Creating flight paths to replace levels Year 7-11 - the impact of the new GCSE grade descriptors7/17/2016
So with very little fanfare, the grade descriptors for the new GCSE grades 9-1 were released on Friday. Those schools who have opted to use these as a progression model, assessment system and general replacement for both NC Levels and GCSE grades must be delighted that they can finally start implementing their systems. In this blog I want to take a look at how these grade descriptors can be utilised from Years 7-11 to provide a clear and coherent flight path for pupils in history. Using the grade descriptors to create a flight path Many schools for instance have opted for the following basic flight path:  As such, the grade descriptors will help to define what this path might look like for pupils in lessons. They could be used as part of the reporting process, discussed with parents and form targets for written feedback….
This is a primer post which goes with my upcoming blog on progression in history. You can find the main post HERE. You can also find my other primer post, in which I attempted to do a demolition job on the idea of linear progression models HERE.
Linear progression models are riddled with problems. In this post, I want to focus on one response to the confusions created them: research-based progression models. Let me be clear from the outset, research-based models of progression were not designed as a replacement for National Curriculum levels, rather to address their myriad shortcomings and help teachers to really get to grips with what progression in history looks like. The best thing to do to understand research-based models of progression is to read Lee and Shemilt’s seminal article in Teaching History 113, “A scaffold not a cage”. Research based models differ from linear models because they take students’ work and understanding as a starting point to describe what improvement in history actually looks like. In the above article, Lee and Shemilt offer some descriptions of what pupils’ thinking about historical evidence looks like. They then divide this into “stages” of development. The upper four stages of their model are given here. This blog is a primer for my upcoming post on thinking about progression in history. You can find the main post HERE.
Linear progression models have dominated the way we talk about progression in history for many years now. Once upon a time, they were an odd perversion created by the mis-use of National Curriculum levels, but now they are absolutely everywhere, infiltrating everything from A Level to GCSE. Linear progression models attempt to create a series of steps which pupils must climb in order to improve at a subject. In maths for example, pupils might begin to understand the concept of angles and their relationships to straight lines by looking at how angles on a straight line add up to 360 degrees, then moving on to deal with angles on parallel lines, and so on. In maths this has the potential to work because there are clear steps for pupils to take to improve in their knowledge of angles and lines. In history the situation is quite different. Linear progression models, such as those used by many schools up until the abolition of the National Curriculum level descriptors, were generally based on the idea that students could improve through a focus on their second-order understanding, rather than knowledge; that is to say, the ways in which we understand history, for example through our understanding of significance, cause, or change. See the example below:  This is just a very short post. I am uploading (bottom of the post) an updated version of my thoughts on assessing historical thinking. This is more of an update to previous posts than anything radically new, and I am painfully aware that I need to incorporate something of Kate Hammond's latest research on substantive knowledge. However, it does expand upon some of the ideas I have put forward in the "Setting us free?" article in this month's Teaching History. As such I thought it was worth putting on. All comments appreciated. For context read "Setting us free?" HERE. To be frank - read the whole issue - especially Hammond! Mr F 
OK, so I am not even going to make the pretense of being brief here! The attached document (below) outlines my current thinking about how we might make assessment work in a whole school context. As suggested by the title, this has been something of an epic struggle and I am pretty sure I haven't got it right, however I hope that it might at least spark some discussion.
I would like to make mention again however of the excellent work being done by Michael Fordham at http://clioetcetera.wordpress.com/ on this issue which has been crucial in forming many of my ideas. As ever, all thoughts and comments are appreciated! So yesterday I delivered a session about progression in History in a post-levels world at the Leeds Learning Network History Conference. The most valuable part of the day for me, other than the excellent sessions, was the chance to speak to other heads of department about how their schools were approaching the issue of assessment and reporting in Key Stage 3. The major worry across the board was that we end up replacing the Levels system with something essentially identical. In the worst cases, schools seemed set on keeping Levels and not updating assessment and reporting arrangements at all. The main reason for this seems to come down to the age old issue (or is that actually a recent issue) of accountability.
