The long awaited day has arrived and I’ve been doing my own version of an impatient child checking the DFE site and clicking refresh to see if the promised findings had been published and so what a treat it was for me when THIS POST this  appeared on the blog pages of Ofqual.

I was so excited only to find we’re no further forward than we were before and I’m reminded of a year 7 who says “Miss … you know that homework? Well … I did it! I promise I did it. I can even tell you that question 7 was really tough … ummm … well … I left it on my desk. I promise I did it … ring my mum … she’ll tell you I did it!”

On a more serious note let’s deal with some of my “issues” (some are more of an irritation than an issue, and others are just plain downright “issues”!). I am assuming, for the sake of this blog post that it is a given that I feel the whole accreditation process has been a debacle from start to … um … errr … I’d like to say “finish” but we aren’t at the finish line yet! Before I do, however, I am once again going to make it clear that I am supportive of the changes in focus that the new GCSE will bring but I feel we should defer it until we have a clear and open process for accrediting the boards. In fact I am actually quite excited about the future but what we need right now, especially given the current recruitment crisis, coupled with the implications to funding that are resulting in “restructuring” in many schools is some stability. Let me hear you say it: “what do we want? STABILITY” “When do we want it? NOW!” (Thanks Amir for the inspiration on that … your tweet did make me chuckle!)

So let’s make a start:

• Once again the announcement has been made via the Ofqual blog and is not available on the DFE publications part of the site – it also hasn’t been sent out as a “teacher update” (in fact I haven’t had one for months!!). I’ve blogged about how the DFE and Ofqual don’t appear to have a consistent “modus operandii” when it comes to making announcements and it’s almost as if it will just fly under the radar. However, I am a stubborn cow and am not just going to forget about it – I take what I do for a living very seriously and believe it or not I am interested in the changes and the future for my students – as are, most teachers I talk to.
• In fact, communication about the whole thing has been lacking – in one of Ian Stockford’s updates on the 20^th March he mentioned that we will continue to provide updates over coming weeks and guess what? We’ve heard nothing. Nada! Zip! Zilch
• Today’s blog post is entitled “GCSE maths research complete” and says “We said that we would look to complete our research by the end of April and we have met that goal” …. Um … NO. THEY. HAVEN’T. Let me remind you, what was actually said was that the programme was “scheduled to report at the end of April 2015”. So somewhere along the line “report” has become “complete”!! Someone has suggested that Ofqual are abiding by election purdah rules … well! If that was the case then why? Oh why? Why would you have given a date of the end of April to report findings if it was going to be impossible to achieve because of purdah? It’s not like we didn’t know there was an election in May before now is it (oh of course we do, what with having a fixed term Parliament!)
• The other issue with the title of the blog is that I would have thought that pulling together all of the conclusions and recommendations was an “actual” part of carrying out research … hmmm … evidently Ofqual have a different idea of what “complete” actually means!
• Let’s look at some of the numbers mentioned in the post; more specifically about the number of students involved which makes me question the validity of the programme- can such a small number of 3865 students really be representative? What would be the impact of any bias, in terms of student and school profiles with such a small sample of students? I’m more uncomfortable with the fact that when you consider that over 500,000 students will be sitting these exams every year, I don’t think I’d like to “bet my mortgage” on less than 1% of an “actual” cohort being a fair representation.
• The post goes onto to say that they have “three independent experts looking at the work we’ve done to provide added assurance that the conclusions we are drawing are appropriate.” Call me cynical (yes I can actually hear lots of you saying out loud “cynical”) but how independent can an expert be if they are being called in to provide assurance? Basically what is being said is: “we’re paying someone to come in and support what we’ve found” … but …. Ummmmm …. What if they don’t agree? Or is that the point? They aren’t allowed to disagree?

So in short … we are now looking at mid-May before we hear anything else. Brilliant! (say that out loud with a petulant teenager voice) just as we approach the GCSEs for our current year 11 is just when we need more information – the clock is ticking:  “the moon is getting awfully big in the window” is what Tom Hanks would be saying if this whole thing were a movie. I’ve said it before and I will keep saying it: Some politicians and “suits sat in ivory towers” think the new Maths GCSE is a two year course (I’m not sure who you are listening to and it might be the case in a few years’ time!) but our current year 9’s are part of the generation, that will see a shift in Mathematical content down the Key Stages and they aren’t necessarily going to have been taught much of it YET … there is so much extra content and so teaching for these new GCSE has already started and we can’t keep working in the dark.

PS: Those regular readers (I’m still amazed that I have regular readers **waves**) will know that I’ve been following this whole process for months and months (it may be my first anniversary soon!) so if you want to read through the complete catalogue of events I’ve documented it in my letter to Nick Gibb (which is attached on this post HERE ) … by the way I have had no response to my second letter after I’d been fobbed off which I’m putting down to election purdah!