As a kid my mam would nag me about my lack of patience and short attention span. I find I am now eternally grateful as I don’t give up very easily and will wait, wait and even wait some more. To give you a jovial illustration: ourselves and best mates plant “sleeper jokes” with each other where it could take years to come to fruition – we still have another 4 years (having waited 6 years) for the best ever yet to fall into place!. When it’s something I genuinely believe in I have, as they say “the patience of a Saint”. Which is why I find myself enjoying unpicking the whole GCSE accreditation process given that we only publicly get told certain parts of the story through publications and open letters.

On the 2^nd Feb Ofqual published their video attempting to define the difference between “demand and difficulty” (I wrote about it here -> Accreditation is robust ) and I’ve been wondering if there was some other motivation behind it. I’ve even considered whether Ofqual have written (are writing?) a PR strategy for dealing with the current situation. Having come from the “real world” in the long distant past I know that I would have a whole range of dates and “positive key messages” mapped out for dealing with any contingency and would have consulted with a PR agency (that we had on a retainer = £££’s) to advise in the event of any negative press. I remember losing weeks of my life to writing flipping “Business Continuity Plans (BCP’s)” … now there’s a new one for “buzz word bingo” for you!!

Given that yesterday (4^th Feb) part of a speech by Glenys Stacey at the Association of Colleges Examinations Officers’ Conference 2015 in Nottingham (transcript here -> Tomorrows World Speech ) she included reference to the new Maths GCSEs reiterating much of what was said in the video. Many of my comments I make about the video are as valid to this speech … but I really don’t understand the need to bring in the baking references. I am sure that no-one needs such an analogy to help them understand the situation.

Wellllllll … imagine how my curiosity was roused when I saw that on the “We Say” page of The Mathematical Association ( scroll down to “Position Papers” ) you will find two letters dated PRIOR to both the video and the above speech:

16^th Jan from Ofqual to the MA.

30^th Jan from the MA to Ofqual.

I like the letter from the MA as there are some valid points in it from the perspective of heads of departments – real people with real challenges, especially given the funding situation schools are faced with. From a personal perspective I know that we don’t have the money to buy all singing-all dancing new textbooks yet … it just isn’t in the budget right now (which is a good thing as there aren’t any decent one available yet!). Add in the fact that almost every other subject is undergoing an over-haul and most will also be looking for an injection of cash over the next couple of years. It just isn’t there, but on the plus side for those schools that do have the money they’ll be pumping shed loads back into the economy as the big publishers rub their hands in glee. (Trust me … a school could easily spend £30-40 grand on new textbooks if every subject is to be catered for!)

If the people making these decisions want to know how it feels to be at the coal-face – get yourself to an “options evening”. I’d love to see how you handle having to say that we aren’t in a position to give parents information about the exam board their child will be sitting. Believe it or not but some parents like to know this information well in advance. The most positive message (& I didnt need no PR posse because its true … every word of it!) is that they can rest assured we will make the right decision for their child. This is true and it’s what teachers do every day – we make decisions, we back down on some, we stand by other decisions, we reflect on what is the “right thing to do” and sometimes this means that we have to admit we have got it wrong. We’d like to think that this doesn’t happen very often and the one thing we wouldn’t do is plough on regardless. There is too much at stake.

I eagerly await my “sainthood” … ummmm do you have to be dead for 100’s of years to get one?