In clearing her room in preparation for writing her speech, Kathleen stumbled across some papers which had relevance to her speech:
· A letter from the LEA informing her parents that she had passed her 11+ thereby gaining entry to a local grammar school that would eventually prepare her for university
· Her "pitiful" O and A level results which gained her access to university, but which would not today. So much for standards being higher in the past!
· The 2004 report of Mike Tomlinson in 2004 which recommended that diplomas replace the current system, not augment it.
· The March 2010 remit from Ed Balls to QCDA which was to be at the heart of England's education system
· A desultory collection of speeches from the past which touch on similar themes:
o Freedom, fairness and responsibility
o Control and direction
o Accountability and transparency
o Choice, flexibility and diversity
o Standards, equivalence, comparability and reliability
o Parity of academic and vocational qualifications
o The role of assessment in learning
o The role of assessment including teacher assessment
Context is everything and she resisted the temptation to use these old speeches, deciding to walk around the secret garden of education to predict what would flourish and what wither on the vine.
The "garden" is now more of a public park, since learners and their families, rightly, have open access to information. Clear, direct communication is vital to facilitate learning. Assessment and feedback are vital to improve learning.
The landscape is changing. QCDA, BECTA and GTCE have all been scrapped, leaving the government without any central control over education for the first time since 1917. Future planning will be carried out by "experts"; teachers need to be part of this process.
In the past it was not easy to reconcile diversity, local decision making choice and flexibility with equal access to curricula opportunities, comparability and national standards. Will this prove just as difficult today? A wider range of qualifications has opened up to promote freedom and choice, but this freedom lacks the funding to support it. Unfettered, untended freedom and choice can, like bindweed, smother the garden, so there is a real question about who will be the future arbiters of curriculum and qualifications without the QCDA.
The current budgetary constraints have already impacted upon certain pilot programmes - the ending of single level tests, the closure of the national strategies programme and its support for assessment for learning. There are a number of reviews of current provision: the early years review, the vocational education review and the new review of the primary curriculum. There is a fondness for subjects, of content rather than skills, just as there is a fondness for Victorian flowers in the current garden. But it is the teacher in the classroom who is the final arbiter of the curriculum.
Ofqual's brief covers a wide range of qualifications. Just as the gardener has to ensure that all plants remain up to standard, so Ofqual must look after its charges - the qualifications on offer to learners. There are several choices for today's learners in terms of both the qualifications available and the awarding organisations which offer them. They all vie for the sunlight and public funding, but this raises an issue which runs through the entire system - comparability of standards
At the heart of the problem lies parity of esteem. . There has been a long standing debate about the relative merits of vocational and academic qualifications that will not go away. This short changes a good number of our learners and alienates employers who claim a disconnect between general education and the essential applied skills needed in the workplace.
There will be winners and losers in the public park that is now the environment for qualifications. It is premature to guess which will survive and which will not. It may be determined by the market place. One thing is certain: assessment, whether internal or external will continue to play its role to identify and accredit students' attainment and to hold institutions to account. All the more important therefore that teachers are equipped to play their role in assessment. The CIEA is perfectly placed to help them do that.