Coronavirus: Better Call Sol - CORONAMANIA (6 Viewers)

[magicbastarder]

this is balls out, tripping acid, batshit:

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[Anthony]

We got a breakdown from the school about what they're doing instead of the Junior Cert. Mixture of November results, Mock results and work they have to do now. It's not great. My lad's mocks were terrible and he's been working harder since then.
Same for our Leaving Cert lad.

 

[egg_]

Same for us in junior cert, though her mocks were not terrible, just worse than she normally does. Suppose JC doesn't actually matter though. If I understand the documentation right there'll just be a "certificate of completion of junior cycle" from the dept of education (without, I presume, any grades on it), and then a school report

Feel sorry for your older lad though. I was wildly erratic in school after the inter cert, had my career guidance teacher dropping in to me in my summer job when the results were about to come out to talk to me about repeating. Ended up doing rather well, but if it had been based on mocks/teachers' opinions it would have been a different story

 

[bogmanfan]

My suggestion is to leave schools closed for the rest of the year. Let everyone start back in january 2021 where they left off this year. So current LC students will recommence 6th year in January. They'll have an extra couple of months to get back up and running and then sit their exams as normal. Colleges can do the same. Would be weird not having any graduates in 2020, but better than opening the state up to lawsuits from kids who are aggrieved at their predicted grades.

 

[ann post]

My suggestion is to leave schools closed for the rest of the year. Let everyone start back in january 2021 where they left off this year. So current LC students will recommence 6th year in January. They'll have an extra couple of months to get back up and running and then sit their exams as normal. Colleges can do the same. Would be weird not having any graduates in 2020, but better than opening the state up to lawsuits from kids who are aggrieved at their predicted grades.

This requires a vaccine, which isn't bankable. I think a developed version of this year is probably the plan for the people going into 6th in sept.

 

[Unicron]

Another issue with that is that there's only so many college places, just putting it off till next year will probably mean that there's twice as many students applying for the same number of places in 2021. As it stands I imagine that there'll be a bumper crop of repeaters next year anyway. On that note, the least they could do is waive the exam fees for people who chose to repeat in 2021.

 

[bogmanfan]

This requires a vaccine, which isn't bankable. I think a developed version of this year is probably the plan for the people going into 6th in sept.

It's far from ideal. But this situation is developing daily, and any short-term plans seem to be getting constantly revised. This way you're pressing pause for 7 months. See how things develop, and start up again with online classes if necessary.

 

[ann post]

It's far from ideal. But this situation is developing daily, and any short-term plans seem to be getting constantly revised. This way you're pressing pause for 7 months. See how things develop, and start up again with online classes if necessary.

Aye that does make things better for the current LC's presuming the old normal is possible then, but there isn't anything to indicate thatis the case, so you either burn this years LC's or you burn everyone from national school entry to 6th year and the college admissions, so the variables are really vaccine/no vaccine and only one of those realities can be the operational parameter at the minute. but you are right, it would be fairer in the case of a miricale cure, in the case of no cure, then its one year older and nothing to show.

 

[dudley]

Another issue with that is that there's only so many college places, just putting it off till next year will probably mean that there's twice as many students applying for the same number of places in 2021. As it stands I imagine that there'll be a bumper crop of repeaters next year anyway. On that note, the least they could do is waive the exam fees for people who chose to repeat in 2021.

Working under the assumption that there will be very few foreign students starting the next academic year, I don't think places will be a problem. Most people get into college anyway, just not the courses they want as first preference.

Might be better to ditch all this predicted grades stuff too, give everyone a school completion cert. Let students engage with teachers in terms of career guidance over the summer, maybe colleges could interview, invite written applications and perform aptitude tests, and if the places are available just let everyone in. Let college become a sorting house with a lot of latitude for course transference in the first year.

Maybe. Any solution is bananas.

 

[hugh]

Working under the assumption that there will be very few foreign students starting the next academic year, I don't think places will be a problem. Most people get into college anyway, just not the courses they want as first preference.

Might be better to ditch all this predicted grades stuff too, give everyone a school completion cert. Let students engage with teachers in terms of career guidance over the summer, maybe colleges could interview, invite written applications and perform aptitude tests, and if the places are available just let everyone in. Let college become a sorting house with a lot of latitude for course transference in the first year.

Maybe. Any solution is bananas.

Places will be a problem. For sure, some colleges fill courses with foreign students, but they are the exception rather than the rule. You can't just let everyone in because the places won't be available. Most courses have a limited number of students they can accomodate so it's impossible (in many cases) to ramp it up. And that will be even more impossible in September because they are going to have to implement social distancing for whatever face to face teaching does happen, making the numbers problem even worse.

