................................Really what it says in the heading. I will play with this from time to time. A mixture of education and domestic ...............................observations.
Tuesday, March 29, 2022
Tuesday, March 22, 2022
#BETT22 , #BETT2022 What I will be up to.
- ThingLink
- Intel
- Fujitsu
- Click-View
- Microsoft Education
- Google Education
- Advantis Systems/Class VR
- Instructure Canvas
My diary is almost full - if you want a meeting reach out to me on twitter @joecar
I look forward to meeting friends old and new.
Reflections last few years BETT
Friday, March 04, 2022
We interrupt this Service #Ukraine No to War #FightForUkraine #FreeUkraine
Here is a simple mode of resistance and civil disobedience. It's not my idea it is one doing the rounds on social media - but it is easy to do.
Search google maps for cafes and restaurants in large Russian cities with large numbers of reviews. Use google translate to post a pro-Ukraine message directly on to their website. I suggest the one below but you may prefer a more subtle message.
Уважаемые россияне, ваши СМИ подвергаются цензуре. Кремль лжет. Тысячи ваших солдат и украинских братьев гибнут на Украине. Узнайте правду в бесплатном Интернете и в приложении Telegram. Время свергнуть диктатора Путина! любовь из Шотландии
- Go to https://www.google.co.uk/maps/
- For a start here is a link to Restaurants in St Petersburg
- Go to the institution's website - your browser will translate the site from Russian into English
- Find the comments book
- Leave an appropriate comment of your choice
Friday, December 31, 2021
Reflections on 2021 #oerxdomains , #phygital , #Fujitsu , #openscot , #Bett22
The end of another strange year - this year without the lockdown beard.
It's all been a great team effort. This year topped and tailed by two College Development Network Awards both reflecting well on the work of the Learning and Teaching Academy.
Amazing really as the team have battled the frustrations and heartbreaks of CoVid like everyone else.
Highlights
- Continued staff support for webinar training and development .
- Chairing #OER21
- Launching College Fujitsu Hub.
- Sourcing speakers , open badges and chairing sessions at #Phygital conference
- Staff and Student input to business case that led to procurement of Canvas.
- On going cross College work on transition to Canvas.
- Trying to figure out what hybrid learning and teaching actually means.
- On going sanity checks from colleagues in College and from ALT and many others across the sector ( you know who you are) and patience, kindness, consideration and teamwork.
Monday, November 08, 2021
#COP26 Week One Glasgow
https://twitter.com/PuddingPop0802
I’ve been working remotely most days but in the city and College on Tuesday, and on Friday in College as duty manager. The city campus has a great range of Cop26 events on and the Riverside Campus is hosting the large International Cop26 Maritime Hub. Both building and libraries are open for students and there is a full programme of events for learners and the community.
My commute from south side into City centre has been pretty much as normal and if anything the city is much quieter than I expected it to be. I’ve not experienced the disruption and road closures around the UN Blue Zone north of the river. But was very aware of the increased police presence across the city centre. Particularly on my walk back to central station on Tuesday evening I was suddenly in a phalanx of armed police but I think Leonardo DiCaprio was doing some shopping nearby.
I thought there would be more going on and a more visible presence of all the visitors. I do hope they are getting out and about and enjoying the city. The autumnal rain has been torrential this week
I was kindly invited to participate and contribute to a Herald and Epson sponsored event on education and #cop26 on Tuesday morning. Thanks to Doug Belshaw for line and it was a 'white manel' but the audience was diverse and included school pupils.
There was some pessimism about role education can play in whole carbon neutral agenda 80% of school buildings today will still be with us in 2040 and they are hard to heat and insulate. Consensus seems to be that without gas boilers best way to heat schools is by biomass boilers.
I am really fortunate to work in a new build and an institution that has thought through its own contribution towards the zero carbon agenda and as a skills based organisation leading out changes to other sectors of the economy.
There has been lots of progress around getting a green curriculum into schools in most subject areas. This is easy to understate and some in the audience felt that special new green subjects should be shoehorned into the curriculum.
My bigger reflection; the schools and media do need to end their fixation on SQA changing its name is not going to change culture. One of the panel even suggested that everything can change, but attaining 5 highers will still be the gold standard, that’s not really change at all. The debate strayed for a while onto global warming is really all SQA's fault.
