PiXL and gaming progress 8 with exam entries

[noblegiraffe]

A very interesting, long, and rather depressing blog from a respected headteacher about the advice being given by PiXL to game the progress 8 measure.

headguruteacher.com/2016/03/20/an-up-and-down-day-at-the-pixl-club/

Enter all your kids for AS Creative Writing! ECDL is easy and counts!

He says 'I’ll get grief for this but, I don’t think we should be choosing qualifications based on their impact on whole-school measures, looking for advantage in the system. Is ECDL worth having? I’m sure it is in its own right. But is it equivalent to taking Physics, History, Art or French GCSE? The fact you can prep for it in three days suggests not. But if it counts it counts, right? When a huge number of schools are going down this path, it feels that the whole system is being distorted and that can’t be healthy. How many schools would run ECDL if the P8 points were zero but still counted for the students? It feels like just another round of equivalence loop-holes waiting to be exposed and shut-down. I’d rather not be part of it – but, at the same time, I don’t know for sure that we can afford not to be; we should not be put in that position. We all need to remember that P8 is not a measure of school effectiveness or the quality of the education our students receive.'

Expect to see this sort of stuff in your kids' option (no-)choices any day now.

[cricketballs]

Its just the same game schools have been playing since league tables were first conceived.

In defence though, basket 1 and 2 is very academic and this only comes into force for basket 3 and whilst the ECDL may seem easy to those who know how to use WP, SS, PP, given the curriculum has moved to Computing we are now having to go back to the very basics on how to use software correctly, even how to use the keyboard so at least skills can be included as this is an area the DfE seem to think are automatically a given