I don't know what's going to happen with this. I think there is an argument to be made for a certain element of randomness in terms of admissions to college. Or perhaps a combination of randomness and predicted grades. The idea of weighting predicted grades according to the expected performance of students from schools who would expect to be getting good grades is very alarming and will potentially make it even harder for students from disadvantaged ones to access college. I'd be in favour of weighting students from DEIS schools and the like upwards in order to, for once, even the playing field a bit. But, like that's ever going to happen ..

You're right .... any solution is bananas.

 

[IFF]

Yeah i'm on the borderline of better off not working.

If I was still fully dependent on disability it'd be 50% increase in income.


Said it before, will say it again - Ireland is compeltely comfortable with people with disabilities being second class citizens.

Hse published their list of people at higher risk yesterday, 14 weeks after we started this thread. 8 weeks after initial restrictions.

HSE release list of conditions which makes people at higher risk to Covid-19

THE HSE have released a list of conditions which can cause a patient to be at a higher risk from ...

www.irishpost.com

It annoys me it has so long for the higher risk(I have a disability on the higher risk risk but mild)

 

[GARYXKNIFEDX]

Two in our house fit the criteria( one very mild,but still).but we knew that already

 

[flashback]

Places will be a problem. For sure, some colleges fill courses with foreign students, but they are the exception rather than the rule. You can't just let everyone in because the places won't be available. Most courses have a limited number of students they can accomodate so it's impossible (in many cases) to ramp it up.

Are they really though?

Take... Trinity Law. (I don't know what the highest demand is, but law in Trinners is normally fairly up there.)

What's the rate limiting factor on teaching kids law. At fucking Trinners.

> The number of seats in the lecture halls!

Sit on the floor. I've sat through a fair number of lectures on the floor, it's quite a lot better than repeating your LC.

> OK, restrictions in place Re social distancing means that lecture halls are put under even more pressure for space.

Stream the lectures online so. The kids attend the lectures through Zoom or some shit.

> Ah, but the tutorials, you need the one on one in the tutorials.

Give the grad students more hours giving tutorials. You pay them fuck all anyway, double the hours available. When I was in grad school I never, not once, ever, turned down lab sessions or tutorial sessions. Because I was skint.

> The exams though, how do sort the exams?

Rent a fucking gym or something. Besides, the exams won't be coming for a semester at the earliest. Worst case scenario you rent out some big space in the RDS and get the kids to wear masks or some shit.

There isn't infinite demand for these things, there is some upper bound to the number of people that want to do them.

The more resource intensive courses, say the Sciences, say Chemistry or Biology, bugger all people want to do them anyway. There isn't that much demand on them in the first place.

Sorry for the long post. But, to me, the demand for Uni places in Ireland has a touch of the Toilet Rolls about it. Just because people are all talking about toilet rolls, and rushing out to buy toilet rolls, doesn't actually mean that we need all these toilet rolls stashed in your cupboard. There's a lot of these uni courses that have what seems to me to be artificial limits on the numbers admitted, which artificially drives up the demand.

Also, if you let these guys in and put them through the ringer, they'll self select out. Billy and myself did all of first year computer science in 4 weeks. I'm not going to speak for Billy, but I can say that for me it wasn't fucking easy, and it makes you take a cold hard look at what you're doing / if you think you can keep doing it.

Let the kids in, give them a chance, make the standards high: the the problem will have eliminated itself in a semester or two.

 

[Cormcolash]

Are they really though?

Take... Trinity Law. (I don't know what the highest demand is, but law in Trinners is normally fairly up there.)

What's the rate limiting factor on teaching kids law. At fucking Trinners.

> The number of seats in the lecture halls!

Sit on the floor. I've sat through a fair number of lectures on the floor, it's quite a lot better than repeating your LC.

> OK, restrictions in place Re social distancing means that lecture halls are put under even more pressure for space.

Stream the lectures online so. The kids attend the lectures through Zoom or some shit.

> Ah, but the tutorials, you need the one on one in the tutorials.

Give the grad students more hours giving tutorials. You pay them fuck all anyway, double the hours available. When I was in grad school I never, not once, ever, turned down lab sessions or tutorial sessions. Because I was skint.

> The exams though, how do sort the exams?

Rent a fucking gym or something. Besides, the exams won't be coming for a semester at the earliest. Worst case scenario you rent out some big space in the RDS and get the kids to wear masks or some shit.

LOL at the idea of Trinity being organised enough to sort any of that out in any way whatsoever.