We really need to get away from a knowledge based curriculum and move to a competency based system. What you know is good , what you can do is much better.
On Saturday I did my own bit and went out and enjoyed the #COP26 demo. I think there was around 150,000 people out on the streets and met many international folks and protesters from across the UK. Not tens of thousands as the BBC reported - pretty shocking really. The rain was torrential.
I hope next week brings some sensible and workable actions from #COP26 .
Sunday, October 17, 2021
Towards A new Curriculum and Assessment Agency in Scotland Part Two
© Copyright David Hawgood and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence. |
I did promise a follow up to my first post upon hearing the news that SQA and Education Scotland were to be re-engineered. Having taken part in some of the initial consultations. It was good to hear that the reform will be phased and planned. But I am no clearer on where the destination will be. I am not sure publication of OECD senior phase report this week makes the destination any clearer.
There will be the same impasse around both what the content is in any national qualifications and how it should be assessed. I'll leave that to the end.
I am going to jump to other side of challenge. There are some parts of the Scottish system that need fixed and these suggested changes would support any future system.
If we stay fixed on the contentious parts of the challenge, as I covered in my last post the real and present danger that by making the reforms all about schools then lots of other useful parts of the system could be lost and we may not make the headway required.
So here is a list of things that simply need fixed for any system to operate more effectively for all.- Data : As a system, the Scottish system small as it is , is very poor at capturing and sharing data on what is actually happening across the learning system. To future proof the system we need to acknowledge that everything is now data and we need to set up a new awarding system that is more effective at providing learners , teachers , centres, employers and the broader community access to reliable information.
- It should start by making everything digital by default. Start by designing a system that is future proof.
- This could be as simple as making proper use of the Scottish Candidate Number (SCN), it has been used for decades but it is not used across education and/or consistently by Higher Education Institutions. If you really wish to track attainment gaps being closed and the impact of FE, HE and work based learning this needs to be addressed. It is there already don't invent something new, just ensure no one gets any public money unless they use it to report on learners' progress.
- More ambitiously and much more productively would be to publish any outcomes or eventual curriculum in a machine readable way. Yes , other countries do this already ! . Then if a PDF document is the output you need, you can have it , but by creating data in this way, the assets can be easily reused across the system. No more collective keying of unit descriptors , experiences and outcomes etc into lots of spreadsheets and databases.
- Certification :There is a quick easy win to make all certification digital and online. SQA were almost there, but lacked political support to push this across the line. A new agency should start by making sure no learner ever needs to worry about a lost certificate again. The system should be set up to allow learner to share a secure view of their certification on any job application etc. Smoothing recruitment processes for all. It would also be cost effective way to deliver richer information to learners. This probably is about data again but needs a heading of its own.
- Subject Communities Who owns and decides what is in the assessable certifiable bits of learning in the Scottish system ?. It should be transparent and clear to all learners , parents , teachers. For teachers and learners there should be clear ways for them to suggest and shape the content of awards. There have always been subject panels - you do still need experts - but make the process more open. Qualifications could be maintained by an iterative yearly online process to keep them current. This with clear stakeholder engagement. Solves relevancy issues with computing and some sciences subjects. It needs to be clear that what arrives in a qualification is actually informed by national occupational standards when this is relevant.
- Learner Communities for learners sitting national assessments the national system should have figured out a way by now to give learners some safe secure spaces to allow learners to access to peer support. If the system is not brave enough to tackle this, it should be brave enough with caveats to highlight services like The Students Room. that have been around for years - but the system should be able to do better. We don't encourage our learners to see that there is a national education system. We should be encouraging national and international engagement.
- Courses and Assessment Direct to Learners If most learners now have laptops. The new agency should work towards having a clearer offer direct to learners. In partnership with relevant agencies Education Scotland, SDS and College Development Network and others. It can be piloted, it does not have to be a big bang. Any learner should have access to any national subject anywhere in Scotland and the opportunity to be assessed and certificated in that subject. This is something that any new agency should be able to coordinate - Colleges ,local authorities, Scholar and other partners can deliver. Perhaps precipitated by more of a focus on open learning.
