The first thing I did as I just walked into the door this evening after a parish council meeting is check out the TES live chat with Liz Truss. I am starting to wonder if its me, and maybe I’m a little bit dim. Surely I’m not the only person that thinks the following just doesn’t add up … we have about 1/3 extra content in the new GCSE which implies that, in order to get through it in time for examination in June 2017 we can’t wait until September 2015 as we just wont have time to get through the content given current teaching allocations (we’d need about a 1/3 more teaching time, most schools I’ve spoken to are getting about one sixth or one seventh extra time). These same schools are therefore choosing to prepare the new year 9 (or they will be in Sept 2014) by starting to teach the new criteria from September. So to see this comment about having a year to prepare just doesn’t ring true … we don’t have a year to prepare. Too much too soon!! Stop! and think and listen to the teachers who are teaching maths, day in, day out.

I am as always happy to listen to anyone that can convince me that I sit back and carry on teaching my new intake as I would normally do and don’t start teaching them according to the new criteria until September 2015. It might be career suicide mind you, when they do their final exam at the end of year 11 .. if you haven’t guessed … I’ve got the “bit between my teeth” and a new pet gripe to whinge about!