National Reference Tests for all?

Back in March 2015 Ofqual announced that NFER had been awarded the contract to provide National Reference Tests ( OFQUAL ANNOUNCEMENT ) The idea is that Ofqual is introducing the new National Reference Tests (NRTs) to provide additional information to support the awarding of the new “big fat” 9-1 GCSEs. The intention according to Ofqual is … Read more

The Mathematical Association Conference Part 1

I’m just home having spent the last 3 days of the Easter Holiday at Keele University for the annual conference of the Mathematical Association and I’ve come away with loads to think about as you do after events of this type. Subject associations and where they “fit” in the day to day grind of teaching … Read more

My Views on Mastery … for what they’re worth ..

At the recent La Salle Maths Conference there was a session labelled the “great mastery debate” (don’t … do you hear me? … don’t say it quickly!) where Bruno Reddy, Alan Patel and Amir Arezoo debated the whole mastery thing. The idea being that the three guys would debate “what is mastery? Is it an … Read more

Ofqual Blog 20th Mar 2015

I have so much I want to blog about but instead I’ve been waylaid by an update from Ofqual about the GCSE research programme ( 20th March Update ). Before I “go off on one” I have a little update to my last post where I summarised the accreditation process ( HERE ) and also outlined the fact … Read more

I was challenged … yay!

Yesterday was another one of the maths conferences run by La Salle education and it was a great event – loads of enthusiastic fellow teachers discussing and sharing ideas. It’s great to meet up with people from twitter and meet with friends … old and new (as always with these things I’m sad not to have … Read more

I *may* have sent a letter

There have been a couple of headlines recently that have caught my attention but I know regular readers (do I have regular readers? if so **waves hello**) will find the it as no surprise that I’d be interested. The BBC Education Page ran with “Exam changes risk problems for schools, say heads” and the online version of … Read more

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