- Open Learning Materials If you follow my blog you will see a lot about this. If the learning content is created by lecturer , teacher and or funded by public money whether through an institution , agency or local authority . The learning material should be made open and available under an appropriate open licence Non Commercial Share Alike to allow teachers and learners to remix and use. Simply aligned to UNESCO global standards in this area. This does not replace a teacher or trainer but gives learners and teachers access to better learning resources. Initially this does not need massive investment in any national system it simply needs positive policy messaging and support so that all actors in the system adopt the UNESCO guidelines.
- Staff Development The new agency should be seen to be lowering the administrative burden on teachers and College staff while not diminishing their responsibility to understand any national standards – There should be pilots around roll on and off secure assessment ( Solar mkt 2) The system can collectively maintain standards while lessening the assessment burden on teachers and learners.
- Validation process In Colleges and work based learning, the centres actually have to have teaching staff and resources in place to deliver new courses . This includes ensuring that staff have adequate training to deliver new courses. This may be bridge too far but in many subject areas staff do need annual development. Perhaps having some better validation processes in school sector would raise standards.
- Verification processes: it still has not really been picked up but teaching staff do feel insecure on their decision making. Make sure that there is robust internal, regional and national mechanisms to support teacher decision making. Make sure everyone knows that standards they are working to. In an interconnected world this should not be a logistical challenge. Learners need this exemplification too. Imagine you are learning in a school or centre that can't show you what an "A" looks like. In learning it is not mythical - teachers and learners should be clear about competencies and levels they are working towards.
- Digital Portfolio We should aim to give every learner a digital profile a portfolio of their learning. They build it and they can decide who and or which components of this they wish to share. This more than an online CV and could include link to their digital certification from a range of sources. There are lots of ways this could be achieved freely and within GDPR regulations.
If the reform is because the current system is no longer fit for purpose. Then I really would expect to see the end of paper based examinations - I promised not to be contentious.
I would go further and re-look at the subject silos - perhaps looking again at the experiences and outcomes and stretching these to end of formal schooling. But that is probably a bridge too far. The suggestions above will support a new landscape whether we are assessing latin , maths, english, astrophysics, languages , welding , music , digital literacies, meta-skills or tap-dancing.
Monday, July 12, 2021
Towards A new Curriculum and Assessment Agency in Scotland
It is time to reflect on : what we need from a national awarding body, what we expect of support agencies, funding bodies, audit and inspection organisations.
They are all, in one way or another, part of the mix.
What is missing is any real form of national discussion around what the future of schools assessment and certification should be. The Scottish government response to the OECD report is big on headlines but thin on detail. The press, including the educational press, tend to stick to the shallow end of any debate on national assessment systems.
BBC Radio Four ran an excellent series simply around thinking aloud about Re-Thinking Education with one programme dedicated to looking at alternatives to the current school exam system in England. I am not a big Lord Kenneth Baker fan but his opinions on ending any form of national assessment for 16 year olds is worth exploring. his thoughts on an academic vocational split at age 14 are abhorrent.
I am concerned on two fronts. The populist decision to abolish the SQA does seem to ignore the fact that one way or another a new agency(s) will simply rise from the ashes. The timing is appalling given the stresses and strains on the system, but it is perhaps that simple political expediency that heralds many education reforms, give them the big news just before schools and parliament go into summer recess.
Lost in this and the only bit that has ever been in anyway exportable is the vocational education system founded in early 1980s by SCOTVEC and buried in the merger with the Scottish Examination Board on the creation of SQA.
In the worst scenario, asset strippers in the form of private sector awarding or the 'not for profit' awarding bodies in England will gladly hoover up SQA's commercial and overseas business and the receipts they brought to support national awarding in Scotland. I wouldn't even be surprised to see elements of Universities Scotland hovering around this area.
If the focus is just on schools then a new agency or vehicle needs established to look after vocational awarding in Scotland. It needs to be new and separate from agencies like SDS or SFC who fund the qualifications. Perhaps this is the new quality assurance agency for Universities and Colleges mooted in the SFC review papers and lauded here by Ewart Keep at least SFC talks about the tertiary education system and working with SQA and successor bodies in their Coherence and Sustainability Review.
Clarity here is needed quickly, vocational awards are at the heart of any economic recovery strategy.
But what about school assessment and certification ? Will removing SQA, rather than reforming the assessment system, solve the issues ?
