Posts Tagged qca
Autonomy for standards
Posted by Anastasia de Waal in Education on 01/05/2009
Ken Boston, former head of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), may not be the man we look to for wisdom on running independent exam watchdogs. Boston famously resigned from his job of overseeing exam boards and qualifications, for the QCA’s lax role in the primary school Sats tests which came to a head last summer.
ETS, SATS and leaves
Posted by Nick Cowen in Education on 16/07/2008
The past month has the seen the Government’s SATS exam system implode in the bureaucratic equivalent of an ageing star collapsing into a black hole. There were delays to the SATS results and claims that the delays were just to make sure that the release was orderly and complete. Then the release this week was neither orderly nor complete with some results delayed until September and head teachers have been forced to send poorly marked or unmarked exam scripts back to the company, ETS Europe, that is meant to be managing the scheme. There was blood on the radio 4 airwaves this morning as John Humphrys eviscerated Ken Boston for the QCA’s handling of the scheme and it turns out ETS Europe have managed to score a lucrative £156 million 5-year contract to administer the SATS marking.
‘Independent’ QCA to be made… independent again
Posted by Nick Cowen in Education on 26/09/2007
Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families has just announced that the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority will be overhauled into an independent watchdog equivalent to the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England or the Food Standards Agency. This rather raises the question of what exactly the QCA is at the moment, considering that it is barely ever mentioned by ministers without the accompanying authoritative claim that it is an independent ‘guardian of standards’, and that an even more independent international panel has described the resulting exam system as one of the most tightly regulated in the world. Just how much more independent can you get? Apparently, much more.
Question 1: complete this cheque to pay the interest on your credit card
Posted by Nick Cowen in Education on 12/07/2007
It will take some time to unpick the latest additions and subtractions of the National Curriculum. But the main theme this round seems to be lowering children’s horizons. More compulsory elements of the History Curriculum have been axed, reduced down to essentials like the Glorious Revolution in order to tie into the requirement for pupils to understand the relationship between the Monarchy and Parliament. These reductions have been smuggled in under the guise of greater ‘flexibility’. If this were true, it would be admirable: allow teachers and schools to use their professional expertise to design a course that they think works for each class.
But there won’t be much opportunity for this while the school has to teach pupils how to open a bank account or how to calculate the size of their ‘carbon footprint’. If you want a vision of our children’s future, imagine trips to the Roman ruins at Cirencester cancelled so that the whole class can be shown the wonders of the local bank. Or instead of a trip to a local university to see the latest super-computer or MRI scanner in action, the local dump to spot how much rubbish their parents are failing to recycle!
See our report, The Corruption of the Curriculum (previewable on Amazon) to understand how we got here.
Up-to-date on the EU?! If you’re in 2003!
Posted by James Gubb in European Union on 01/12/2006
Some rather dry research into where the EU fits into citizenship teaching, and on the current teaching resources available on the EU, revealed this conundrum that at least made me giggle:
QCA writes: “When deciding whether a resource is appropriate for post-16 citizenship, it is important to consider the following factors:….
2. Is the content up-to-date?”
There is then a related link on their KS4 citizenship page to ‘Schemes of Work’ (DfES), which aims to give a framework for teaching citizenship. “Unit 11: Europe – who decides?” includes the following number one “Point to note”:
“The European Union currently has 15 member states”.
Not that I’m aware of! Is the level of ignorance in the DfES really this high?! I’m sincerely hoping this hasn’t been proof-read.