Worked example · English · Year 10
DCF: Data and computational thinking → Data and information literacy
A secure Year 10 response, annotated so you can see which success criterion each part meets. It is also your answer key for Step 2: Yes 12, No 1, No reply 7, so 60% of all 20 employers said Yes, and 92% is 12 of the 13 who replied; the wellbeing axis starts at 6.5, the After bar is drawn 3 times as tall, but the real rise is 0.6 points or 8.8%; sick days fell by 18.2% overall, and 65% is Ffenest Design alone; the output claim is true (15 of 20); sector averages +1.15, −0.02, +0.30, +0.57. Show this after pupils have tried the steps themselves.
Small print: “*of employers who answered our end-of-trial survey.” It belongs to the 92% claim, but it is printed at the very bottom of the poster, in the smallest text on the page.
Every claim is copied exactly, and the small print is matched to the claim it changes. Evidences criterion 1.
(a)
| Yes | No | No reply | Yes as a % of all 20 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12 | 1 | 7 | 12 ÷ 20 × 100 = 60% |
Only 13 employers answered the survey, and 12 of them said Yes: 12 ÷ 13 × 100 = 92.3%, which the poster rounds to 92%. The 7 employers who did not reply are left out completely. That is more than a third of the trial (35%), and 4 of the 7 are in hospitality and retail. The honest figure for the whole trial is 60%, or 12 of the 20 employers.
(b) The vertical axis starts at 6.5, not 0, and stops at 7.5. The Before bar is 0.3 above the bottom of the axis and the After bar is 0.9 above it, so the After bar is drawn 3 times as tall. The real rise is 7.4 − 6.8 = 0.6 of a point, and 0.6 ÷ 6.8 × 100 = 8.8%. On an axis from 0 to 10 the two bars would look almost the same height. It is a real improvement, but a small one, not something that “soars”.
(c) Across all 20 employers, sick days went from 589 to 482. 589 − 482 = 107 fewer days, and 107 ÷ 589 × 100 = 18.2%. The 65% comes from one employer, Ffenest Design: 20 down to 7 is 13 fewer days, and 13 ÷ 20 × 100 = 65%. The poster has taken its best result and presented it as if it were the whole trial. Sick days actually went up at two employers, Popty Carys (21 to 24) and Caffi’r Parc (15 to 17).
(d) 15 employers had an output change of 0% or more: 7 office employers, 2 in hospitality and retail, 3 in care and health and 3 in manufacturing. 15 ÷ 20 = 0.75, which is 3 in 4, so the claim is true. But “held steady” is doing some work: output rose at 10 employers, stayed at exactly 0% at 5, and fell at 5.
(e)
| Sector | Employers | Said Yes | Average wellbeing change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Office | 8 | 8 | 9.2 ÷ 8 = +1.15 |
| Hospitality and retail | 5 | 1 | −0.1 ÷ 5 = −0.02 |
| Care and health | 4 | 1 | 1.2 ÷ 4 = +0.30 |
| Manufacturing | 3 | 2 | 1.7 ÷ 3 = +0.57 |
Grouping the data shows that the four-day week worked very well for offices: every office said Yes and wellbeing rose by more than a whole point. It did almost nothing for hospitality and retail, where the average change is close to zero and only 1 of the 5 employers said Yes. Care and health also gained very little. The businesses that must open to customers every day gained least, and most of them did not reply. The average of +0.6 for the whole trial is pulled up by the 8 offices, so it hides the sectors where the idea did not work.
Every figure is correct and the working is shown. Part (d) admits that one claim is true, which makes the criticism of the others more convincing. Part (e) groups the data and names the trend the infographic hides. Evidences criteria 1 and 2.
| Technique | Example from Text A | Effect on the reader | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Language | Hyperbole in a dynamic verb, emphasised with capital letters | “Staff wellbeing SOARS” | “Soars” suggests a sudden, dramatic climb, and the capitals make it shout. The reader feels the improvement is huge before reading the numbers, when the real rise is 0.6 of a point. The same confidence is in the declarative heading “THE 4-DAY WEEK WORKS.”, where the full stop presents an opinion as a settled fact. |
| Structure | The strongest claim first and biggest; the qualification last and smallest | The 92% in a large yellow circle at the top left; the small print in 11-point text at the very bottom, after the call to action | We read the top left first, so the reader accepts “92%” before they could ever reach the asterisk. By the time they find “of employers who answered”, the poster has already moved them on to the imperative “Ask your boss” and the rhetorical question “why not us?”. |
| Form | A bar chart with a vertical axis that does not start at 0, and a pictogram | The axis runs from 6.5 to 7.5, so the After bar is 3 times as tall; ten smiling figures stand for “368 happier lives” | The chart looks like scientific proof, so the reader trusts it, but its shape turns an 8.8% rise into what looks like tripling. The pictogram and the repeated “368” make every single worker look happier, although wellbeing fell at 2 employers and rose by only 0.1 at 3 more. The teal After bar next to a grey Before bar links the old week with dullness. |
Each point names a technique with the right term (hyperbole, dynamic verb, declarative, imperative, rhetorical question, vertical axis, pictogram), gives the exact example and explains the effect on the reader, using the data from Step 2 as evidence. Evidences criterion 3.
Carys influences her audience through personal experience and humour, not statistics. She builds a relationship with the room straight away with a joke, “some of you owe me for a Welsh cake”, which gets a laugh and makes her sound like a neighbour, not an opponent. She also uses concession: “I’m not saying it’s wrong. For an office, maybe it’s brilliant”. This makes her sound fair, so the audience is more ready to believe her main point. Her repetition of “Nobody rang me … Nobody rang the café. Nobody rang the pub.” builds to her final attack on the poster.
The data backs her up. At Popty Carys wellbeing fell from 7.0 to 6.6, sick days rose from 21 to 24 and output fell by 6%. Across hospitality and retail the average wellbeing change was −0.02, and 4 of the 5 employers did not reply, including the café and the pub. She overstates one thing: the campaign did count one No, so it did not “only count the people who said yes”. But she is right that the people who did not reply were ignored.
Two speaker techniques with short quotations, a comparison with the campaign’s use of statistics, and a test of her claims against Text C that finds she is mostly, but not completely, right. Evidences criterion 4.
Does the four-day week work as well as Amser i Fyw says?
Short bullet points, not sentences to read out: figures, facts and quotations the pupil can talk from, one point about presentation (the axis), and an open question that invites other people in. This is the kind of note allowed in a real group discussion. Evidences criterion 5.