A PERSONAL TRIBUTE TO SIR JOHN ROWLING

On Friday 17th January Sir John passed away after a short illness.

If you read my blogs you know I have never written this about anyone: Sir John was a great man. 

This is a personal tribute so much of what I write is about how he inspired me to work for the important things in school. He also easily persuaded me to do research, presentations and articles. I would walk away from his gentle requests determined to do my best, only once refusing his offer of an opportunity to write a song and perform it to 2000 teachers. Sir John had looked up my name and found an American folk singer. 

I very nearly said yes.

I am not a biographer but his career included around 20 years as head of a school that sounds like a Northumberland version of Chauncy. He was awarded a knighthood for services to education and was a massive part of London Challenge. He worked with dozens of schools helping them improve London children’s achievements and opportunities to such an extent that London boroughs went from the bottom of national tables to the top. Of course, he was not alone – this was a highly effective group of realistic, experienced, non-political school leaders – but he was himself working with 55 schools in 2008.

Sir John unashamedly focussed on ordinary kids doing well in our schools and he walked away from a government which perhaps differed from the focus of London Challenge. He set up PiXL (Partners in Excellence) with the 55 schools mentioned above. He has left an incredibly influential organisation with around 3,000 schools attending cram-packed, inexpensive, inspirational, practical conferences and on-line curriculum resources of stunning quality and relevance.

It was easy to like, admire and respect Sir John. I was also fortunate to watch Sir John rally and brief the PiXL leaders before the start of a national conference and there was no doubt what he wanted, what the expectations were of the day and of every presenter and organiser. He would then address conference explaining our mission and his views on how we could all make schools a better place for children and staff.

He worried the Department for Education when PiXL helped us all be more effective in targeting support for children taking public exams, giving ordinary children in ordinary schools the access to well directed support without the need for families to employ private tutors. 

The work we all did for and with Sir John probably helped 50 Chauncy students pass their GCSEs. PiXL have around 1500 secondary schools. Those thousands of students every year for a decade went to college and university and got better jobs. The work we all did under his leadership changed lives. 

That’s some legacy.

The TES interviewed him asking, “Is this the most influential man in UK schools?”

Sir John was a charming man and patient. He gently rejected my calls for mass demonstrations in Westminster. Mind you, he was outraged by a senior government education minister, still in post, who explained to Sir John that all schools needed to improve children’s literacy is to have all children read the works of Jane Austin, repeatedly.

In recent years Sir John moved PiXL towards wider issues in education. Most recently he has talked passionately about “Character” and the missing third – the 35% of students who fail in our schools. He leaves us the task of providing genuine equality of opportunity for all our students.

Sir John read my blogs and even though he may have disagreed with my approach he was always the very first to write to me. His last response on 12th December included his last instruction to me: “…people like you will press on!”

I bet he wrote to everyone. He always remembered our names and greeted us as friends.

His Christmas message to PiXL members hoped for 2020 to be a time of,

“Hope for a sensible approach to the improving of education for all our students? Hope that we might escape the over-emphasis on measures and judgement and move into a new world of inspiration, creativity, excitement and deep and wide learning about subjects and personal development and character.” 

I think Sir John may have believed in heaven. God would be well advised to prepare for improvements in that area, maybe ensuring more of us pass the entrance test.

Dennis O'Sullivan

Time For A Change

After 41 blogs where I have ranted about the government drive to show ordinary kids that they are as good as worthless; 80,000 words suggesting, demanding and crying out for headteachers and political opposition parties to stand up for comprehensive education, I stopped writing.

I have nothing left to add.

A friend of our comprehensive secondary school said I should say it all again.

We have a staffing shortage across the system – Oh no we don’t (DfE)

We have seen our budgets cut and many of us are heading towards redundancies, larger classes, fewer subject choices and deficit budgets (MPs and DfE: There’s lots of money)

Close your eyes and ears and pretend we will not see a mass exodus of school leaders in 2017.

Under AOB at my union’s information conference in 2015 I said that the new curriculum, including tougher exams, end of coursework and bigger subject content will fail the majority of the young people in my school. I was met with polite silence from the leadership.

When I said that junior school kids are being driven away from creativity, teamwork, problem solving and personal resilience by the obsession with SATs and that this is a bad thing, some people waited for me to shut up.

