The Forty Second Republic - Lockdown 3 online learning struggles continue

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You are most welcome to this school staff support thread to get us through stressful times. It is meant for school staff only – a sort of room of requirement. Baiters, haters, goaders, and bashers can jog on somewhere else.

If you are NOT staff and just have a general education query please start your own thread.

You can play here if you are a member of one the following groups-

-ABBA - anti bashers and baiting association
-SWAB - school workers against bashers
-SWOT - school workers opposing teacherbashers
-STARS - schoolworkers together against ranting + slurs

Do not give the staffroom password just in case it attracts the wrong sort

Other requirements for staff room entry include the ability to find the staff room, the ability to find a clean mug in the staff room, knowledge of the photocopier codes, and the ability to sniff out where the booze is stashed - Thirsty Tuesdays, Fizz Fridays now in operation.

If you come with a stick to goad us then that is not allowed in the staffroom and you will receive a detention

Go many bright kids they may well grow into hard working later in life not mid adolescence. Is the measure employers or he really want, 'they were conformist and consistent in their mid teens'?

I'll stop pontificating. I think the exam v coursework really depends on what you value and what you're measuring for.

I'm cats over sats and exams over coursework and there'll be a whole lot of personal projection in that.

Of course waffling about poetry has a value !

I am no CATs no SATs...

The poetry exam is the only one I have no desire to mark!
If there was going to be robust external moderation then centre assessment would be fine. My concern is that I don't believe it'll happen.

I can remember doing cats and there being zero pressure. I swear we'd just arrive at primary one day to be told we were working in the hall and sit our papers. Presumably because beyond basic skills of literacy etc it was testing us and our ability not the schools ability to forcefully stuff knowledge in our heads. I don't think we ever even saw the results.

I remember them being fun and kind of like doing a puzzle book or a challenge task.

I'm definitely personally biased towards exams clearly!

If we were able to rewrite School qualifications - I would...
Have an "ability to learn tech quickly" assessment.
"Ability to interpret data" assessment
Resilience score
Mathematical skills score
Comprehension of written word score
Art skills score
Critical evaluation of data sources
Etc...
They can study whatever subjects that interest them apart from core, but don't get assessed directly in those subjects facts and recall.
And no assessment until they are older and past the teenage brain rewiring bit.
We all have the internet information at our fingertips in our pocket .
I'm sure this can be refined but I'm getting totally hacked off with the exams sausage factory and I really think we should seize this opportunity for change.

@EnemyOfEducationNo1

If we were able to rewrite School qualifications - I would... Have an "ability to learn tech quickly" assessment. "Ability to interpret data" assessment Resilience score Mathematical skills score Comprehension of written word score Art skills score Critical evaluation of data sources Etc... They can study whatever subjects that interest them apart from core, but don't get assessed directly in those subjects facts and recall. And no assessment until they are older and past the teenage brain rewiring bit. We all have the internet information at our fingertips in our pocket . I'm sure this can be refined but I'm getting totally hacked off with the exams sausage factory and I really think we should seize this opportunity for change.

I want to add critical thinking and the ability to make interdisciplinary links.

But why do they need to do CATs? As far as I can make out as another thing to bash schools about and set targets...

I'm hoping to keep my ks3 classes through ks4 because I'll have already gotten them auto producing the formulaic structuring for exam answers and essays and can sneak in lots of high level thinking and epistemology and subversion.

Kids are capable of really critical and creative thinking when they're not bogged down with teaching to test or only doing what their bloody flight path dictates or minutiae of facts. It also helps if they can read or write beyond ks2 levels obviously.

Let's put create our own school on our bucket list along with introduction to British cheeses and Egypt and whatever else is on there.

We are literally the only country in the Western World that is obsessed with exams.

@Piggywaspushed

But why do they need to do CATs? As far as I can make out as another thing to bash schools about and set targets...

I think of cats being more about inherent ability and affinity at least. So you may be great on v and shite on the more mathematical side and therefore I have clues as to how to use your strengths and shore up the areas that don't come so easily. I don't know. I found them very useful indicators for catering to students needs back when they were the information we got on kids coming into our classrooms.

Absolutely Honey.
When my husband goes for IT jobs no one wants to see his GCSEs and his degree is just evidence that he can study - it is unrelated! Instead they see his CV then set him various online timed assessments of his IT skills.
When I have got previous jobs - airline bookings, hotel receptionist, front of house for a restaurant, accountant - apart from the accountant no one really cared about what GCSEs or a levels I had - it was just an indication of general ability - which can be assessed in better ways than cramming individual subjects! And the accountancy was all distance learning self study stuff completely unrelated to everything I did at school apart from basic maths skills

Yeah, my school never used them in any of those more interesting ways. Apparently that package 'cost more'.

It was interesting for both my DSs who ahve shockingly low spatial scores. But this was just something we then knew ... didn't result in nay recognition or support of that once we pointed it out to very successive school and teacher...

honey my hod never lets us take y9 into 10. It pains me. This year I had to move a kid from my top set 10 into mixed ability 11 (he was number 33 and therefore a danger to the 32). I've got the email in which my colleague tells me how well he's been taught.
No shit Sherlock

Love CATs they tell you so much! Disparity between verbal and non verbal reasoning flags up potential dyslexia or ASC for example.

and as you can see from my typing I may suffer the same problem...

It does enemy if anyone bothers to look at it. We have stopped using them now but literally just used them to create target grades.

DS1 had 125 for the numeracy one, 110 for the English one and 75 for the non verbal one...

DS2 similar.

Because they did OK no one cared much .

CATS are also good at picking up what a previous colleague called "smart blazer syndrome"
Basically that's the kid that has naice aspirational parents, and is good at holding his own in a conversation with big words. You tend to assume they are clever, but when push comes to shove there's not a lot of individual thought there. Studies hard for tests and us diligent - will regurgitate stuff but actually struggles.
These ones will get surprisingly low CATS scores.

@Piggywaspushed

DS1 had 125 for the numeracy one, 110 for the English one and 75 for the non verbal one...

DS2 similar.

Because they did OK no one cared much .

Goodness my looks out of place now sorry Piggy. It's kids like yours that are my mission in teaching. I remember one lad who was bottom set and almost written off in yr8 as his writing was so appalling he got low marks in tests etc. Yet verbally he was totally on it.

He was one of my best A level Chemistry students ever, with a bit of reasonable adjustment.

I don't think ds did cats? Maybe because I took him out of school for a few years in primary?

To be honest I'd take reading age over sats scores. It would tell me a lot more than knowing how they scored on crazy spag stuff at 11.

smart blazer syndrome!~great name for it

Oh god yes reading age is so important

We test everyone's reading age on entry and share it with everyone.
People still get very confused when students with reading ages of 7 can't read handouts with teeny tiny writing and big words.

@MrsHamlet

We test everyone's reading age on entry and share it with everyone. People still get very confused when students with reading ages of 7 can't read handouts with teeny tiny writing and big words.

Ffs

Oh yes reading age has a strong correlation with maths scores. IIRC there's research to back this anecdata from my school up!