub-Saharan IQs range from 60 to 80 (a border collie has an IQ of up to 56), but – whatever racial handicap there may or may not be – educational provision raises the average. Nigeria’s average is 85 and rising.

Learning things, at an early age, you may not be interested in develops curiosity, concentration and self-discipline, stimulates the growth of neuronal connections in the young brain, increases IQ and can open up opportunities and interests. Your GCSE-level education was the foundation of your later achievements.

Life long learning is a bit of a passion for me. I love reading and learning new stuff about all kinds of subjects. I also like to read the stories from a site called NotAlwaysRight.com which is about people in customer facing jobs and the people that they encounter. Here there are people who are wilfully ignorant, who are confidently wrong and actively resist taking on new information. What makes people go one way or the other in this approach to life?

A favourite quote from a manager on the phone to a customer several hundred miles to the west.
“Look, I have neither the time or the energy to explain time zones to you, so you are going to have to either believe me or die angry about it.”

“Right, boys, I want you to run to the sea and back.”

“Sir, is the tide up?”

I was assured this exchange actually happened. How do teachers keep a straight face?

A traditional public school education is good civic training. Nothing prepares you for UK politics quite as well as having some dodgy bloke take a fake interest in you, fuck you up the arse, and then threaten you with detention if you object.

When I was a schoolboy and big for my age, I appointed myself White Knight and went about stopping any cases of incipient bullying I saw. Was I actually doing harm?

Theo,

“That’s your evidence-free belief, WB; but the correlation between a good basic education and positive outcomes in life is so strong that mere correlation can be ruled out. Look at shitholes with little educational provision. Average sub-Saharan IQs range from 60 to 80 (a border collie has an IQ of up to 56), but – whatever racial handicap there may or may not be – educational provision raises the average. Nigeria’s average is 85 and rising.”

I have no issue with a good basic education. Learning to read, write, do arithmetic. Math up to the point of pythagorus theorem, knowing the 3 different types of average. All generally useful. Learning about the Maginot Line? Not so much.

“Learning things, at an early age, you may not be interested in develops curiosity, concentration and self-discipline, stimulates the growth of neuronal connections in the young brain, increases IQ and can open up opportunities and interests. Your GCSE-level education was the foundation of your later achievements.””

Studying almost anything, like reading books will do that to you, too. Or going to work.

I consider nothing I learned from 13 to 16 to have been of any real value to me. I spent time learning to code at that time, which was far more useful than the Chaucer-related homework I didn’t do. My Saturday job, where I had to work for money taught me more about the real world. And I had to unlearn a lot of stupid school shit when I went to work (like a general attitude of Labour Theory of Value like setting people 3000 word essays).

One of the things I most appreciate about what I do and have done – session musician, photographer, Mac consultant – is that you’re only as good as your last gig. If you can’t cut it you’re not called back. There is something clean, decent and straightforward about this.

It’s modern hunter-gathering: either you hunt and gather successfully or you starve. It’s easy to see why people are terrified of this.

Btw Simon Neale keeps posting bangers every day.

the correlation between a good basic education and positive outcomes in life is so strong that mere correlation can be ruled out.
Since at least the 60s it’s been an increasingly credentialised system until now it’s virtually impossible to get any sort of decent career without them. So course you see consequence.

“… pupils missing merely 10 days more than peers have half the odds of achieving good GCSEs.”

If they have half the probability, their odds are greater.
If someone attending full-time has, say, a 50% chance (odds of even money) of achieving good GCSEs, then someone missing ten days has only a 25% chance (odds of 3/1).

Dearieme
Correlation does not imply causation; but a high correlation coefficient, consistently observed in a variety of conditions, makes a causal connection probable.

WB

Studying almost anything, like reading books will do that to you, too. Or going to work.

Not as effectively as schooling.

I consider nothing I learned from 13 to 16 to have been of any real value to me.

‘Value to me’ is not the same as ‘of benefit to me’.

john77
many things with a low correlation coefficient have A probability of one causing the other – just a low or very low probability
Yes; but a high correlation coefficient, consistently observed in a variety of conditions , makes a causal connection probable. If you change the initial conditions several times and the correlation still occurs, then it is probable that you are deal with causation.

secondly in your example causation might go either way…
No, not in my example; because my example involves African primary school children, where the causation can run only one way.

Probability is intrinsic to the relationship (or lack of it) and is not affected by observation.

Assume x and y have a high correlation coefficient in state S1 which also includes variables a, b, c and d. Now assume one looks at x and y in S2, S3, S4 etc in which the variables a, b, c, and d are removed in turn and completely, and the correlation coefficient of x and y remains more or less constant, then a causal relationship between x and y is highly probable. (To say it’s “plausible” is just a vaguer way of saying ‘probable’.)

The first time I met an African was at Public School – I got there on a Scholarship, his father paid full fees. I quoted Good Queen Bess because no-one is going to dispute the facts in her case, but the same applied.

I cannot see the relevance of that. My point is that educating impoverished piccaninnies with low IQs is known to help them thrive – raising their IQs, developing their curiosity, concentration and self-discipline, etc. The causation there is one way: basic education results in better outcomes for the impoverished piccaninnies.

Forgive me for butting in, chaps, but surely J77 is right. If the link were causative then surely a better education would always result in a better outcome, and the lack of that education always result in worse. This is demonstrably not the case, unless you want to ignore those exceptions. All one can say is that a better education usually produces a better outcome.

And then we look at our contemporary “educated” classes, a.k.a. the “lanyard classes”, and doubts set in.

John77
The former is more common than the latter. Longitudinal studies that control for background show a strong correlation between childhood IQ and future income, wealth, health, status and happiness.

@ Not Cockgobbler

Couldn’t you go away and fall heavily on some sharp objects?

Agent ; That is a death threat. You sound like a low IQ strange psychopath. You probably wet the bed.