In my view incessant power struggles over school curriculum and assessment held the whole Scottish system back. They certainly held SQA back from 2003 - 2015 while I was there and they were delaying things like HN reforms when I worked in the College sector immediately prior to that. I am guessing now there will be further delays around the HN Next Gen work which the College sector badly needs. We need reforms too around qualifications in the work based learning sector.
I'll post separately on where the opportunities lie for a new sort of awarding agency for the public good.
Where will consensus on school assessment and certification come from ?
The school assessment system with its narrow subject and exam focus was not really about SQA but an image of what teachers and governments wanted. To have a more flexible system it starts with the teachers and schools knowing and applying national standards, no matter what subject area, this could be in any domain or discipline, you can then have flexible assessment policies , it could all naturally flow through from the experiences and outcomes.
The tech and systems have been in place for years to support more innovative forms of assessment and certification but the school system has fought , resisted and won battles to keep the exam system and year long courses, while maintaining glacial speed too on any curriculum changes.
While the civil service and local authorities continued to embrace systems that only recognised achievement in exam based subjects. Universities like this too. I hope there is now a confidence in the system to tackle this. It needs to be tackled system wide. There will be a real drive in many quarters to ignore any learning from the last two years and get back to business as usual.
I fear further insularism - the awarding system in schools needs to place learners more at centre , subject choice should not be determined by which school and where it is located , assessment should take a variety of forms and be ready when the candidate is ready - not annually and teachers should as matter of course be able to make accurate estimates on grading, and certification should be digital by default.
"The SQA levy to local authorities and entry fees charged to independent schools and colleges for the certification of national qualifications have remained unchanged since 2012-13. These fees contribute to the cost of awarding. The costs of awarding National Qualifications are greater than the contribution made by local authorities, independent schools and colleges."
"Scottish government funding in the financial year 2019-20 to the SQA was £41.4 million but, in 2020-21, that figure almost halved to £21 million"
Source https://www.tes.com/news/exam-cancellations-save-millions-second-year
Wednesday, May 19, 2021
Contract Cheating
I was asked to respond to a paper on the incidence of contract cheating. Here are some thoughts. It is an old chestnut. There will always be those who seek to cheat the system and ultimately themselves.
We know cheating is on the rise across education - but that is because we are identifying it with the safeguards we have in place. We are constantly providing further mitigation for a potential risk .
I am more comfortable that most forms of contract cheating - particularly from essay mills get picked up by Turnitin - the subtler a friend/parent wrote my assessment is the one that is much harder to mitigate against . The privileged cheats.
You can trick Turnitin - put an essay through auto translate a few times and then rewrite it - this could get you across the line - but you would need to be very careful about referencing and sources - as though your words would be different - they would stay the same. - but it is a lot more work than simply writing a paper. Though you may learn a lot in the process.
I think this all comes down to students making an assertion - as they do every time, they submit work to Turnitin that it's all their own work . In SQA land on portfolios we get teachers to sign off work too saying that they know work to be students own work - academic integrity is for staff and students to maintain.
Perhaps just a reminder that we use similarity detection software and tutors will ask about submitted work to ensure its integrity. I have a question; how empowered do staff feel about challenging the authenticity of a learner's work ? - we rarely get any staff members reporting this to LT team or asking us to investigate .
For students it's the black and white statement in the student code of conduct and disciplinary procedures, to effect, that cheating in assessments in any form is unacceptable and will result in disciplinary action including expulsion.
Does the College keep a record of issues , incidents ? I had access to this in other Colleges as Chair of Learning and Teaching Committee - we saw high level report on all disciplinary issues . Incidence of cheating was low 2003-2019 Anniesland , Clyde, and Kelvin Colleges - higher were disciplinary issues about student conduct in general - we tracked as part of equalities work.
I think in world we are in at moment - cheating could be impersonation and taking notes into a closed book assessment , whispering answer to a friend during a SOLAR multiple-choice assessment , or Whatsapping them - as our invigilation arrangements are perhaps a bit looser than normal due to circumstances.
Perhaps, a piece that makes sure that staff and students know and understand the assessment arrangements for any unit of learning and that these are conducted in a fair and accessible way .
