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.
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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….

Just wanted to say a huge than you to people who attended my (rather history focused) talk on life after levels at ResearchEd today. I am posting the powerpoint and links to other useful resources on this blog post. Please do get in touch if you would like to discuss further.

• ​Progression in history -a support pack
• Progress & progression - special issue of Teaching History
  
• Making progress in understanding progression: a blog series
  
• Dealing with GCSE grades replacing NC Levels: advice
  
• Example task-specific assessments
  

​I have also uploaded my notes from two other sessions, in case you missed them:

• ​Peter Henderson from the EEF on effective marking
• ​Philippa Cordingley from CUREE onwhat makes an exceptional school (this is particularly interesting)

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:

Thanks once again to everyone who came to my session on "life after levels" at this year's SHP. As ever, the discussions had with so many of you have really helped to shape my own thinking about next steps and I will continue to work on this project as we move into the new school year. As promised, I have uploaded the PowerPoint and notes files to this blog post. See below.

If you would like to see how we have been putting this into practice at Guiseley, do check out my "2014 Curriculum" files which can be found HERE. Please bear in mind that these are working documents and therefore I update them constantly. If you want anything preserving, you may wish to download it.

There are also links in older posts to some of the surveys done with parents on assessment and reporting.

All comments and feedback welcome!

Mr F

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

Please bear in mind that these are very much work in progress, but I am attaching my outline plans for two more 2014 KS3 units: the Reformation and the French Revolution. Any comments would be appreciated. I have also added a new 2014 KS3 files section to the top bar so you can get resources easily.

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:

1. Established a common "gold standard" for history in school
2. Used research based models of progression to identify how students could make conceptual progress towards this gold standard - picking out key misconceptions to overcome through teaching and feedback
3. Developed outline enquiries which would be based around developing students' conceptual understanding as well as their substantive knowledge
4. Tied these to enquiry-specific assessments with task-specific mark-schemes. Each mark scheme outlines the broad areas in which a student might demonstrate understanding of a particular task.

So we have begun planning our next steps for the new Key Stage 3 curriculum. For the most part, the last few weeks have been spent hammering out what exactly we want to cover in Year 7-9 and fleshing out how Year 7 might be assessed in particular. 

I have had a number of interesting discussions about assessment with people on the back of the last blog, and have continued to refine ideas about how we assess in history. For some more thoughts on this issue from a much more reputable source, you might like to read Michael Fordham's excellent blog posts on 
http://clioetcetera.wordpress.com/ .

The document attached here just gives a brief outline of the assessment scheme we are putting in place and a little more detail on the units and assessment were are planning on introducing in the first wave. Some more adventurous units may come later. Importantly, we are basing each unit around a number of key enquiry questions and planning the assessments from the outset. I should note that the BWEA idea may later change to something akin to Michael's Pass, Merit, Distinction model.

I have also attached another sample unit for the Reformation which I would love to hear feedback on!

Mr F

So I have spent quite a lot of time over the last 6 months planning for the new curriculum. As a department we have begun to suggest the key units we might like to cover and have begun debating which key questions we want to answer (see attachment below). This process is far from complete, but at least we have a rough outline to begin with. 

Now the outlines are almost complete, the next big issue will be creating the schemes of work and assessments which form the core of our new curriculum. This is the bit where I tend to feel a bit unwell. Images of thick, inpenetrable schemes of work starting running through my head and I get tired thinking about churning out lessons after lesson for a plan that no-one will end up using.

So here is the big issue. We have very limited time to write our new schemes of work and we want to make this the best curriculum we have ever taught. So how do we best use our time? Building on Michael Fordham and Jamie Byrom's recent articles in Teaching History (Curriculum Evolution Supplement, 2013), I think there are 3 areas which will need the most attention:

1) Agreeing on a "gold standard" for History - this has largely been done through previous work here
2) Setting meaningful enquiries - a work in process but nearly there
3) Creating meaningful assessments which enable students to address the enquiry and demosntrate the gold standards of History. I am particularly keen on divorcing such assessments from any generic mark schemes - making the marking specific to each assessment.

With this in mind, I am trying to devise an appropriate planning format, which prioritises the above. I have attached a sample SoW for the Norman Conquest Y7 unit and would be interested to know what people think. The main differences between this and previous SoW I have written are:

* I have been much more rigid in defining substantive concepts to cover - I am hoping to incorporate a mixed approach to assessment which also includes regular checks of knowledge and chronology
* I have spent the majority of the time planning the assessment and mark scheme so that it is specific to the task.
* I have not stipulated indiviudal lessons, leaving this down to teachers.

I would be very interested to get any feedback on this approach. Do you think it works? Is there enough detail? Is it too open/restrictive? Are you doing something similar or do you have a different approach? Again I think this is a great time for debate and discussion. I look forward to any responses.

Alex

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:

• A greater focus on the assessment process - linking concepts to specific knowledge.
• A removal of the concepts booklet for students - replacing this with very specific, student friendly mark schemes for every assessment.
• A revision of the totalisers for Y7-9 so students can keep track of their progress in a general sense as well as a specific conceptual sense
• The introduction of a student assessment system based on effort and progress rather than arbitrary grading.
• The revision of some of the concepts to remove on or two of the more esoteric signposts.
• Renaming the Concepts to Learning Objectives (I know - it felt wrong, but kids know what this means).
• Drafting two example assessments to show how the process of assessment might work in practice.
• The writing of student friendly versions of the concepts in the format: What do go historians do?
• The production of new poster materials for classrooms.
• The removal of generic descriptors in mark schemes altogether and hopefully a greater focus on the specific.
• A rationale for planning and teaching in the new KS3.

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.