A third of U.K. adults lack basic high-school aptitude, half lack any proficiency in numbers and a seventh are functionally illiterate, according a recent government-commissioned report by Lord (Sandy) Leitch.
Medical admissions procedures attempt to select for academic and non-academic competence using a combination of school grades, aptitude test scores, personal or school statements, and interviews (Parry et al., 2006).
Important decisions about school placement, aptitude for college work, and opportunities for training and advancement in the workplace are often based on an individual's performance in relation to arbitrary cutoff scores on IQ-like tests (Bellinger 2004b).
The hypothesis that establishing medical school applicants' aptitude at the outset enables one to rank applicants in order of their likelihood to succeed in medicine and become good doctors appears sound on the surface.
The much-touted reforms include measures such as submitting teachers in public schools to aptitude tests and imposing more competition on the telecommunications sector, previously dominated by billionaire Carlos Slim Helu, once the world's richest man.
There is also a Summer Visual Arts Institute designed for high school students with aptitude and interest in the visual arts.
In 1953 the family moved to Bromley, Kent, where David attended Burnt Ash junior school and showed aptitude in singing and playing the recorder.
At school Gesner's aptitude, especially for reading the classic works of Latin and Greek authors, so impressed his teachers that a number of them sponsored his continued education.
The Youth in Transition Survey (YITS) is very rich in family background, school experience, and aptitude variables, but it is difficult to identify those in apprenticeship programs.
In education it means ending academic selection once and for all (see here how it could be done), removing the right of schools to select by aptitude or run their own school banding systems from the School Admissions Code and ending the right of schools to select by "faith-based" criteria.
