Asked for and recieved permission from Head Teacher to bring whole science department to a meeting regarding the new Draft ACfE outcomes.
Attended meeting at Boroughmuir and discussed the proposals with other teachers. I was pleased with the changes since the last time – the prescription over how we teach things (I will have learned about x by giving a presentation about it) had gone and the document was much briefer than before.
Still we had a number of concerns:
- The progression seemed fine, if the primaries were able to afford to implement all the things they had to teach. We are concerned about the amount of work being expected of the primaries – can they not teach children to read and write?
- At the other end of the timescale, what was going to happen with S3 into S4? As it stands, pupils will experience all of the outcomes up to third level, and then some students will experience some of the fourth level outcomes. This appears to mean that pupils can specialise at the end os S2, as they do at the moment. Then they go on to sit either Their general or their (insanely named) advanced general exam. This will be a one year course. We were concerned about the quantity of learning that can go into those courses. Also, given that these courses might have to assume that the pupils have not experienced all the outcomes at level 4, then will they adequately prepare students for Higher?
- We are pleased that we are hearing lots of information from LTS but we really want to hear some information from the SQA about how all of this is going to fit together.
