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bgy1mm:

"Cooking the figures" means inventing a problem with numbers which cancel out, or are otherwise easy to manipulate.

That's fine for schoolroom exercises, but it doesn't transfer to the real world.

Ok, try it with any other original figures you like. Makes no difference. 

You express the numbers in standard form and round up (or down) the multiplier of the power of ten to a whole number between 1 and 10.

bgy1mm:

Taking logs gives an order of magnitude estimate.

An order of magnitude estimate could be miles out. Why do you want to ignore the multipliers of the powers of 10? You would want to get within 10-20%.

bgy1mm:

Computer programmers think in terms of log 2

I'm a computer programmer. My computer might think in base 2 but I don't.

In science and engineering we use base 10.

Why are you so keen that chidren should NOT know the value of 7 * 8?

Maths isn't just for mathematicians.

oldandrew:

 They recognise activity; they will know that there are classrooms which appear productive and well managed, but they will have neither the experience of effective teaching themselves, nor the grasp of data, to accurately judge whether the activity in the classroom actually corresponds to teachers teaching and students learning.

These are the classrooms of the Illusionists.

Heavens oldandrew you've gone straight to the heart of the problems with ofsted here!

As we discussed in the maths forum here: 

http://community.tes.co.uk/forums/t/455551.aspx?PageIndex=3

"The key to very powerful and engaging lessons is that you are responding to the progress of the students and adapting tasks or changing task depending on what you see.

This 'response' is both 'in the moment' in that unexpected developments are accomodated capitalised on and 'longer term' in that your wider experience in how classes respond to the types of activites you are presenting informs they way you plan the lesson."

The quality of lessons is difficult for an internal observor who knows the students, the member of staff and discusses the lesson with the member of staff to describe. 

It is utterly ludicrous to think that an external inspector who doesn't know the students, the member of staff or the context and does not discuss the lesson with the teacher can judge what's going on!  I think you have to be on the other side of being externally inspected as many times as I have to understand quite how ludicrous, ignorant and mortifyingly cringeworthy their 'lack on insights' are oldandrew.

How strange you should choose to criticise the observations of internal school management.  With internal inspections you have a support infrastructure, feedback loops and unions if you have a failing head.  If you want to contextualise their abilities you could try being on the receiving end of 7 external inspections in a year oldandrew.

Would you like me to tell you more?

If so you could continue to create and destroy your straw men in this thread and I will annotate your contributions.

I followed your cue oldandrew.

You asked me to look at your link so I did and I commented on it.

Do you use and broadband infrastructure to facilitate the effective delivery of a robust and challenging curriculum with a demand for fluency?

If so you will have seen how this infrastructure creates more time for high quality teaching and how this high quality teaching enhances rather than compromises fluency and performance with the core curriculum.

Please tell me about your experiences with this kind of system oldandrew.  Then we can puzzle out why your conclusions from those experiences are so negative. 

If you do not have the relevant experience then you are not arguing with me, you are arguing with some invented character in your imaganation and this is why we are getting nowhere yet.  You need to listen more carefully to understand my points.  If they are not clear I will explain their contexts more fully to you.

oldandrew:

Well it's possible that the apparent lack of coherence in your argument is actually an illusion created by some kind of deficiency on my part.

On the other hand, you could just be incoherent.

The former possibility would raise the obvious question as to why you are posting here, if you think that people won't understand what you are saying without some specific experience and knowledge.

Or you could just be spamming rather than interacting with the discussion oldandrew.

But if you interact with it and point out which aspects of it you don't understand rather than just abusing me then you might convince me that you're not just spamming.

oldandrew:

weebecka:

Would you like me to tell you more?

 

Not particularly. 

I can't see any connection between what you are saying, and the discussion that was being had here.

weebecka got criticised by OFSTED, so she slams them at every turn. Including slamming one inspector by name, I seem to recall.