curious.. the disappearing entry on the DFE timelines.

This evening I got a tweet from Miss Mews (@MissMews1) asking what was happening with the year 7 resits as they had disappeared from the DFE website … so off I went … oh hang on … lets take a step back for some of you.

Nicky Morgan announced that she wanted to introduce resits for year 7 students that failed to attain “expected standards” and I “may” have said before now that I think it’s a bonkers idea (blog post-> here)  In January the below was available to view on the useful timelines that are published by the DFE for schools of all types … at the bottom of the page appeared the below text:

resits

THEN .. extract from the “useful timelines” for schools (Jan 2016)

This evening looking at the timelines it looks like this entry is NO LONGER THERE because the entries for Autumn 2016 look like the below and include some others in relation to governance and before and after school care (depending on the type of school) BUT THERE IS DEFINITELY NO REFERENCE TO YEAR 7 RESITS. I have also checked the mandatory timelines … nothing there either. I’m not sure what this means but there isn’t a reference to it being removed in the “updates” where any changes are logged (which is very very naughty by the way and really not good for version control!) … I’m not suggesting anything (and I’m chasing the DFE) but it’s just flipping curiouser than a curious thing in a curious world!

Now

NOW … extract from the useful timelines (18th May 2016) 

If there is another “u-turn” there are two things I need to say: (1) You heard it here first and (2) Thank feck for that!! Common sense prevails.

If it isn’t a u-turn on behalf of the DFE maybe they’d like to publish their promised consultation (mentioned in this post) on the whole year 7 resit idea before they start spending shed loads of public money on an idea that has little public backing! They also need to reinstate the entry on their timeline … it has massive implications and shouldn’t be hidden away – it was obviously important enough to have been included in the first place and so (if the tests still go ahead) I’d be interested to know why the entry was removed.

Thanks must also go to Adam (@adamcreen) for pointing me in the direction of archived versions of the timeline. Gotta love Twitter!!