I thought this among many sites offering advice to students on the pitfalls of contract cheating was done well
Turnitin offers advice too.
In end it all comes down too , to the quality of the questions .
There can only be so many essays on things like "Discuss the theme in Romeo and Juliet" , " Explain and evaluate six different organisational types " etc - Where we can the system should offer cleverer and more valid assessments - it makes learning more stimulating and interesting too and that would lower the temptation of plagiarism and make life harder for essay mills.
Tuesday, May 04, 2021
We, they, did it again!, and you can too! #oerxdomains21 #Openscot #FEUKChat
We do talk a lot of jargon and acronyms in education.
My head was buzzing with ideas , links , contacts and as ever the global #OER community re-energised and reinvigorated me. Open should really be the way we do education and the final key note picking out open education as being the route to justice and empowerment was a great note to end on. If you are a policy maker perhaps find time to tune into that one session. If you work in any bit of the education system you will find some useful gems in the sessions all recorded and openly available. Here is direct link to Rajiv's session.
The technology was simply inspiring and set a very high benchmark around how on-line conferences should be run. I am sure there will be a blog post that I will link to here . The short hand is that the team from Reclaim Hosting wove together Streamyard, YouTube and Discord to create a magical experience - you can capture some of it in the recorded proceedings .
Yes, I am a people person and I miss meeting everyone face to face - I don't miss conference travel and cold chicken buffets though, but I do miss conference bonhomie and meeting old friends and new.
So down to earth with a bump - back to planning where City of Glasgow College goes next for a virtual learning environment in August 21 and still explaining why positioning content in the VLE or even on the College intranet is not open education - in fact the discussions are actually pre that , it's explaining that encouraging staff to publish anything outside of the College in an accessible way is actually a very good thing for them and the College and most of all for learners , and an email arrived on Friday asking for support on staff and student digital literacies at a national level, an old chestnut , groundhog day.. the open education journey is a long and challenging one.
Thursday, April 08, 2021
OERXDomains21 Conference 21-22 April Tune In #openscot #OERXDomains21
- This is great value to get a grip on what you should be doing to open up your own learning materials at institutional and as an individual.
- If you struggle to get institutional sponsorship - there are still scholarship places available.
Tuesday, February 09, 2021
Innovation in Adversity : Discover #OERxDomains21 Online – 21-22 April 2021
thanks to Gabriel Vivas for image under Creative Commons Licence |
There is still time to get a proposal in and to sign up for the conference.
Theme 1: Openness, care, and joy in the times of pandemic;
Theme 2: Open Education responses to surveillance technologies and data ownership in education;
Theme 3: Open in Action: open teaching, educational practices and resources, how you might be using Domains and other tools;
Theme 4: Shifts in agency and creativity as empowerment of learners and educators;
Theme 5: Open Source Tools: infrastructure, cloud environments, targeted teaching tools.
We've come along way since #OER10 , I've blogged some of my own #OER journey.
My world may be similar to your world - wherever your geographic location.
Teaching staff while juggling their own domestic commitments are finding ways to develop engaging learning experiences . We can see a lot of thought and design going into Moodle courses and higher levels of interactivity through quizzes , forums, and other tools. Staff have been embedding Wakelets , H5P ,Google Sites and in the UK the Blended Learning Consortium content alongside links to open digital materials in the College's library to give students a rich learning experience.
We can see too great use of Zoom , Click-View and YouTube to provide short episodes of learning embedded in courses - while staff are doing crash courses in Microsoft teams used on the admin side of the organisation.
On assessment, staff are developing flexible solutions and making good use of dropbox and Turnitin where these are required - but mainly looking around at more open portfolio approaches to gathering evidence.
From learners feedback is positive. They understand the challenges we are all facing . They appreciate the richer content , collaborative activities and zoom sessions. They enjoy using social media to support their formal learning and classes now use a variety of tools to stay in touch. They are coping with remote learning along with their own challenges.
Like any other year the students are looking for more feedback. Some innovative staff are doing this through voice and video recordings as well as through more traditional feedback mechanisms.
One of the biggest challenges is a very human one - how do we get everyone to work with their camera switched on.
