school hasn't completed the GCSE syllabus

[jacobibatoli]

recently found out that dc has not completed all aspects of the syllabus for GCSE
school is hot on uniform, discipline etc.., and quite right too
and the parents need to do their bit, support the school and supply dc to school in correct uniform, attitude etc...
and if not there is a whole raft of punishments available to them and quite right too!
but in return we expect the school to do their bit like cover the whole syllabus or if not at least tell us so we might be able to do something about it
accountability is just a one way street

Er..... I am a teacher. I am a senior leader in a school. I teach lessons in which I instruct students every day, and I observe the lessons of other teachers. I have been ofsteded twice in two years (they follow me...). I understand the difference between lectures and instruction. Do you teach, currently?

I am a senior leader in a school

are you one of the ones that goes round checking that 4 learning objectives have been written up on the board and copied down onto every piece of paper in he room, and that all students are self assessing themselves against them, and the teacher is repeatedly running mini plenaries to tick the assessment for learning box, and wanting to see the lists of students that require differentiation, for being in a different socioeconomic or racial group, or a different sexuality, or have been in care, and wanting to know what literacy exactly is being addressed in this maths lesson, and what employer engagement etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc

if so, you are one of the reasons maths isn't taught in maths lessons.

I hunk I have made it very clear that I am not one of those people, no.

think!!

I have a deep distrust of the mini plenary...

I hunk I have made it very clear that I am not one of those people, no

good, glad to hear it, although you must be AWARE why teachers can't teach.

Although even the SMT that are like that don't have any choice in the matter, the madness doesn't eminate from them.

I am a teacher. I teach. I tell my students how to do things. Do you teach?

I'm not sure of the last time I taught in a lab with fewer than 18 students in it!

FM don't you realise howILLEGAL that is!!!!!

How do you know they have not done everything? Have they done any A*? Has your dc not been doing past papers as revision for the last couple of months in which case this would of been highlighted? Or using a revision guide to check they have done everything?

If they have done everything else it is just about possible to get an a without actually answering any a topics although it means you can't make mistakes earlier on

I was a teacher for 25 years, I am now doing free lance consultancy in special needs part time, and some supply in a different borough.

I don't know where that 18 figure comes from?

In some schools, you can still teach Maths the way you want. What's wrong with 20-25 minutes of teacher talking, the kids doing practice for around 35 minutes. The key points are recapped and off they go to the next lesson.

Back to the op's question, you can get an A without actually doing most of the A topics as long as you do well in the rest. An A* for Edexcel is like 164/200 for the two papers. So you can dropped 36 marks, which are about 7-8 questions out of 50 questions over two papers. There are topics such as Graphs transformation, which will take around 3-4 lessons to teach properly and you can gain around 4 marks at most. Teach a little bit of it and the students can gain 2 to up to 4 marks if the easier type of question comes up, which they do mostly. Vector is another one, you can leave the proof bit alone, which is normally 2-3 and takes around 2-3 lessons to learn properly and cover all the possibility or use that 2-3 lessons to go over things that the students are not 100% secure yet.

So if you don't give much context of what your DC actually missed then it is difficult to have an informed opinion.

What's wrong with 20-25 minutes of teacher talking, the kids doing practice for around 35 minutes. The key points are recapped and off they go to the next lesson.

Nothing, it has worked for millennia! Ofsted don't like it though.......

They liked it just fine a couple of months ago when I did it .

They liked it just fine a couple of months ago when I did it

You are very lucky, this time.

No - I taught a jolly good lesson, which received very positive feedback. Their own bumf specifies that they don't have a preferred teaching style. & had they hated it, well, they don't report on or grade individual lessons these days. So no 'luck' involved.

Honestly, I'm all for a bit of Jeremiahing about Ofsted, SLuGs with clipboards & blah blah blah - in fact so hacked off am I that I'm off to see if the grass is greener overseas, this September - but your picture isn't one I recognise, & it seems nor do many of the teachers on this thread.

I'm sorry, it is EXTREME luck, you would be threatened with capability here , my closest friend is a brilliant maths teacher, I have sat in on many of his lessons, yet he has had an official warning for standing in front of the class for more than 5 minutes.

just that. nothing else, he was seen to be speaking to the class for 5 mins.

Then his school is shit and behind the times. The latest ofsted handbook specifically states that a lesson can't be criticised for too much teacher talk.

Wilshaw is trying really hard to put a stop to all that bollocks, his job is pretty much on the line over it.

Nor is it my experience Charis. Also ofsteded recently, and talked for more than 3 minutes without being inadequate... Nor would I, with my clipboard, go into automatic capability mode if someone tells a class how to do something... I would suggest it is your friend's experience that is unusual.

I agree it is shit. i don't think it is behind the times though, the latest ofsted inspector feedback to the school was only a few weeks ago.

I currently teach in an exam factory. They don't go putting teachers of core subjects on capability so long as they get positive residuals & don't turn up pissed, frankly.

You're talking utter crap.

I know older, expensive teachers of less trendy subjects who've been bum's rushed through capability, absolutely. But with a chuffing great recruitment crisis, no school is likely to be chucking good teachers overboard for, erm, teaching.

Either there's a huge backstory wrt to your mate, or his school is quite, quite bonkers & utterly failing to keep up with Ofsted's own guidelines, & indeed, high profile press releases.

He's probably been listening to your advice charis

Am I being in naive in thinking that the core skills in maths are n't changed by the way they are examined?

The sample assessment materials released by some exam boards (and now deemed too difficult by Ofqual) were incredibly wordy. You can ask the exact same question but change its difficulty level by the changing the words you ask it in. A dense block of text with technical language is harder than one split into paragraphs with a diagram. Helpful labels on the diagram makes it even more accessible. Previous maths exams have had structured questions broken down into parts (e.g. show 'algebraic fraction' can be rearranged into this quadratic (2 marks) Hence solve 'algebraic fraction'=0 (3 marks).) Lately exams have been more unstructured ('solve 'algebraic fraction' =0 (5 marks). ) We had a couple of years where there was a multiple choice paper which required a completely different type of exam technique to be taught.

Knowing what the exam will look like is vitally important in preparing kids properly for it, even in maths. The really wordy questions we thought we were going to be faced with would have required a real focus on our students' literacy skills.

Whilst some on this thread disagree/give evidence that OFSTED don't formulate lessons unfortunately Charis is right in that SLT in the vast majority of schools haven't had that memo!