Thursday 13 August 2009

Dumbing down? Never!

Labour's campaign to provide all with some form of educational qualification moves on:

Teenager given 'council certificate for getting on bus in Greater Manchester'


It sounds impossible, but it really does get even better.

The 15 year-old got the certificate from exam board AQA after attending a three week holiday scheme run by Bury Youth Services earlier in the summer.

Some of Bobby's friends also received the qualification although others, including Bobby's younger brother Joe, 13, missed out it.

The teenager, from Bury, Greater Manchester, wasn't even aware he had sat the test and admitted he was surprised to be awarded the certificate.

Entitled "Using Public Transport (Unit 1)" it recognised, amongst other skills, his ability to:

  • Walk to the local bus stop.
  • Stand or sit at a bus stop and wait for the arrival of a public bus.
  • Sit on the bus and observe through the windows.


Words fail me. These are skills?

"Bobby's face was a picture when he saw the certificate"


I'll fucking bet it was. I still cannot get my head around this one.

24 comments:

SaltedSlug said...

Is it April or something?

microdave said...

His family were "bemused" Is that all???

Jesus fucking wept!

It's been many years since I last used a bus, but I can't see #6 in that list being much use: "Wait until the bus has stopped, stand on request and exit the bus." How is that going to work if you want to get off at a "Request" stop? You need to get up and press the nearest bell push, or shout to the driver, otherwise you will be able to observe your destination go sailing by out of the window (number 5!)

staybryte said...

I clicked on the link thinking: "Ah, the lad's probably got Downs' or something and it's just a nice way of encouraging him to be independent."

But no.

You know when you hear shouty types going on about "cuts", "frontline services" etc? Is this the sort of thing they mean? Without which our society will dissolve into a bloodthirsty welter of Hobbesian proportions, or something?

Unknown said...

I must have a BA with Honours then, truly unfuckingbelievable!

Mark Wadsworth said...

Pets win prizes!

PS, the post will look a lot tidier if you don't leave a blank line after the end blockquote tag; just close the tag and keep typing, it puts an empty line in automatically.

View from the Solent said...

Getting on a bus? Trivial. I do really difficult stuff. Where's my Phd for going shopping for multiple items from several shops?

Dick Puddlecote said...

The next level up is reading the numbers on the front of the bus.

Anonymous said...

I think it was bofl on either OH or Guido who said that he'd gone to the job centre to ask about retraining & was given two options - a carer or a doorkeeper (I think). i'm not knocking either job - I think carers particularly do a terrific job - and one that I couldn't do - but it's hardly high grade retraining is it? Having spent 30 years at the sharp end of IT, I got a call about an opportunity for an interview - as a packer in a cosmetics factory. Gordon's people in the Job Centres etc, charged with getting the nation on its feet & back to work haven't got a ********** clue.

manwiddicombe said...

Some of Bobby's friends also received the qualification although others, including Bobby's younger brother Joe, 13, missed out it.

It seems that the Telegraph is also suffering from dumbing down .. .. .. ..

Angry Exile said...

Please let it be Daily Mash, pleasepleaseplease...

[clicks link]

Oh Christ, it's real. Britain's fucked.

Anonymous said...

Of course they are skills. But they are skills that before total bureaucracy took over education, no-one would have thought worthy of certifying. The 11-plus sometimes had questions about reading train timetables, but they were a darn sight more sophisticated. In the bad old days pre-infantile days of Thatcher Milk-Snatcher, a five or six year old was generally presumed to be able to catch a bus in order to get to school - assuming they weren't walking there by themselves. If you didn't know how to catch a bus (and pay for the ticket and get change) in those days, you were either too posh to have been on a bus at all, or what we then called mentally defective.

Mr Eugenides said...

Mass executions. Only way.

SaltedSlug said...

^This^


The herd. Thin it.

David Davis (Libertarian Alliance) said...

I did examine for AQA (GCSE sciences) a few years ago in the early part of my retirement.

It was a "Foundation Combined Science" paper, for the "less-vocationally-inclined" 16-year-olds.

The paper contained questions like:-

Name THREE substances that Farmers want to put on their land, which can cause pollution...

Right answers were:-

Manure (alternative spellings allowed)
Pig shit (disallowed)
Compost (alternative spellings allowed)
Fertilisers (alternative spellings allowed)
Ammonium nitrate (alternative spellings allowed)
Pesticides (insect killers disallowed)
Herbicides (weedkiller disallowed)

Other ones that were decided at the "standardisation meeting" in Bradford, to be __allowed__ were:-

NUCLEAR WASTE
FARMICIDE
POO

I objected to these on the count that they were either wrong, or slang. I was over-ruled.

David Davis (Libertarian Alliance) said...

You know, Mr Eugenides may have a point.

Will we actually have to kill them all (I mean the bureaucrats)?

I hope not, for I would savour the mooments on the videos, when they all find thenselves turned out of their deparrtments into the streets, with binliners of personal possessions, and they are forced to watch as they pass by the skullheaps of Hard Disks, being malleted by crack "People's Libertarian Action Cadres" PLAC-squads - that's good, keep it! - that contain _/ALL/_ the records of everything their departments have ever, ever done.

Then we can open up their [state] pensions, sell off the good shares for what they will fetch, slowly and without announcement unlike Gordon's Gold, and hang onto the bad for a few years, and give the money back to "taxpayers", starting with the most poorly-paid in the Private Sector first.

Redistributive we shall be! - the GramscoFabiaNazis will be forced to praise us for that.

JuliaM said...

"It's been many years since I last used a bus, but I can't see #6 in that list being much use: "Wait until the bus has stopped, stand on request and exit the bus." How is that going to work if you want to get off at a "Request" stop? You need to get up and press the nearest bell push, or shout to the driver, otherwise you will be able to observe your destination go sailing by out of the window..."

That'll be for the advanced certificate, obviously.

JuliaM said...

"Please let it be Daily Mash, pleasepleaseplease...

[clicks link]

Oh Christ, it's real."


*weeps for Britain*

Anonymous said...

What I want to know is whether someone had to observe him do all of these things or whether they assumed he had as he turned up on time?

Also, if he didn't look out of the window, isn't that obtaining the qualification fraudulently?

Perhaps "Super Hero" Ed Balls needs to investigate the examination standards.

It'd be almost funny if it wasn't for it being my money & some poor sod being blown up due to lack of funds for kit.

Anonymous said...

quango quango quango quango
some fucking numpty got paid for dishing it out?
pigeons

Anonymous said...

Perhaps more worringly there is the implicit possibility of failure (or should that be "deferred success"). I mean, what can you do with somebody too thick (am I allowed to say that?) to pass this "course".
TTFN

Joe Public said...

But could he actually 'read' the certificate?

Pogo said...

@David Davis (Libertarian Alliance) "Then we can open up their [state] pensions, sell off the good shares for what they will fetch,"

Point of order "Mr Davis"... State and government pensions are not funded, therefore there are no shares, good or bad, to be sold. These pensions are all paid from current taxation, which is why the "government pensions time bomb" is quietly ticking away.

Simon said...

And this from the same council that is the shirt sponsor for Bury FC?

microdave said...

@ JuliaM - yes I had an advanced certificate, As I remember I had to change buses in the middle of the City!

"4. Be directed to a downstairs seat by a member of staff"

How does that work on a one man (ooops, sorry PERSON) operated, single decker bus? You can hardly go upstairs...

I've just checked the Daily Mash, and nothing on this yet.