I have been an ASCL member for 19 years. Our previous General Secretary, Brian Lightman, was kind enough to engage in debate with me – in person and by email. I respected Brian as he kept telling me that the politicians were listening to the ASCL, even though we have watched their attacks on state education. They did not listen, Brian, but a million thanks for your work.

My local ASCL rep has written to us explaining why we should consider voting for a sitting ASCL Council member. I propose doing nothing of the sort.

If there is to be a change in policy to secure a brilliant education for our children, one where they are individuals with their own talents to be developed, a system where state schools are recognised for the amazing successes already achieved and the opportunity to achieve even more, where teachers are esteemed and admired for the fantastic commitment to learning, achievement and fairness, if we are to be optimistic about our children’s future, it is time for a change. It is time for courageous union leadership. The ASCL Council nomination for General Secretary has never been a headteacher, has been a civil servant and is a consultant. He has experience of for-profit education provision, is now with an academy chain and probably ideally placed to understand the government’s priorities.

I have just discovered that Geoff Barton is standing for the position of ASCL General Secretary. I have watched his work for many years, I have borrowed from his school’s website, I have read his stuff on literacy and I have listened to him speak at PIXL conferences. I am sure he is not as oppositional or militant as me and he may not thank me for my support. However, I think we should all look at what he stands for (Google is a start) and hope he is the sort of leader that will commit to the membership and times changing for the better.

Dennis O’Sullivan (Headteacher)

Education, Education, Education? Not this election

With electioneering in the UK hitting some remarkably cynical, free spending lows one searches in vain for the “Education, Education, Education” mantra that helped elect Tony Blair in 1997. Late in the game, as we build to a tumult of voter indecision and disbelief the Lib Dems have decided that “nothing is more important than the education of our young.” Of the 1.3 million of us working in schools how many will welcome Cameron’s promised “major education reform within 50 days.” Every time I hear a politician talking, “passionate” I shudder in anticipation of ill advised, ideologically driven meddling and tinkering from career politicians who show as much passion as a formica table. (“They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance”) 

Young teachers are fleeing our exam factories and ten year olds are being turned off by SATs practice after practice to secure schools’ league table status. 2017 marks the exit plans for many school leaders: new memory-testing exams, an ever deepening crisis in teacher recruitment, unmanageable finances and the SEN malaise combine as these Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse drive us to breakdown. 

Here’s an election nutshell: the Conservative Party will open 500+ more Free Schools, whilst Labour will open new schools that are “parent-led academies.” Apart from competing and vague rhetoric on apprenticeships, literacy, vocational routes and regional commissioners that’s it for content. School funding will be cut. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (26-03-15) Conservative, Labour and Liberal pledges, “all suggest a real-terms reduction of 7% per child by 2020.” TheTories claim they are “committed to delivering a good deal for schools.” Labour just say they have, “a better plan” and the Lib Dems say protecting funding in schools is a “red line” issue – a deal beaker in any coalition. The IFS go on to claim that the cut in funding will be nearer 12%. 

National Insurance, pension contributions, a 1% pay rise for teachers, 2% for non teachers and some incremental progression gtotals a 7.26% increase in our staff costs in 2015-16. Staff are 80% of our total costs. Our income per student has already been reduced and will be reduced further. My school budget for 2016-17 shows a deficit of £550,259. And the next year we will be another £900,528 short. By 2018 staff will cost 100.4% of our income so no lights will be turned on. Can someone, please, donate some toilet roll. (This isn’t life in the fast lane. This is life in the oncoming traffic.”) 

Private companies will experience some of these costs and they will put prices, and inflation, up. 

To transcend dread, I imagined that the late Terry Pratchett wrote specifically about the 2015 election. Quotations from his novels are presented in brackets and italics; I hope many of you will know why I couldn’t use capitals. So if you can read on with an open mind…(“the trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.”) 

All three of the big parties, and the Lib Dems may not qualify for this status after May 4th, seem to have abandoned any notion of austerity and instead adopted a series of promises to “spend, spend, spend” and to give us all cash. 25 hours (Labour) 30 hours (Conservative) free childcare (£6,000 a year in Ware) tax breaks, savings bonuses and stamp duty exemption for first time buyers by parties pledged to build up to 1,000,000 houses. Conservatives will sell off Housing Association properties to whichever of the 1.3 million tenants is willing to accept a massive bribe. 

