English GCSE: Legal action being taken by schools and councils

A group of headteachers and councillors has launched legal action against exam regulator ofqual and two exam boards over Junes GCSE English exam. It has served court papers to exam boards AQA and Edexcel, detailing the case for the exams to be regarded. The papers challenge the examiners' decision to raise the marks needed to get a C grade between January and June and have also challenged Ofqual's refusal to reverse the decision.

The group argues that changes to the grade boundaries meant that pupils with the same mark got a different grade and students had to resit the exam so that the exam boards could re-grade their exams in accordance to the new grade boundaries.

I think it is really unfair that Edexcel and AQA decided to change the grading boundaries because this caused students to not only have to re sit their exam but some students had to change their career and further education  plans completely because the grades they got after the resit were not high enough for the job they wanted to get or the colleges they wanted to get into. AQA and Edexcel are two exam boards that some of my GCSE subjects are under which makes me a bit annoyed because after all my hard work at the end of year 10 could be wasted when I go to take my exams in year 11.

Like I have said before, we don't need changes to the education system if it's not broken don't fix it! what will it take for Michael Gove, Ofqual and everybody else to understand that! the government made a promise to provide children with an easy education but they are doing the complete opposite and instead making the lives of students miserable!

There is another rant I want to go on surrounding the topic of rising university fees but we'll save that for tomorrow as I hate people that go off the topic of the article they are writing!

Is the 4G upgrade for phones really worth the money?

A few weeks ago, mobile network EE announced that it will launch its 4G service on the 30th October. A lot of people are excited about this but I always ask myself the same question, is it really worth the money? to be honest, 3G is just as good, the only difference with this upgrade is the speed. I admit that this is a good thing for those people who always use the internet from their phones but other than that it doesn't really matter it's just a number! EE's network with apparently cover sixteen cities this year.

Rivals of EE are unhappy that this early roll out of the new network will give them (EE) an unfair advantage by launching the 4G network ahead of them, O2 and Vodafone have agreed that they will not pursue any legal action against EE to block the launch.

EE's chief executive, Olaf Swantee has said "This is a significant milestone for the United Kingdom, and for the people and businesses of our country who will now be able to enjoy the huge advantages of super-fast 4G technology for the first time".

Lots of people are going to pay out loads of money just to get a faster internet connection! where is the logic in that? everyone is struggling for money because of the recession and they are spending money on a new network rather than important things like bills and food for their families, although the recession has not got to the point where we are struggling to put food on the table, we are still stuck for money and should be focusing on things that we NEED not things that we WANT because believe it or not there is a very significant difference and it's about time people learnt that very quickly.