Wednesday, January 20, 2021
#OERxDomains #OER21 Two messages for Two Audiences
Online Conference – 21-22 April 2021 #OERxDomains #OER21
Organised by the Association for Learning Technology and in partnership with Reclaim Hosting’s Domains Conference, this special edition of the much loved event is the 12th annual conference for Open Education research, practice and policy.
The Call for Proposals is now open https://oer21.oerconf.org/call-for-proposals/
For those who don't really understand what this is all about.
Forty years ago I left a school which gave me a good but narrow education - but one of the best around at the time. I've not stopped learning. I've been a school teacher , a hack , a community education tutor and College lecturer and held my share of senior posts. I am still a Glaswegian with an incurable social justice complex. I do believe that education can make the world a better place. Too often in my teaching career, the book I chose for the class or the resources available for learning were determined by the finances that the institution had. The learners got great learning - but through the narrow letter box view of the resources that we had available for them.
I don't get get that Scotland has not understood yet what open education practice and policies could do for learners and teachers.
We are currently in the midst of this terrible pandemic and we still haven't figured out that we don't compete on how well we re-package knowledge. Education staff around the world are tying themselves in knots trying to improve their notes , power points , instructional videos, that is not a bad thing. But it would be much more effective for learners and learning if that was a much more collaborative activity. It is more than having a set of course materials that are shared around and within your subject team. (though I do know that in many institutions that remains a triumph in itself). While putting a set of learning materials on to your institutional virtual learning environment may be your act of sharing ,you could be a bit more ambitious for learners everywhere. I don't believe learning materials replace a good teacher - but sharing helps teachers and learners.
It is not a dark secret the answer is making and sharing your learning materials with an appropriate open educational licence. If you , your institutional leadership team , local authority education team , national education policy makers haven't spotted that this is actually practice encouraged globally by UNESCO , mandated for public education I am not sure where you have been since 2012.
In Scotland a good place to start might be considering The Open Scotland Declaration. and why not come along and meet a well informed set of international set of speakers.
Full disclosure I am co-chair of the ALT Scottish Sig and a Co-Chair of this conference - but none of this is fake news ;-)
Thursday, December 31, 2020
2020 Vision and a Happy New Year !
What a year of loss and struggle for so many people. The impact on the economy and on people’s lives won’t really be clear until the end of next year. I know how fortunate we have been in the roles we are in, in that we enjoy a degree of job security and we have been able to help others.
Professionally it’s been great to see staff and learners rising to the challenge of new ways of learning. I work with a great team who have been working flat out.
It’s been great too to see how our two school age children have adapted to online learning and monthly changes in the schooling system - they both miss sport most of all and socialising out of school, but generally their enthusiasm for learning has not suffered. Blended learning really does work.
Personally, it’s been very long hours and dealing too with navigating family illness and the stresses and strains of the new enforced domestic arrangements. We’re so lucky to have a garden and a dog and this space and companionship have kept us all sane. The scottish weather was kind too when we made our great summer escape to Lewis and that made all the difference to recharging our batteries.
Along the way I lost a couple of good pals, in normal circumstances I’d have been present at the celebration of their lives. Watching remembrance services remotely , Zoom meetings and WhatsApp groups just don’t cut it.
I sometimes make predictions for the year ahead - I don’t think I could ever have predicted a year like this.
I hope things get back to a new normal where online learning is embedded in how everyone learns. I hope too we see a new system of national assessment in Scottish schools. We need some better national leadership around this. There is a lot of good learning that could come out of this pandemic. I am ever hopeful.
As the economy changes - I expect to be busier than ever , we have ambitious plans for the year ahead and the demand for digital learning and associated skills are not going to diminish. My inbox is perpetually full with requests for support.
May the New Year bring you and yours good health, happiness, prosperity and a timely dose of Covid Vaccine.
Tuesday, December 29, 2020
Beyond Multiple Choice #BMC2020
I am doing a bit of tidying up and catching up on some posts that should have appeared earlier in the year. What a strange yet busy time it has been. In early November I was asked to contribute to this global conference on assessment. You can find my modest contribution from a College perspective in day three of the proceedings.
Beyond Multiple Choice #BMC2020 ( worth clicking on timestamp below videos to see running schedule)
It was a really interesting conference given the world's reaction to CoVid - suddenly on-line testing came into its own - in ways that may surprise you - if you watch one session have a look at final session of the day about how the national testing system in Scotland is operating and the political pressures around this. It's all about putting the learner at the centre.