The last time we sold off our public housing had some interesting consequences. A GMB investigation into the “right to buy” scheme in Wandsworth found that of the 15,874 dwellings sold under right to buy 6,180 are now owned by private landlords. Tenants took the subsidy, bought their council house and then sold it on at a massive profit as soon as possible. 

The GMB claim that taxpayers, through the government’s housing benefits scheme, paid £9.300,000,000 to private landlords in 2014. We are being asked to put monetary self-interest first and last, a bit like animals putting their need for food as their sole task. Should there be a wider agenda for us? (“Personal’s not the same as important.”) 

During this frenzied period of political cross dressing all parties are promising up to £8 billion for the NHS, which is reeling from the latest £20 billion of cuts and expensive, unnecessary reorganisation. Labour promises minimum wages will rise by a third and Electricity, train fares and rents will be as good as frozen. All parties say that fewer people will pay tax. Some are giving tax breaks to the poor, others to the rich and, regarding inheritance tax, to those approaching death. 

Ken Clarke, the previous Tory Chancellor has warned against “silly” giveaways that will cost £20 billion by 2020. Austerity has faded in return for votes, and there’s still a week to go. How will you decide between parties? (“You think there are the good people and the bad people. You are wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.)” 

My union, ASCL, spent a year on “The Great Education Debate” culminating in a splendid, visionary self-improving school–led system for promoting excellence. All sorts of politicians have signed up to the vision. I can imagine our ASCL leader Brian Lightman saying, “I told you they were listening,” until, Secretary of State for Education, Nicky Morgan agreed 100% …and added, “control of the curriculum is best left to politicians.” Oh dear, Brian. (“The trouble was that he was talking in philosophy but they were listening in gibberish”) 

Our Prime Minister is so convinced that voters do not believe politicians’ promises that he will pass a law so that his own party cannot raise Income Tax, VAT or National Insurance contributions over the next five years, becoming the first ever government to give up this power. 

A general election that offers us everything if we have money, food banks if we don’t. (“His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools – the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans – and he summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, ‘You can’t trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there’s nothing you can do about it, so let’s have a drink.”) 

Dennis O’Sullivan 

30th April 2015

GCSE Results Day: Now teachers lose their jobs

GCSE Results Day: Now teachers lose their jobs

Pretty girls leaping. It’s GCSE results day. With Performance Related Pay ordinary teachers of bright kids will fare better than those who brilliantly teach those children who don’t make 3 or 4 levels of progress. With the threat of Ofsted for the lower attaining schools results day defines their futures. The incentive to do all one can for the students means sometimes teachers have overstepped the mark. And talking of marks: over-extended exam boards’ standards are deteriorating and few teachers, parents or students trust them. The independent regulator, Ofqual has politicised itself in its toadying and the political parties just need a soundbite. Today, careers are savaged, destroyed by a single statistic and good people are distraught.

That’s everyone covered except to say it sometimes seems that young people are mere statistics.

The dominant phrase “5+ A*-C grades including English and Maths” diminishes education, whilst making schooling at age 15 a bore beyond reasonable tolerance. For schools the phrase spells Ofsted inspection on the “computer says no” model we have come to detest. Fall below the ‘Basement’ figure and your school may be sent into an academy chain. My friend, Fiona, has put much of her life into successfully dragging her school away from the basement in a secondary modern school next door to a grammar school where the most able have been creamed off. Her teachers struggle in the 30% - 40% range with kids who have been told they are failures at age 11. Parents flock to her school and I have seen amazing things done there, for the partially sighted for example. Ofsted will destroy their efforts and abuse their achievements.

Another headteacher friend was so drunk on the joy of this year’s results she was unable to talk to me.

Compare unfavourably in raw data and teachers may spend demoralised months responding to frequent frenzied senior management edicts, policies and strategies as school leaders try to avoid condemnation and dismissal.

At Chauncy in 2012 we had 26 C grade students awarded a D grade in English. The Head of English was summoned and she and I faced resignation.  How could we have cocked up so badly? We had failed the kids. Some of them wouldn’t be getting into 6^th Form or college. At least one of us cried that night.

