Assessment – Assessment and the Curriculum

Continuing the theme of assessment the next few posts are going to involve a trek around the QCA website to summarise the information and exemplification found there.
The QCA ‘Assessment and the Curriculum‘ page is a good starting point when considering how you will monitor the day to day progress of students as they traverse [...]

Single Level Testing

Upon getting to grips with curriculum change, one of the first questions that immediately follows is “What about assessment?”. With the pervading culture of reporting headline external assessment results many teachers are torn between a perceived need to keep a tight ship with regard to performance in exams and unshackling teachers and reinvigorating pupils.
Whilst I [...]

Support for History

Just a quick entry. Hidden away on the QCA website I came across this link that may be of interest to heads of history departments:
http://www.qca.org.uk/history/innovating/key3/index.htm
The material is NOT from the new curriculum site but does contain elements outlining some cross curricular approaches, assessment, progression, etc. If you dig around the QCA site (delete the stuff [...]

Personalisation

The following recommendations were made by a highly successful school working in a deprived area, where personalisation and brain-based learning have transformed the school:

Education is done with not to, students
Students have choices of how to learn, when they learn (through flexible timetabling), where they learn and with whom.
Pupils become independent and lifelong learners
Pupils are not [...]

Personalised Learning – The Four Deeps

Personalising learning has gone from contentious double-speak first spewed forth by central government in 2004 to something that is at the heart of curriculum development.
” John White, emeritus professor of philosophy of education at the Institute of Education, one of the most consistently original and free-spirited thinkers in British education, has called into question one [...]

Community Cohesion – Updated 25th February

Hot off the presses, ‘Guidance on the Duty to Promote Community Cohesion’ has been released to assist schools to reflect on their role and contribution to community cohesion. This may be of limited use to anyone operating outside of the senior leadership team but I think it is important to keep in mind that as [...]

"How Well are we Achieving our Aims?" – SSAT (1)

Once the wheels start turning on your curriculum change it will be important to gather feedback in a range of contexts and via a number of pre-determined way-stages. Collecting information from stakeholders – yes even the pupils! – is a crucial step along the way.
This first document, produced by SSAT, will be of use during [...]

"How do we Organise Learning?" – SSAT (2)

SSAT have produced a list of questions that could be used with stakeholders from a range of backgrounds to consider what it is you are trying to achieve in your particular school. As with previous posts the questions come in a pretty PDF and a more pragmatic DOC format.
Questions to develop thinking around curriculum change [...]

If you take away just one thing from this blog….!

‘Part of the necessary boldness on the part of a school is to stop controlling, managing and predetermining so much, and to dare to create different kinds of time, and different sorts of learning opportunity.’
Professor Guy Claxton, Professor of Education, University of Bristol

“How Do we Organise Learning?” – SSAT (1)

SSAT – the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust – have produced exhaustive and high quality resources to support curriculum development. Getting staff to buy-in to the vision of the senior leadership team is critical in the creation of a coherent curriculum that is equally owned by teachers at all levels – to say nothing of [...]