BETT 2015 ETAG Reflections 7 & 8

Reflection 7: Leadership and professional development

OK, first of all how does this statement align to the section on Evidence???

“This workgroup focussed on the need for teachers to develop and exchange clear, evidence based strategies for using digital technology, improving their skills to use it effectively”

Right, I hear you mumbling … but it gets worse. The team want to set up an overall ‘CPD Directorate’ to ‘collate and share ….’. Do I hear you mumbling “jobs for the boy(girls)”. How on earth will a central directorate be able to support the individual CPD needs of teachers across the country and what school is going to prioritise such a system over the structured, targeted CPD that they barely have time for now. Really, really I expected more than this rather, dare I say, old-fashioned approach to this from such a group of experienced and, individually, innovative people.

Reflection 8 : Assessment and accountability

I really like the suggestion that institution should be required to describe how they use digital technologies to improve learning and that assessors such as OFSTED should be required to have a good understanding of strategies that could be used when they assess institutions and providers. Of course the challenge here is to provide examples that can be used to benchmark these descriptions and strategies. So let’s get some descriptors from good school development plans shared across the profession.

However, the focus of the assessment recommendation on the move towards digitally enabled, high-stakes assessments, whilst welcomed, perhaps misses an easier target. Digital tools enable much richer assessments to be carried out as part of the learning experience that, in turn, would provide learners with just-in-time feedback on their progress and enable them to make adjustments to their learning in a timely fashion. Embedding these types of assessments would not only provide real impact to support outcomes within the current high-stakes exam regime but would also give the designers of future digitally-enabled, high-stakes assessments useful data about pupil interactions with digital-based assessments. Yes, lets work towards more digital exams but given that these will take a long time let’s not forget the other assessments that can help now.