I have just come home from an absolutely WONDERFUL Maiastra concert and just have to urge anyone who lives in or near Cobham Surrey to go to the free repeat concert on Sunday 7th Dec 25 (tomorrow) at 4pm at St Andrew's Church. I'll be there again! Schulhoff 'Five pieces for string quartet, Smetana string quartet no 2 and Beethoven 'the Harp' quartet - really exciting and impressive works.
After an intensive week long course, three brilliant music students (Yixuan Kassia Ren, violin, Jemimah Quick, viola and Gabriel Webb - cello) performed with the amazing course coach, Bartosz Woroch who led on 1st violin and they somehow just played 'as one' ... chords melting into the next chord - virtuosic passages played apparently effortlessly in every work (note to self: just practise those scales Helen!) - subtle changes of tempi / rubato all precisely together - the changes in dynamics perfectly executed - beautiful - and even the silences were perfect.
I loved every movement - but perhaps my favourite was the 2nd movement of the Beethoven - adagio ma non troppo. Being on the front row (a perk of being there very early!) I could see Bartosz almost wince at the beauty of those chords (and I admired his lovely jacket)! What a privilege to have been there - the audience was just buzzing at the end! Hope to see some of you there tomorrow!
In advance of the release of figures for GCSE tomorrow and to
avoid wasting time and drawing misleading conclusions, it’s important to understand
the relationship between raw marks and grades and how grade boundaries fit into
this. The principles apply to both GCSE
and A Level.
Ofqual have released helpful posts to explain the situation to
candidates. I have copied and pasted
these at the foot of this post.
(1)Don’t look at grade boundaries in other subjects or in
other languages
(2)As far as any individual subject is concerned, because
the national % getting each grade remains essentially constant, any change in
grade boundaries will be a reflection of whether the pupils score more or fewer
marks in the papers than in other years.
It is tempting to want to talk about something which seems tangible
(figures) but it can be unhelpful when in
fact the raw marks and boundaries do not tell you anything about standards from
year to year, from subject to subject , or
paper to paper.
It's the time of year when teachers ask questions on various fora about how to interpret assessment data and how to respond to management, pupil and parental expectations regarding predicted grades.
Pasted below is the advice shared by David Blow, (Executive Head of South-East Surrey Schools Education Trust) at the ALL London June Event 2025. A download of the document is available here. A version including how to deal with Tiering is available here.
Un grand merci à Romain Devaux, qui m'a offert le livre 'Petit Pays' par Gaël Faye. I read it all in one go today and I can see why it was awarded the Prix Goncourt des lycéens. I suggest that it would be an excellent recommendation to any serious students of French who want to expand their knowledge of language and francophone history and culture.
Written in the first person, Gabriel/Gaby recalls his childhood in Burundi as the son of a French father and a Tutsi mother (a refugee from Rwanda), describing nature, friendships, neighbours, servants, family and recounting everyday life, including incidents of class, race and political conflict. Although not autobiographical, we know that the fictional Gaby is a contemporary of the author, Gaël Faye, and it must surely be this lived experience which makes the narrative so real and compelling, seeing the impact of the horrors of the 1994 genocide through the eyes of someone who was affected by it and experienced its consequences.
