All change again....

[cricketballs]

so after spending a lot of time sorting out a new SoWs for the new spec GCSEs starting this year I find on waking up this morning that I will have to do it all over as things are changing again! new leaked

Personally I think that Gove just wanted another way of driving teachers to the brink of insanity!

Relax. You can use your new SOW for three years.

The changes won't happen until September 2013.

I currently have year 11 on one spec, year 10 on a different spec and soon have to get to grips with another spec........I ache for the years when I had all groups on the same spec, which I knew every single detail without having to check and could focus my time on teaching

All the years are going to have different SOW, surely?

Aren't your Y10s doing what Y11 did last year? They may be following a linear course, but the material they cover should be the same.

SoW normally only have slight changes once lessons etc are evaluated but basically the same each year for the same spec.

Year 10s linear spec has changed a SoW significantly as yes whilst the learning required has not hugely changed the method of assessing has changed from an exam in year 10, then start learning for the other unit to exams only at the end of year 11 has meant large changes to SoW. When this is refined over the next couple of years so it is as close to perfect for my students as I can get it, it will be all change again

I've been teaching maths for 7 years and I think for most of those years I have taught a new syllabus. 3 tier, 2 tier, coursework, no coursework, linear, modular and now linear again but with functional maths and unstructured questions. There was even a brief period with a multiple choice exam.

I wish we'd just be left alone to get on with it!

And when will we get the new specs? When the Science GCSEs (all 6 of them) were changed for first teaching in September 2011, the specs weren't accredited by Ofqual until Easter of that year.

Madonna that's to ensure we don't get any time off in the summer

You haven't met my SLT. SoL by the end of the summer term...

I genuinely wonder whether I can continue in the job. Maybe as a mainscale teacher, but not as HOD...

I was speaking to a Head of English the other day. She is well into her sixties, and I was asking about when she might retire, citing ever changing specifications as a reason form just not having the stomach for it any more.

She said that she was completely unfazed by new specs, as she felt that nothing was ever new. A new spec is simply something that she taught at some other point in her 40+ years.

I think the hardest thing for a head of department is working out how modules work, and tiers. With the move to single tier linear, this pressure will go away. It will be much more down to plain teaching of the specification, and less worried about admin.

For most subjects, a new spec is a slight rearrange on the SOW. In practice, you only have so many resources in your school, and you have your own favourites that you will find a way of incorporating into the SOW. Exam boards publish fairly full SOWs which you can personalise to make them work at your school.

If you are part of a large department, everyone can take one course and produce the SOW for everyone else to use.

For most subjects, a new spec is a slight rearrange on the SOW

even in maths where it's always Pythagoras, trig, algebra and so on, that's not true.

A change in the spec means that new end of term tests have to be written to incorporate the new order of the SOW. New textbooks. New instructions on how to prepare for the exams. The old past papers have to be cleared out and the (usually dodgily written) specimen ones have to be scrutinised and photocopied. The changes have to filter down to KS3. Teachers have to be briefed. Changes have to be highlighted.

Even though I taught linear in maths not that many years ago, the linear spec that we're starting to teach now is so sufficiently different that we can't simply wheel out the stuff we did years ago.

It's a whole load of work even for a subject like maths. For subjects like science where the actual content changes, it must be a nightmare.

Exam boards publish fairly full SOWs which you can personalise to make them work at your school.

I have yet to read an exam boards SoW that only takes a bit of tweaking! The SoW for my subject is based 100% on the purchase of the boards resources which is impossible on current budgets. It doesn't show clearly enough the differentiation, it doesn't sit right with my lesson times etc. New specs require a lot of work by everyone in a department

I imagine the publishers of textbooks/web resources/revision books etc are quietly delighted. How wonderful that our kids' schools will all be having to shell out once more - this won't help them stretch their meagre budgets. :(

Do you think they will have some common sense press ahead with the revisions of subjects such as history that are due to have their first exam in 2015?

I am so glad my DC will all have got through this stage by then. I dread to think what Gove will do with this qualification.

I think exam boards and publishers have been living through a golden era the past 10 - 15 years. The proliferation on modules and resits has been very lucrative.

If you think that exams are about subject content, then you do only know "a bit" about it. It is about how that content is assessed.

SoL need to help students prepare for assessment, not learn a bunch of facts. Covering the content is just not enough.

@knowsabit For the people actually doing the work of writing the material this will be another of those 'what fresh hell is this' moments (I sporadically do textbook writing for uni level/post graduate textbooks/publications in an area which has gone through similar root and branch perpetual-ish change in the last 8 years (and shows no sign of stopping)). For the people selling the product? I imagine they are already planning their revised investment strategies. The only possible caveat will be if there is an approved single board there may be approved single text books but even then there will be a proliferation of un-official stuff which some (enough) people will buy (they always do) to either get an edge or because their particular learning style or (perceived) weaknesses aren't sufficiently catered to by the approved official texts.

Speaking as a parent of DCs who are variously in the process right now, soon to enter the process (in the last lot of kids to take the old exams) and doomed to take Gove levels it's all very depressing. The ONLY ray of comfort I have is that at least they won't be comparing themselves against each other. It's not the shiniest ray there's ever been in the history of comfort giving rays.

creamteas I share your dread, his ideas on the history curriculum are so out of step with what is being taught in universities. Can't we send him back to Oxford, with an injunction against him talking to Niall Ferguson!! Absolutely crazy, universities are going to have to undo all the damage he has done to the ability of students to question and adopt objective perspectives.

I also dread selecting the brightest pupils as a result of these exams, they are fine for selecting the brightest who are good at exams but how do we select the brightest who can't for some reason perform to their potential during three hours in an exam room on a given day. No higher level courses are assessed purely on exam performance now.

Cop I know what you mean, we spend the first year trying to get u/grads to understand that to succeed they need to think for themselves!

It is also laughable that he thinks that modular courses are somehow less than rigorous. It is the quality of the assessment that is important. If we returned to final exams, we would only be able to 'test' a fraction of student's understanding in comparison to the amount you can get through module assessment.