This post was going to point to the JCQ data on 2012 GCSE exam results. Instead I’ll link to the Guardian Datablog post (which has a link to a Google spread sheet version of the data).
Why so?
The JCQ is the Joint Council for Qualifications (see Wikipedia for a description). It acts as ‘a single voice for the seven largest qualification providers in the UK’.
The Terms and Conditions for the JCQ website include this clause:
2.6 You undertake not to:
[…]
establish a link to this website from any other website, intranet or extranet site without our prior written consent;
Complying with this clause means not *establishing* a link with the JCQ site [1]. A rather strange clause to include in the T&Cs for *using* a web site. The result? I guess it makes JCQ a single voice that’s not part of the conversation.
To quote Nate Anderson in Ars on a similar issue:
But those wanting to link to a normal Web page on the site certainly don’t, as a general rule, need permission to do so; indeed, the Web would be a hugely different place if linking were permission- and form-based. One can see why Lowe’s likes such agreements, but it’s harder to see why anyone would sign one.
I wonder if they really mean this. I’ll ask.
In the meantime…
- Panton Principles for Open Data in Science
- 8 Principles of Open Government Data
- UK Government Open Data (with GCSE data to 2011)
Footnotes
[1] I suppose there’s an interesting legal discussion somewhere on whether including an HTML anchor tag is *establishing* a link (or if that’s what happens when the browser makes an HTTP request to the webserver hosting JCQs site). Irrespective
TeachGeek 