The 2 most anxious days of the year! A Level results

When I became HOD we changed KS leadership roles within the department. My colleague became KS4 leader, and I took KS5 leader. I found it a very different experience to KS4 leader, as the KS5 teaching team do so much for their own classes and little intervention is needed on a department level compared to GCSE. The main issue this year was managing revision plans with 3 sets of exams; resits of the old AS exams, the new AS exams for year 12 (which we’re getting students to sit until the majority of subjects are linear) and the year 13 exams. This put a lot of pressure on the team to juggle supporting students. The way we managed this was the year 13 students resitting AS exams went into some Year 12 lessons where the content was the same, and those teachers supported their revision outside of lessons. Because we didn’t change topics when we chose the new topics this worked. Then these teachers also organised revision sessions for the new AS exams between them, but we put the onus on students to start revising early and not need the sessions from us as much. We then ran a few revision sessions for Year 13 but because we finished teaching the course in good time realised we didn’t need to do additional sessions and just made meaningful use of lesson time.

All this seems to have paid off, with good results for year 12 and year 13 this year. The next task is to recall a range of papers from the new AS exams so we can see what they did and improve our confidence in marking for these. We also have the new challenge of year 13 needing to revise the year 12 topics and the new coursework, as well as teaching the unit 3 topic (OCR) that has more content and more questions on the exam than the old specification. Our coursework was moderated down at the top end this year, so we are anxious about ensuring this doesn’t happen again. The plan is for the coursework teachers to go on exam board training for marking the coursework so they can see what the exam board expect from the very top end.

We also have plans for ensuring year 13 are revising effectively at an early stage. To do this, we’ve used the specification outline, mark schemes, and skills tick-lists to create topic booklets that students spend their study time using notes, the library and our online subscriptions to fill in. They have lots of suggestions for extending their knowledge, and a space for them to log what they’ve done and when so that teachers can monitor quickly and easily. Hopefully this will ensure that students stay on top of revision and don’t realise too late just how much there is to do with several linear subjects adding many more exams than year 13 have had to do before (for a few years anyway).

The 2 most anxious days of the year! GCSE Results

 

2 years ago we waited with bated breath to see our GCSE results. The year before they had seen a steep drop, and we had worked hard to improve them. We hoped they would be better. I will never forget the moment I found out they were worse, and having to face students who deserved to do so much better. Last year they improved significantly, and we had a fantastic morning congratulating students who did brilliantly and deserved the grades they got. I wrote a post last year explaining what I think made the difference.

So this year, with one good experience, and two very disappointing ones in the last 3 years, we really didn’t know which way it would go. We knew our controlled assessments were a lot better (70% A*-C compared to 53% the year before) and I was hopeful of beating last year’s surprise good results. But the exams were not good this year… we were disappointed that they seemed to try to trip up the students and were unnecessarily difficult. So thank goodness the controlled assessment results were better.

I hadn’t seen the news stories about GCSE results being down across the board this year when I learned that we were 1% down on our A*-C from last year. But looking at the bigger picture I’m not disappointed with this. Our students still did very well at the top end, with the same A*-A as last year. Plus the arguably more important measure of progress rather than attainment is slightly higher than last year. We’re now on the national average for History A*-C and above the school’s, and have more confidence in what we’re doing. We can recall some papers to ensure exam question marking is accurate and find out which areas we particularly need to support students with.

So, at least no radical overhauls needed by next week, we can carry on doing what we know has worked, and focus on ensuring students are as well equipped for ‘surprises’ in the exam as we can make them, and focus on supporting weaker students in achieving their target grades. Any suggestions on how to do this would be greatly appreciated!

A whole year in!

I know for a fact that after today the only thing I will think about for at least a few days is GCSE results. So I thought I should break my shamefully long blog silence now!

Now I have a full year as HOD behind me (and have had time to recover!) I can reflect on how things went, and what I want for next year. It’s fair to say that moving house half way into your first year as HOD is hard work; made harder when doing so in the first trimester of your first pregnancy! Having said that, I feel very lucky that my first year as HOD went very well, although not without some interesting challenges.

The biggest challenge was co-running the department’s Battlefields trip, which was 1 hour into the journey when the news of the Brussels terror attacks broke. Parents got home from waving their child off on a trip to Belgium to see that there had been explosions there. Understandably, especially as the news was only just unfolding, we had a tense time finding out if we were safe to travel, and ensuring parents were informed and happy with the arrangements. We were in the queue for the ferry when we finally had the LA’s and the school’s go ahead, and we boarded. What made it a great trip in the end was how well informed the team at school kept parents, and the fact that students didn’t have SIM cards in their phones (standard policy on our trip). This meant panic did not start, and we could tell students about what had happened and reassure them that they were safe and would be safe on the trip. Thanks to this, and having an experienced and well coordinated team on the trip, the trip was one of the best we’ve done. Lots of lessons learned in how we handle and avoid incidents in the future too.

The other big challenge we faced this year was the new GCSE course we started teaching to year 9. Having no textbooks, and very little subject knowledge within the department, we have had a steep learning curve on the new Edexcel Crime and Punishment course. Luckily the whole of the department are keen to learn from this, and have used the newly arrived textbooks and our improved understanding, to improve on the lessons we taught and the support we have for staff and pupils. This is definitely best done fresh, when we’ve just finished teaching it, rather than leaving it until we teach it next time. We also have a clearer idea of what’s needed to prepare us (teachers and students!) for teaching the next units, and for the skills we need to start developing at KS3.

Finally, planning the new A Level course has been a priority this year. I have several times been very grateful that when we made decisions about what to teach on the new AS and A Levels we decided to stick as closely as possible to what we knew. Big changes at GCSE and at A Level would have been too much. Because we’ve stuck with familiar topics, we’ve been able to focus on the new skills that students need to focus on. Having taught the new AS Level, planned the new A Level, and started teaching the new GCSE we now have a much better idea of the main strands of continuity that we need to draw out from year 7. Some pleasing results at AS this year, mean we can recall papers and be better informed for next year.

All of this means that in just over a week we start the new term in a much better position than this time last year.  I know better what I can do as HOD to support the rest of the team, and what I can spend less time on as it’s not as important. The main priorities are going to be; developing the departments confidence in the new GCSE exam questions; ensuring that KS3 prepares students for the new GCSE, whilst keeping it fun and engaging; supporting our Year 13s in an A Level that needs more independence, without taking away too much structure and guidance.  Of my 6 resolutions this time last year, most have gone well… the new challenge personally will be maintaining a healthy pregnancy work/life balance and not pushing myself too much in the 6 weeks before I go on maternity leave.

All I can say now is fingers crossed for GCSE results, for everyone that is waiting as nervously as we are! I’ll write a post about exam results and lessons learned from them in a few days.