Sixth Year Leadership Team
‘I am delighted to announce that the Head Boy and Head Girl for the year 2012/13 have been appointed.
Jodie Wilson 6R Head Girl
Cailean Osborne 6A Head Boy
In addition, the 6LT team will comprise four Deputes:
Iyetomiwa Folorunso Scott House
Ross Hunter Raeburn House
Maddy Bourne Napier House
Sarah McEwan Adam House
Congratulations to the new team and we look forward to working with them.’
Pauline Cumming, Depute Head Teacher
CfE implementation plan 2012-13
This plan – written by the Scottish Government’s Curriculum for Excellence Management Board – sets out what primary and secondary schools and local authorities should be doing. The author/s clearly have not benefited from a CfE education themselves: one extra point for the table format, but immediately lost for foggy language. The plan includes several actions for staying in touch with parents on matters such as assessing progress, reporting to parents, tracking progress, publication of CfE materials, etc. Apparently, Edinburgh education department has been pretty slow off the mark with much of this, but CfE guidance and exemplars produced by the Scottish Government have also been slow in coming out. Quite a lot of the actions from Education Scotland are simultaneous with schools and local authorities delivering the same actions. If the Scottish Government would like schools and local authorities to be creative and progress rapidly with all these, timely publication would be helpful. On the other hand, everyone knew all of this was coming for years …
Curriculum for Excellence ‘deep audit’ report
Here is Education Scotland’s report on the progress of CfE implementation in schools as of 23 May.
Chairman of the Broughton Parent Council says, ‘[The report] provides an overview on how well secondary schools and education authorities across Scotland are prepared for CfE. Since I like my reports to contain numbers, tables and telling examples, I’d probably give it a “C” at best. At least the conclusion is clear: “There are no requests for whole-school delay in the implementation of new National Qualifications and the audit did not identity any individual departments which have requested delay through the exceptional circumstances arrangements.” Independent of the report, I am pleased to note that, thanks to a lot of hard work by staff, CfE at BHS is moving forward at the right pace.’
feedback about feedback
Here is a letter from Alasdair Allan, Minister for Learning, Science and Scotland’s Languages, in response to communication from Harald Tobermann, Broughton PC Chair. Says Harald, this letter was ‘clearly written by a civil servant and signed by the minister – he appeared a lot livelier on the phone!’
May update from the SQA
New Guide
A guide to the new qualifications is now available for parents and carers. It is available to download from the dedicated section of the SQA website.
There is also a guide for young people and updated guides for teachers and employers.
On their website, you can find other useful resources, such as the ‘Myth buster’ and ‘Jargon buster’.
Final documents for the new National 2 to Higher Courses are available. The final documents will be used by teachers and lecturers to prepare to teach each new Course. The documents are of interest to parents and carers, as they give information about the skills and knowledge young people will gain.
Use the subject drop-down menu on the website to find the documents for each subject.
Education Scotland has also published a suite of practical advice and guidance to support practitioners in preparing for implementing key aspects of the new qualifications.
Advanced Higher
The draft Course Specifications for the new Advanced Higher qualifications are now published. To find them, use the subject drop-down menu to find the documents for each subject. For more general information, use Advanced Higher.
The SQA continue to seek our feedback on these documents as the qualifications are developed. We can give our feedback via Have Your Say.
The new Advanced Highers will be introduced in 2015/16.
Awards
SQA has developed new Awards for young people. These cover work from different subject areas and are shorter than traditional Courses. They recognise success across different levels of difficulty, meaning they’re suitable for young people of all abilities. They will be marked and assessed internally and do not have any external assessments or exams. The final documents for these are also now available.
Next Steps
Assessment support
Specimen question papers and other assessment resources for National 2 to National 5 qualifications are being developed and will be available by April 2013.
Assessment materials for Higher will be published by April 2014.
CfE Events
To continue to support practitioners with the implementation of the new qualifications, SQA is hosting a further 10 Curriculum Area events in September 2012 to update teachers on the latest developments.
Between October 2012 and March 2013 we will host a series of subject-specific events, which every principal subject teacher will be invited to attend.
Our CfE Liaison team are continuing to support local events including those with parents.
Broughton High School Parent Council 