A picture emerged on the internet. Exam boundaries had been changed after the students had completed the course and taken the exams. Gove had said there would be no increase in pass rates and “independently” Ofqual told the exam boards to reduce 10,000 C grades in English to a D grade. Excel – one of the boards were told that if they didn’t reduce the grades Ofqual would. I can’t remember the number of foul words I used to describe this betrayal of students and teachers but I did join in a lawsuit against Gove and his regulator. How could students trust us or the system when they had been cheated? They made fools of us, legally but unfairly.

We do not need the GCSE measure at 16. The damning obsession means even less now that young people must stay in education or training until aged 18. I should have more faith but what’s the point of vocational courses for 14-18 year olds if you exclude them as a measure.

When one’s career, employment, standard of living, status and prospects depend on “5+ A*-C grades including English and Maths” is it surprising that some of us give too much time and help to push borderline students over the grade boundary. Years 10 and 11 are now barren, tedious, repetitive years for students as they are drilled towards the “5+ A*-C grades including English and Maths.”  We are constantly assessing them and parents may recognise the language of  Predicted Grade, Target Grade and/or Challenge Target Grade. GCSEs are too narrow, have too much assessment and do not prepare students for further study or employment. Rote learning is not educational.

Don’t insult us by criticising “teaching to the exam.” Once the test becomes the measure it becomes useless as an educational tool. Did you expect us to lie down after 2012 and sacrifice more kids’ self-worth, just rewards and opportunities on the false altar of unreliable statistics. Exam attainment at 16 is now just a passport. No one expects a driving instructor to teach the glories of the open road prior to a test.

Did you think you could bully us into failing our students? Where was I supposed to lie down?

10% of my blog visitors are in America and this month Latvians, Poles, Ukranians and two of my sisters have been reading my blogs. I’d better explain what is making me cross (this time).

In England GCSE exams are set and marked by five exam boards (also called ‘awarding bodies’). They are supervised by the government regulator, Ofqual. The late Gove appointed Glenys Stacey as Ofqual Chief Executive from a field of one. When she asked a conference of headteachers if they believed she was independent of Gove we shook our heads in unison and she got quite animated in fruitless defence.

Gove said more kids would fail exams, Ofqual immediately did the deed. Gove doesn’t like American literature in English exams – like magic, Steinbeck and Harper Lee disappear. Gove didn’t like the A*-C grading; neither does Glenys. It’s a shame that neither have taught a single lesson in their lives, imagine that sort of empathy when working with kids.

Gove has gone, destroyed by his etonian betters and Stacey can now, settle down in regulatory mode and be a non political civil servant. She has much work to do and I hope she will do it with us.

Like many astute candidates for a job she started a Masters degree course on Educational Assessment just before interview. She has not yet graduated, but one must not condemn her failure to complete, in four years, what is usually a 2 year part time course. Many of us believe we should examine students when they are ready and if you need a little more advice from your tutor, don’t think it’s cheating.

In November 2013, Gove changed the rules, announcing major policy in “The Telegraph” rather than parliament. Two weeks before students were due to sit ‘early entry’ exams he declared  that resit results would not be allowed in  League tables.  Many schools immediately and at considerable expense withdrew early entries. Many headteachers made up excuses for the students and parents, sadly avoiding the truth.

Glenys Stacey had no experience in education but did claim at interview that being a mother was good preparation. Primary headteachers in particular find a front gate forum of parents who know how to run schools because they went to one themselves. I recently considered taking over my local petrol station on this basis.

If Ofqual has tinkered with results again this year, teachers will lose their jobs, some will be demoted and some will give up the profession they love. The feared ogre of Ofsted roars into schools on these results and the work of teachers is dominated by the havoc wreaked by the ungodly Gove-Wiltshire–Stacey trinity. With disingenuous disregard for students and teachers, Stacey has warned us to expect “greater volatility” in this year’s results. Apparently, this year’s students may be of different ability to last year’s. There are new, harder exams with less coursework and tougher boundaries. I hear that there are, indeed students, teachers and schools inexplicably in dire strairts today, yet  Stacey boasts, “We have maintained standards.” I fail to understand how English results going down and Maths going up can be the same standard. Add to this that one is meant to be able to compare a “B” grade in 2014 with a “B” grade in 2011 and that Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales have their own grades and maintaining standards is a falsehood not worthy of your paygrade.

