Thanks for pointing that out. It just goes to show that the older you get the less you should rely on memory!

I’m not sure that I can agree with your last paragraph, though. From what I can see from the YASS website  http://www.open.ac.uk/yass) these will indeed require a level of work and commitment equivalent to Advanced Highers but I don’t think that the individual modules which are available offer the breadth of an Advanced Higher, nor do I think, that they are intended to. More depth but less breadth perhaps.

Also, the entrance qualification equivalence that they offer is only guaranteed for the OU. As their website warns, other universities may attach a different value to them.

So I would be wary of portraying them as an alternative to Advanced Highers. But potentially very good for the academically athletic.

Ian Smith

An interesting post, what I am taking from it(and I may be totally wrong!) is something akin to a conceptualisation of an ‘S3 profile’ or an ‘achievement profile’ which has been internally assessed and moderated, but that will have currency beyond school.

I think this is the direction that we need to go in, in order to allow our education system to be truly inclusive. Any such system/profile would also have to be sufficiently flexible as to allow the young person scope and space for the articulation of the skills and attributes developed while engaging in experiences that currently exist outwith the current curriculum (I’m thinking here of Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, John Muir Award, ASDAN, ‘informal’ learning etc etc).

This is a huge (and exciting) task. Currently I don’t think that anywhere in the world (including NZ) has really been able to capture this in a form that is both usable and managable, as well as being sufficiently motivating for the youngster to ‘own’.

The moderation issue itself will involve a huge sea change in practice and attitudes, as well as a great deal of professional learning, to allow it to work effectively. I hope that we, as educators, are brave enough to try and crack it!

Good to hear from you

I certainly don’t intend to perpetuate the industrial model. Far from it. When one considers how students at further and higher education are allowed to create their own courses by selecting units and modules - and contrast that with the assembly line, linear model of school certificated courses then I hope you can begin to see what I’m driving at.

I’m also worried that we fail to provide “value” in the early years of secondary schooling - and by value I mean what parents and children themselves value. By recognising this and creating a system which builds upon formative and internal assessment and which gives credit for learning I believe we can meet the needs of learners and society. I would also argue that the system I’m proposing would provide a framework for significant innovation by schools and teachers - as opposed to the traditional lock-down model of curricular guidance.

My real fear is that we fail to recognise this and the one-off chance we have to change our educational system is lost in a backlash from reactionary forces.

How about a pint sometime soon?

Don

That’s what I want to explore through my meetings with learners. Is active learning enough if it carries no substance.

I’ll be writing about my findings in a few weeks.

Don

I meant that I disagree with your particular take (as I read it) on the issues of the separation of qualification and curriculum, where you seem to be arguing that they should not be as separate as ACfE seems to want it. My argument is that this separation is necessary and ‘a good thing’.

It is because of this that I can’t agree with you about the need to “…keep the qualifications issue separate from the curriculum development…” Doesn’t the route you suggest simply consolidate the ‘industrial age’ notion that education, and particularly secondary education, is primarily about employment thereafter? That would be to strengthen the very culture that ACfE is trying to change, in my humble opinion.

Two things, in addition:

First, I’m not sure that the originators of ACfE wanted to keep qualifications and curriculum separate as such - rather, they wanted the curricular development to lead the qualifications development (which might even turn the history of the past couple of hundred years or more of formal education and bring about some change the nature of university education, although that, I am sure, was never an explicit aim of the initiative). To do it the other way around would be to have the tail continue to wag the dog.

Secondly, there is, of course, a big debate to be had (one, indeed, that has been going on since formal education and schooling were invented, probably) around the right balance between ‘education for education’s sake’ and ‘education for employability’. I have no truck with either extreme, but I do think we desperately need to shift the balance away from the latter to the former. That is where the real cultural change would happen.

The model you suggest could be a very good one, but only if it is built around the real, and broad, needs of the full range of students in schools, and not around the narrow requirements for university entrance. I’m sure, by they way, that this is not what you are suggesting, but I could see the definite possibility that such a model would be subverted to the needs of the academic elite yet again.