OK … so the blogging bit is usually “mine, all mine! … *cue maniacal laugh* but for our 301st post I’m letting Seager have a go. Bless him, he’s been out for the day in London and had an horrendous journey home so I’m letting him loose. Here goes:

Just back home (at 8.45pm!!!) from the great MathSpeak down at America Square in London. Graham Smart has yet again pulled off a slick maths conference with hundreds of maths teachers heading home this afternoon with loads of those ‘golden nuggets’ you hope to return to school with. I’ve got several that I can’t wait to use in the classroom tomorrow.

As a regular delegate for most of the day, my nerves gradually increased as we got closer to 3pm, the time I was going to chair the question and answer session with a panel consisting of 2 great people from industry (Amy Leonard from Transformation Trust and Stephen Uden from Nationwide Building Society) and the 3 ‘big guns’ – Graham Cumming (Edexcel), Andrew Taylor (AQA) and Eddie Wilde (OCR). Little old Seager from Redditch was given the responsibility of keeping a session in line with 200 maths teachers and the maths leaders from the exam boards mixed with the biggest changes to qualifications for a generation….no pressure then!

 Well I have to say the audience and panel were extremely professional…nice questions that were answered very well. One delegate did pump a little adrenaline into the discussion about half way in…but still no sign of the question I personally was desperate to be asked. With 15 minutes to go I decided to break the rules of being an impartial chair and joined the audience, raised my hand for the microphone to be brought over and I cheekily introduced myself to the panel again. I then asked the question that I am sure was on the lips of most delegates….’can each exam board be given 1 minute to tell the audience why we should choose your board for the new GCSEs over the other boards, sharing with us your unique selling point’. What makes me think that this was on most peoples lips??…the round of applause this question received! I have to say, the exam boards were very ‘safe’ with their answers – not really giving much away. Maybe it’s the kind of question that should have been shared with them all before hand for a response that could have had time dedicated to it rather than having it thrown at them on the spot. However, I am glad I asked the question, as this is what we want to know! I know that OFQUAL will ensure parity across the boards in terms of the tests, so what will be the real deciding factors for us to chose one board over the other, is it the support, resources, the mocks, the analysis services, the clarity of time scales or all of these?

 I thought it was genius of Graham Smart to get the 3 exam boards together, and if (maybe, just maybe) JustMaths was to run a conference, would you three enter the ring again?

A couple of notes from Mel:

(1) Good lad! Glad you had the “cahoonas” to ask “the question” .. that’s my boy!!

(2) Oh my! A JustMaths Conference … now THAT I would like to do! It would be the nuts! (the mutts nuts!) … Imagine it being full of real teachers sharing best practice, people who do what you do day-in day-out … could we pull it off?

(3) NOW GET OFF MY BLOG!! MINE!