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10ticks Newsletter March 2006

Welcome to the March Newsletter 2006 Two Tier GCSE for 2008 The two tier GCSE is to be introduced in September ready for examination in 2008. Even the harshest critic has to admit that the old 3 tier system was de-motivating for those sitting the lowest level – never to be able to achieve a Grade C.

But what of the new two tier system? It has already been shown that there will be a dumbing down of content at examination level and an increase in higher grades. London University’s Institute of Education independently reviewed the new GCSE and confirmed that better grades will be achieved based on the trial paper. In the higher paper 80% of the questions were set at grade B or lower, however only 67% is needed to gain a grade A and 81% for an A*. 55% of the questions were set at grade C and D levels, however a grade B could be obtained with 49%.

The worry is that by students targeting the lower GCSE topics in the examination the grade they achieve is not a true reflection of their maths ability. If this encourages them into AS and A level courses they could find it a struggle and lead to higher drop out rates.

10ticks Verdict: Winners: More motivated students at the lower end of the GCSE spectrum; GCSE students with higher grades; improvement for schools 5 A-C’s and Government targets closer to being met.
Losers: Continued erosion of the value of a GCSE; weak students attempting A levels, A level teachers picking up the pieces.

Formula for the perfect Football Chant [C x I/A] + P (S+H) + T2. Rogan Taylor, a Liverpool academic who makes a close study of football chants, devised the formula and claims they are an art form. C is the Contribution, which has to be multiplied by I for intensity and divided by A for aggression. The additional P is the measure of performance in adversity, which can be multiplied by the sum of spontaneity (S) and humour (H). The final addition is T for topicality squared.
"Their speed of development is awesome," Dr Taylor says. "They can be simple or complex, but the heart of the perfect chant is humour, spontaneity and topicality. The best chants occur in the face of adversity, often in response from opposing fans." In his position as Director of the Football Industries Group at the University of Liverpool the chant professor pioneered the world’s first post-graduate football degree: a Master in Business Administration, and claims that British fans are the most witty and inventive in the world – so who’s not singing any more?!

Dangers of personal websites We continue to develop our sister site WebsiteBoffin. This is aimed at people who want to build their own website with no technical knowledge. We have built in safety features so parents can protect their children. My daughter showed me her friends website hosted on free server space from an ISP. The first page told me her name and showed me photos of her and her friends. The second page told me which school she attended and the next page told me where she intended to be on Friday night next week.

The WebsiteBoffin sites have parental controls that can be switched on or off. Anything submitted to the website goes through the parents first to be vetted before being passed to the child to make live. We have introduced ‘secret pages’. Pages can be password protected, this way only those who you give the password to can view those pages. This enables children to continue to have fun experimenting and learning about websites, but in a safer environment.

Try our 14 day demo!

Special offer for 10ticks registered users. The cost of the WB40 website including domain name is normally just £63.45 per year, as a registered 10ticks visitor use this promotional code to buy for just £54.05. The code DE25876226 is valid up to, and including 30/03/06. http://www.websiteboffin.co.uk/index.aspx

Would you like to help us promote WebsiteBoffin and the extra safety it brings to the interent? If you would like to hand out some websiteboffin A5 fliers with £5 discount codes contact us at info@websiteboffin.co.uk, with name, address and how many Fliers you would like. Even just posting one on a notice board would be a great help!! We will send you one of our unique 10ticks keyrings!

We hope you all have an excellent term,
10ticks Webmathster

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