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Thanks for this. I'm glad we (in HE) don't have (inter)national exams...
Someone else mentioned syllabus - think that was the word I should have used. I wonder if it's really necessary for kids to know about the Plantagenets (for example) balanced against the negatives of any kind of catch-up teaching. I guess the real problem is to do with what comes up in exams. Mind you I do still occasionally break out the trigonometry.
hoefla-
This is how I feel, I don't really mind that my child has missed out on learning Jekyll and Hyde and don't think she needs catch up sessions to learn it, provided that she won't be disadvantaged when it comes to her GCSE results for not knowing it. Math and Science I feel differently.
I do have sympathy for the teachers and exam board though as I don't believe it will be possible to achieve a 'fair' solution for everyone, so my only hope is they can come up with the least unfair solution to not put disadvantaged pupils at a further disadvantage.
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I think we’re really touching on a slightly different subject, namely what should be taught in schools and why. I’m an academic by training, and fairly fundamentally believe in knowledge for its own sake, and instilling a love of learning. The useful skills aren’t really subject specific. It’s more (in the humanities) about learning to research, to balance competing viewpoints, to summarise complex information, to assess the validity of different accounts, to write fluently and to present your own views and arguments intelligently. Those things are absolutely transferrable. The actual specifics of why Edward II was deposed won’t help anyone, but hopefully some people find it interesting and can think intelligently about the parallels between that situation and today.
And if we’re talking about catch up teaching, we’re really talking about catching up syllabus content, which does contain things like the Plantagenets. Moreover, none of the GCSE specifications will prescribe a certain order of teaching (though the route through some is much more obvious than others), so the exam boards can’t just say ‘don’t teach X, just do Y’, as some people will have taught X already, for example.
To really complicate things, all GCSEs have Assessment Objectives (AOs), which are tied into key skills. For example, 2 different history syllabuses might teach 2 different periods, but are still ultimately looking to assess students’ ability to interpret sources and estimate their reliability. In this year’s TAGs, schools could reduce content but still had to assess the AOs in much the same way, which actually backwards engineers a lot of the content back in, if that makes sense. For instance, one AO in the humanities is often comparison. If only one of the units has a comparative focus, it’s very hard to assess comparison without teaching that unit, even if the board has said it’s no longer compulsory.
It would be possible to re-design syllabuses to address the AOs in a more concise way, but in reality it takes 2-3 years minimum for a syllabus to go from conception to teaching, via Ofqual approval. That’s too long to be useful in the present situation. Even if by some miracle everyone got their heads together right now, and Ofqual just waved it through, it would be very, very hard to get a useful scheme of work for September, with a full syllabus, suggested resources, sample assessment materials, etc.
Finally, as it’s education, everyone’s an expert (my pet peeve) and the actual teachers are never consulted on any changes. So just because we think something is sensible (or not) seems to make no difference whatsoever.
greentricky
RecoveryRide
The problem is there isn’t any 1 approach because there isn’t any 1 shortfall. Students who’ve had a positive remote learning experience, with engaged parents, who aren’t within 12 months of GCSE or AL probably need little help and will likely catch up to where they ‘should’ have been within a term. Those at the other end of the spectrum almost certainly need some sort of targeted intervention if they are to have the key skills in place at all.
In terms of intervention, extending the school day won’t go down well with either teachers or pupils. I can say for 1 if I had to do it, I’d be asking SLT which bits of my current marking, prep or admin they were ok with not happening. It’s also worth noting that with teachers doing the job of the exam boards this year, those who have been teaching live over lockdown have worked unprecedented hours this year for no extra money and are approaching burnout. As for the pupils, engagement in lower ability groups typically drops after lunch anyway; by 5pm, say, I think little would be going in. The most unmotivated are likely to be actively disruptive by this point, especially if sports clubs etc get problematised. Good teaching can address that to a degree but it’s very tough indeed to make trigonometry or the Plantagenets more engaging than football practice or hanging out by the chippy.
Opt in holiday sessions (say 2-3 mornings a week) possibly have some merit, though like most clinics they tend to attract the worried well or the middle class kids. Scaling down exam content definitely helped this summer and will probably need to happen again next academic year. The very able, motivated and well-supported will probably find a way anyway.
Probably the most common problem we’re seeing is weaknesses in extended writing, especially grammar. Few students read for pleasure and writing and comprehension skills in many students have noticeably fallen over the course of the lockdowns. This can, to a degree, be addressed through cross-curriculum activities (more long written answers in Science, for example), but some work at home, with carefully targeted resources, will be needed for some.
Many of the problems are also societal and Covid has exacerbated them but not caused them.
That’s probably enough rambling from me!