This got me to thinking. Is there any point in replacing our progression systems if we end up keeping a debunked system of assessment and reporting? Now I completely accept that schools are (in our current culture) going to have to show evidence of pupil progress, as it forms a major part of the Ofsted framework. However, I think there may be some ways we can make something which both satisfies the need for data reporting and allows us to develop and use our meaningful models of progression which we have been crafting over the last few months. Once again, I would like to thank Helen Snelson at the Mount and Michael Fordham at Cambridge for their inspiration on these issues! What is crucial for me, as for many others, is that we don't let our progression revolution die a death at the hands of data systems wedded to an outmoded way of thinking. So we have spent quite a long time over the last nine months considering how we might develop a system of progression and assessment suitable for a post levels world. We have made many revisions along the way, however I think we now have something which we are reasonably happy with. To give a brief outline we:
 Just a short post to say that I have updated a range of content to do with progression models for the new KS3. I have made a lot of amendments thanks to some very productive discussions with people online and in departments around the country. I have attached my DRAFT rationale for History, which outlines some of my current thinking - any feedback would be greatly appreciated. I have also updated the old posts with the new materials. Some of the key changes include:
All thoughts and comments appreciated.
 “As part of our reforms to the national curriculum , the current system of ‘levels’ used to report children’s attainment and progress will be removed. It will not be replaced.” (DfE, 2013) This blog aims to be a follow-up to the Northern History Forum meeting from November 2013. You will find links on the blog to all aspects of planning for progress and progression in the new KS3. I hope we are able to spark some healthy professional dialogue about the concepts we want to use to assess History; how we make progression models meaningful; and how we can create a mastery model of History education. All comments are much appreciated and help us to begin the process of moving History forwards. I hope we can be in the vanguard of educational reform as a subject as we move into 2014. As ever, I am indebted to the huge amount of work which has already been done on these themes over the last 20 years, by a range of incredibly talented people. I have provided a full bibliography for all the models in the introductory file below. I would however like to mention the amazing articles from Peter Lee and Denis Shemilt in Teaching History, as well as Peter Seixas' and Tom Morton's "The Big Six" which first got me excited about the prospect of rethinking history assessment. For each of these concepts it would be good to have a discussion about how far you agree with the signposts set out and the aims of the concepts. Student friendly versions are available in the student resources section.
Exposition Surely I cannot be the only one whose heart leapt when I read this statement in the DfE’s recent statement on assessment without National Curriculum Levels. In two short paragraphs, the document went on to describe everything that was wrong with the current system of assessment in Key Stages 1 to 3. “We believe this system is complicated and difficult to understand, especially for parents. It also encourages teachers to focus on a pupil’s current level, rather than consider more broadly what the pupil can actually do. Prescribing a single detailed approach to assessment does not fit with the curriculum freedoms we are giving schools.” (DfE, 2013) I seldom sing the praises of the Secretary of State for Education, but this surely has to be one of the most sensible reforms we have seen for many years. In the wake of the demise of the levels system, it seems the ideal time to begin to thinking about what should come next. How should we think about progress and progression in History in a post-Levels world? It has long been accepted that the system of NC Levels is woefully inadequate when it comes to describing, assessing or planning for progression in History. Levels have become, in the worst cases, the end point of teaching itself. This has been accompanied by an increasing fetishisation of NC Levels as a means of establishing accountability in schools. Worryingly, the idea of NC Levels seems to have become so ingrained that many are unsure how we assess now these ‘ladders’ have been removed. I would suggest however that this is a moment where we need to seize the opportunity to build meaningful models of progression with both hands.
 It is now several days since the publication of the revised National Curriculum proposals; days in which my initial disbelief and incredulity have become a sense of deep, immutable despair over the future of our profession. Many excellent responses have already been penned in response to Mr Gove’s proposals for the reform of the History curriculum but nothing yet has quite encapsulated the disappointment, the anger I feel about this abomination, this ahistorical, jingoistic mess which is being peddled to our children disguised as a “history curriculum.”
Let me be clear from the start, I am not against reform. Indeed some of the key changes to the History GCSE are long overdue and in some cases I am frustrated that reforms have not gone far enough. Yet the revised History curriculum offers little in the way of real reform, little to develop the historical profession and even less still to the students it aims to educate. I had been genuinely excited by the prospect of a greater role for History in the National Curriculum. Back when creating departmental documents in 2010 I noted, “This is an exciting time to be a History teacher and an historian. It is clear that History is set to play a much larger role in school curricula than it has done over the last 10 years of Labour government.” How bitter then my disappointment with what we have been given. It transpires that there is at least one aspect of the new curriculum which will avoid criticism: second-order concepts remain. There, that’s it! The rest of the document appears to be the combined wet dreams of reactionary Tories, Daily Mail readers, Empire apologists and neo-liberal crusaders throughout Britain (or should I say this “Sceptred Isle?”) |
Image (c) LiamGM (2024) File: Bayeux Tapestry - Motte Castle Dinan.jpg - Wikimedia Commons
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