My slides below - if you have an interest in following this global community you can join the linkedIn Group.
Wednesday, August 12, 2020
An Experienced Reflection on National Awarding
I worked for the SQA for most of the current century - and every year congratulations are due to all learners and this year, in that respect, it is no different.
I'm glad I am on a beach in the Outer Hebrides this week. Working for the SQA is a thankless task and colleagues will be working hard as ever to deliver.
We need to step back from the hysteria.
These are exceptional times. This is the first time since the 1880's that the national exam diet has been cancelled. This has put a strain on everyone; learners , teachers , administrators and politicians. In times like this tough decisions need to be made and justified. A decision was made today to uphold the estimates made by teachers.
This I think exposes some deep fault lines in our system. Teachers have systematically over estimated pupils eventual results for years. The external exams being the method of arbitration. Without the exam this issue is thrown into sharp focus.
I think the appeals system that was ready to go into operation would have supported the deserving cases. But we will never know. The noise about education being a postcode lottery isn’t just noise - but the appeals system would have adjusted these.
What is the issue .
Many teachers are not particularly good at designing prelims , and or are unsure about standards. The evidence is pretty well known to those who have worked in and around the system. There is often a big gap between learners actual grades and those predicted by their teachers. Appeals are often made based on invalid evidence, commonly cobbled together prelims based on items from past papers - when this was admissible evidence.
The system has not done enough over a lot of years to make sure that teachers can make better estimates. Perhaps given the parental and institutional pressure that teachers are under, along with different learner performance between prelim and final - it is too hard a task. SQA has done its bit around Understanding Standards.
SQA has data on the reliability of estimates at school level and I am certain that SQA's initial response was based on sound evidence. In this, and ultimately the change of tack, they follow the instructions from the government. SQA staff and the 15,000 appointees ( who are mainly serving teachers ) do their utmost to make the system fair for all.
Some observations -
A decision has been made that will be very popular with learners and teachers , it looks as though it has almost cross party support. The government was never going to have an easy decision on this.
Should the system now accept that teachers make these national assessment decisions ? ( I think the view is that this is perhaps a one off ( I'd like to see more robust decision making moved here ) . No one, least of all the learners were prepared for what has been an incredible year, an upward drift of 14% across the board, does create a credibility problem , but who knows perhaps lots of learning was happening in lock down and schools and local authorities had to put in long hours creating their orders of merit. Neatly too it creates a cohort of learners for Higher Education when overseas numbers are down. Perhaps it just highlights that exams are not really about quality control just quantity management for the tertiary sector. It probably mirrors what is happening in the Higher Education sector - where grade inflation is much more of a reality - and when the dust settles it will have ballooned this year. Please press, don't roll out the usual elite moaners and fixers from Higher Education about the school and college system - they have zero credibility on standards.
What is clear and to restore learners faith in the system is that learners need a better means of evaluating their performance against national standards. The wide variances between school estimates and the original awards need tackled. It is an opportunity to revisit the whole exam system - roll on , roll off digital assessment for all is within reach along with digital portfolios of evidence. Local Authorities , Education Scotland and the GTCS should take a much closer interest in teacher decision making. It is only recently that the GTCS started recognising teacher engagement in national assessment work as a critical part of CPD and often it is the schools with fewer SQA appointees that have the most divergent estimates. Perhaps a starting point could be a comparison of previous years performance based on exams and this year's based on estimates. What was this year’s secret sauce ?
The credibility of the national assessment system, whatever its future shape, is everyone's responsibility and it is ill served by political slagging matches and press hysteria. I think we are still not in a place where we can say the academic year ahead is without more uncertainties.
In the meantime , I wonder how the more market driven education system of England will cope with a similar crisis, A stars all round I wouldn't wonder.
Monday, August 03, 2020
Active Summer with Fresh Challenges Ahead.
Thursday, June 11, 2020
Sign Up for Scottish Association of Learning Technology SIG Event with a difference 22nd of June
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ALT Scotland Special Interest Group Co-Chairs
Joe and Vicki
Dr Vicki H.M. Dale, University of Glasgow
Joe Wilson MA, MBA , DipEd , PGCSE City of Glasgow College