Certificate of Merit

Questions and Support regarding the Certificate of Merit.
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John Upham
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Re: Certificate of Merit

Post by John Upham » Wed Oct 20, 2010 2:18 pm

Carl Hibbard wrote:It's a dead duck and was never going to recover the 10K+ of development costs was it?
Shall I stop people buying CoM product and taking the tests or would you like to?

I wish I had been paid £10K !!
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John Upham
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Pass, fail and other such difficult language

Post by John Upham » Sun Oct 24, 2010 4:06 pm

In these enlightened times in which nobody is a failure I seek your advice as to what wording I can use to inform persons of the result of their test.

Currently I have four categories of result for a test of 20 questions :

18 - 20 correct : Passed with Distinction :D

16 - 18 correct : Passed with Merit :)

14- 16 correct : Ordinary Pass or simply Pass :)

< 14 correct : Fail :cry:

My question is : will children be used to seeing the word 'fail' or have schools stopped using the f word?

I could use "Yet to succeed" or "unlucky this time"?

I do not wish to be responsible for crying children or angry parents so your advice is appreciated!
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Matthew Turner
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Re: Certificate of Merit

Post by Matthew Turner » Sun Oct 24, 2010 4:17 pm

John,
Without wishing to be 'politically correct', I am not sure that 'Fail' is really appropriate, after all we are saying that the CoM is part of the learning process and not passing only highlights areas that we need to improve further. There are horrible phrases like 'deferred success', but I think you can say something more sensible like

Unfortunately you didn't get the 14 correct answers required for a Pass, better luck next time.

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John Upham
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Re: Certificate of Merit

Post by John Upham » Sun Oct 24, 2010 4:22 pm

Matthew Turner wrote:
Unfortunately you didn't get the 14 correct answers required for a Pass, better luck next time.
Matthew,

Thanks for that. Your wording is essentially what I had decided to use with a smiley face at the end! :D
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