Have you responded yet?
Lots of teachers that I've spoken to haven't read, much less responded, to the consultation. The frenetic pace of the first half-term being one reason. However, many teachers said that they hadn't responded because they didn't think they'd be listened to, so it would be a waste of time.
I can sympathise with this view. Reading through the consultation questions it feels a little like we're being asked 'Which stick would you like me to hit you with - the ash or the oak?' rather than, 'Should I hit you?'
But, and it is a big but, if teachers (and others actually involved in Education) don't respond to the consultation, then the DfE will have no evidence of the depth of feeling about the changes. It's easy to send out disparaging tweets about the EBCs (and other policies) on twitter, but does take a bit of time to respond to the consultation. If we care about education, we should be willing to put time in to making our views known. If we want students to have periodic tables, calculators or set texts in their exams we need to say so.
I'm not going to comment on specific questions, but others have blogged about them, and about the EBCs in general. See for example, from an English teacher's point of view by @panderson1979, or from a Headteacher's view from @johntomsett
On a recent course we looked
at the consultation documents and discussed the questions. To do this we made use of a cooperative
learning activity that could be useful for departments to carry out in order to
assist their teachers to respond to the consultation. It would take about 1 hour to do well, but
the time could be shortened if needed.
Step 1: What does the consultation say?
The participants on the course were split into groups of 5
and each group was given a copy of the 19
page consultation document (printed onto single sided A4 paper) and a sheet of
flip chart paper which had been split into 8 pieces.
Each member of the group was given sections of the
consultation to read and then summarise on the flip chart pieces. The list shows who was asked to read
what. Each section had to be summarised
on separate pieces of paper.
- 2 pieces of paper for sections 2 + 3
- 2 pieces for sections 4 + 8
- 1 piece for section 5.1 - 5.13
- 1 piece for section 5.14 - 5.25
- 2 pieces for sections 6 + 7
Step 2: Putting it
all together
Each member of the group used their flipchart piece to
summarise what they had read and learnt.
This took about 20 minutes. It
was helpful if the group didn’t discuss what they heard at this point (though
to be fair, they were very keen to comment on the information).
In this way the flipchart paper was rebuilt to provide an
overview of the consultation as a whole.
There was then time for the group to discuss the
consultation, say what they thought, and suggest other possibilities, as well
as share ideas between groups. This
could take quite a while depending on how vocal people are.
Step 3: Answering the
questions
Helpfully (?),
the Department for Education have provided a word
document for responses. I printed
this out onto A3 sheets of paper and put them around the room in numerical
order.
The teachers then wandered around, writing their answers and
thoughts to the questions, discussing further with each other as they did
so. Some question got lots of responses
(e.g. should there be tiering and should students be allowed to take
calculators, periodic tables or set texts into the exam), others none. However, as I pointed out during the session,
you don’t have to respond to every question – just those you’ve got an opinion
about.
At the end of the session, I typed the answers into
the word document and emailed it to participants. That way, when they answer the consultation
they have got a starting point to work from.
This process can be adapted depending on how many people you
have, or how much time you have. However, it is very important that teachers
give their views on these proposals, and I hope that this simple activity will
help you to do that by 10th December 2012.