Ofqual’s  job is to make sure the system runs smoothly, overseeing the exam boards, specifications and syllabuses and ensuring the boards mark properly so that the qualifications are fairly awarded.  Good students earn their grades and should receive them.

The exam system is outdated, deteriorating and near collapse. It brutalises and demoralises good people with inadequate, inaccurate measurement of memory-test exams. Teachers will happily embrace constructive, planned and rational change designed to promote and celebrate achievement. Consider this please: our students would benefit from more assessment during their studies, and less examination at the end.

Ofqual should advise the government. Introducing new tests, exams, qualifications and curriculum for every age group from 4 to 19 at the same time is educationally unsound and daft. To create a new History curriculum you have to introduce the age 11 course to students four years after the age 7 one. This cannot be done concurrently to suit a political thirst. Think building blocks.

Don’t call us cheats. Gove gave us the inelegant term, “gaming.” Independent Stacey adopted the word and concept, asking teachers to let her know, anonymously, where their schools were “gaming” the exam system to secure higher grades. Gaming refers to practices helping kids do better than if they walked into exams unsullied by preparation and practice, wearing blindfolds and mittens. If this is the standard of your academic investigations let’s hope you can resit the Masters, after guidance, advice and a walk through the specification. I bet it’s a non exam course.

My wife has been gaming my daughter’s exams. They do it in the evenings, behind closed doors. They speak French before tests and this gives Cathy an adavantage.

Is it only half the middle class world who use private tutors: gaming, dependent on private wealth?

“Gaming” is forever with us; how innocent am I?

My school has (that means I have) increased the timetabled curriculum for English and Maths with more teachers and smaller classes. From age 11 we target the skills that will be examined  at 16; from age 14 we practice exam questions; at 15 we target likely questions. At 16 we do early entries and we double entry some students for GCSE English and the private schools’ preferred iGCSE. We do practice essays, and “walking talking mocks.” On exam day  we get the kids in early for a warm up; feeding them them toast and bacon rolls. Each student is given a bottle of water. We have a team of dedicated invigilators, an air conditioned hall and a very big clock. Students are provided with a black pen and we are nice to them. No barking attacks the students. As an exams centre we administer public examinations faultlessly according to exam board inspection.

Gamers such as Lewis Hamilton? He has a team of dozens, millions spent designing better car stuff, nutritionists and fitness trainers, coaches using every device to analyse his racing style, He has on board computers and pit stops where he doesn’t even put the petrol in himself . He practices in the car and in simulators, on the track he will race. My goodness, they virtually drive the race for him.

I’ve heard of candidates trying to spot interview questions, newsreaders using notes and prompters, firefighters simulating fire rescues, actors learning lines and fuel tanker drivers being shown exactly how to transfer toms of fuel. Gamers all.

There has been cheating. Extra help or time in SATs, model answers where kids change a few words, constant correction of coursework, inflated marks in oral exams and too much help in practical exams. Yes, it has always been done and it is wrong. To prevent such malpractice we need effective monitoring exam boards, to  visit schools during controlled assignments, talk with students, film oral exams, read coursework submissions and use computer plagiarism checkers. Warn, penalise and publicly ban centres found cheating. Headteachers will quickly impose internal checking to save their school’s reputation. Put this alongside an ethos of trusting schools and abolishing league tables and we stand a chance of integrity returning. Simply using a mountain of terminal exams which exam boards fail to mark properly is not the answer. Do away with resits, Modular exams, early entries and access to iGCSEs and you will remove a burden on markers. But with the 16 million papers (Guardian Jan 2012) all now to be sat in June the exam boards stand no better chance.

There are too many exams and too many end of course exams. Properly moderated school assessments in most subjects would be a more efficient and accurate way of assessing student achievement. The only way forward is for the assessment system to be built on trusting teachers and reported student achievement broadened. Have fewer formal assessments, with a new role for in-school trained, responsible assessors. Schools are really very, very good at knowing their students and assessing each one’s ability in each aspect of each course. Ofqual must look to use this knowledge rather than rely on statistical models of assessment. A lack of trust explains the removal of Practical assessments from the new Science A levels.