 

[nuke terrorist]

myself and most of my siblings had a fine school record... of quitting secondary with a year to go.

but the kid that let the side down got a bog standard degree from Trinity in the early 2000's.

the other day they got a letter from Trinity College asking for a donation 'cause they
are going skid with current lack of income.
LOL.
anyone else get one of these in post ?

they weren't best pleased and thought the school had some nerve.

 

[flashback]

myself and most of my siblings had a fine school record... of quitting secondary with a year to go.

but the kid that let the side down got a bog standard degree from Trinity in the early 2000's.

the other day they got a letter from Trinity College asking for a donation 'cause they
are going skid with current lack of income.
LOL.
anyone else get one of these in post ?

they weren't best pleased and thought the school had some nerve.

this is an American thing.

US Unis aren't happy with gouging your eyeballs out and fucking the sockets during your stay within their hallowed grounds resulting in you taking out a loan that you will be paying back well into your middle age, they'd be cool with you letting them grift you out of a few more quid afterwards too.

 

[Cornu Ammonis]

anyone else get one of these in post ?

You’ve only gotten one? A get a few of them a year since finishing my degree in 2006. I’ve gotten maybe two total from Maynooth since graduating from there 10 years ago.

 

[nuke terrorist]

no, it was a sibling. (note i said i never did leaving cert).
i assumed it was to do with current COVID-19 crisis.

they do this regularly then ? ...hmmm.

 

[flashback]

I mean, people voluntarily give money to churches, and nobody bats an eye.

 

[Cornu Ammonis]

Are they really though?

Take... Trinity Law. (I don't know what the highest demand is, but law in Trinners is normally fairly up there.)

What's the rate limiting factor on teaching kids law. At fucking Trinners.

> The number of seats in the lecture halls!

Sit on the floor. I've sat through a fair number of lectures on the floor, it's quite a lot better than repeating your LC.

I know this is already happening in some courses in Ireland before all this. Most universities are running short on space at the best of times.

> OK, restrictions in place Re social distancing means that lecture halls are put under even more pressure for space.

Stream the lectures online so. The kids attend the lectures through Zoom or some shit.

I think this should be done more now that we’ve ripped the plaster off but although students appreciate it at the moment, I don’t think it’s a good replacement for actual in-class teaching. Even when I lecture a big class (200 students), you work off the room. It’s never a case of just reading off the slides and robotically carrying on.

> Ah, but the tutorials, you need the one on one in the tutorials.

Give the grad students more hours giving tutorials. You pay them fuck all anyway, double the hours available. When I was in grad school I never, not once, ever, turned down lab sessions or tutorial sessions. Because I was skint.

That depends on the course and the department. Some departments have millions of graduate students (like the sciences) but some of the humanities won’t have those resources. Plus I don’t know any course that really dose one on one tutorials.

> The exams though, how do sort the exams?

Rent a fucking gym or something. Besides, the exams won't be coming for a semester at the earliest. Worst case scenario you rent out some big space in the RDS and get the kids to wear masks or some shit.

They already rent out the RDS, the Mansion House and who knows what else around the city centre. Exams take up a huge amount of physical space. That said, I’d love to see a move to less exam-focused assessment - my course became an essay this year in place of the usual exam.

The more resource intensive courses, say the Sciences, say Chemistry or Biology, bugger all people want to do them anyway. There isn't that much demand on them in the first place.

Erm, they’re fucking huge courses. Practical classes run pretty much constantly across dozens of large teaching labs every day. It is a massive draw on lecturers, graduate students, and technical staff. Lectures and exams are child’s play in comparison. Bear in mind that the early years of chemistry and biology are also done by medical, radiography, dentistry, veterinary, and physiotherapy degrees (amongst others I’m sure).

Sorry for the long post. But, to me, the demand for Uni places in Ireland has a touch of the Toilet Rolls about it. Just because people are all talking about toilet rolls, and rushing out to buy toilet rolls, doesn't actually mean that we need all these toilet rolls stashed in your cupboard. There's a lot of these uni courses that have what seems to me to be artificial limits on the numbers admitted, which artificially drives up the demand.

While there certainly are “prestige courses” with small numbers to drive up the points (but are otherwise bog standard science degrees for example), I really don’t think universities are capping places artificially. They need students, the more students the better as that’s where they get their money. The fact is, staffing levels in Irish universities are shite and it is impossible for any sort of decent education to be maintained if they increase the numbers by any significant number. The system is creaking under its own weight as it is with too few, underpaid, and overworked staff carrying a faulty university system that really needs to be tackled from a government level.