And. Please can we make the tasks assessed a bit more exciting, stimulating, challenging and rewarding. Problem solving maths is on the ball here.

A student’s grade should not be based on the choice of board . I am in favour of one board, one syllabus. However, the AQA Drama results were so crazily wrong in 2011 many schools switched other boards, saving thousands of students from irrational failure. This is by no means a unique example. Government and Ofqual seem to agree that speaking and listening should not be examined in English, so many switched to iGCSE. I want one resourced good board funded by the massive fees we already pay them and regulated by an Ofqual free of political catchphrases and interference. Any money received by an exam board employee for writing exam textbooks should go to reduce the cost of exams.

We should abolish league tables as unfit for purpose.  We now have the Govian exclusion of resit grades, many vocational subjects, “discounted” subjects which, for example, counts one of Art and Textiles as meaningful. The official, published result will be the first exam sat, so if Art was sat on Monday 10^th June and textiles on Tuesday 11^th June Art counts in league tables and Textiles is rubbished. Well, it isn’t as if any one designs, makes, sells or even wears clothes is it?

NAHT, ASCL and PiXL have combined to support schools with “end of Year 11” statistics including early entries, unintentionally wrecking league tables in the process. How then will Raiseonline enable Ofsted to condemn on figures alone? And by the way, what’s wrong with a Leaving Certificate/Graduation standard that records all student achievement as a passport to job interviews and further study? And goodness, how will we cope if more young people achieve this standard?

If the league tables are there to entice or deter parents on such simplistic measures do we really think families are that naive? I know dozens of people who love our school despite the drawback of a blogging headteacher..

Exam boards make many, many mistakes. Schools paid exam boards £328 million in 2013 (Channel 4, 15-08-14). Every year incompetent marking leads to incorrect grades given to candidates and attempts to get injustice corrected are met with bureaucratic, defensive obstruction from exam boards. We have seen our ICT coursework, marked by the same teacher for 12 years, reduced by 3 grades per A level student. Our English language coursework, marked by the same teacher for five years, has been marked down an entire A Level grade. There are countless examples of this across schools When a candidate gets a remark the remarker receives the original script with the first marker’s marks. This is bound to influence the second marker and is a highly dubious practice in academic matters. Appeals cost schools £5.5 million in 2013 (Channel 4, 15-08-14).

The arts suffer more than most from interpretive moderation. Just two recent cases in my experience:The Drama A level moderator told the head , that’s me, that she was happy with our marking. All kids were then downgraded. Our appeals were dismissed without explanation An experienced Music A level teacher resubmitted the exact same lower sixth work a year later.  All grades went up.

Exam marking is outrageously hit and miss with the misses failing good students. Marking is neither accurate nor fair (HMC Report 2012) “12,250 grades changed at A level and 26,270 grades changed at GCSE” after schools appealed (Ofqual Statistical Bulletin March 2012). Real people, real mistakes that could cost teachers and students their careers.

Schools pay dearly to appeal badly marked exams and Ofqual’s response was to add this to the gaming accusations. Stop appealing results, you said, because the examiners doing the remark were often tempted to give a higher mark on appeal.

Parents, teachers and students do not have confidence in the exam boards. Ofqual’s own polls showed that, “89% of headteachers had ‘considerable’ concerns about GCSEs, citing worries about incorrect marking of papers, grade boundary issues, incorrect grading and lack of information and knowledge about standards.”  (Ofqual, May 2013)

When Ofqual polled 4,696 people they found that “one in five of all teachers (20%) believe that around a quarter of GCSE students get the wrong grade.” Alarmingly, Ofqual declared this “a broadly positive statistic.” (Ofqual 2012) My Masters course emphasised research methods and use of statistics

In the same survey Ofqual reported 41% of parents ‘not confident’ students got the correct GCSE grade, 33% likewise concerned about inaccurate A Level grades. Goodness, Glenys, how high do these figures need to be before you demand higher exam board standards?

Chauncy has scored 24% on EBacc measures, 62% on First Entry only measures, 72% on the results achieved by the end of Year 11 and 73% if we include vocational courses in full. I reckon appeals may bring us to 74%.

Someone protect me from this nonsense.