Red is my favourite colour – it has been as long as I can remember. So, you’d think that my departmental policy of using only red ink to mark in student’s books would come naturally to me. But, I tend to flow around the class, using whatever pen or pencil is nearby to write in […]
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The recent collapse of alternative qualifications and the narrow focus on which qualifications count for Progress 8 scores mean that GCSE Combined Science has become the default entry route to a science qualification for students in England. Some schools co-teach GCSE Combined Science with Entry Level Certificate (ELC), but an increasingly challenging curriculum presents difficulty […]
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Education is fast moving, with new ideas, recycled ideas, and changes in the political landscape which feed into curriculum change and inevitable examination changes. A rising hot topic is ‘stretch and challenge’, but what exactly is it? As part of the Teaching and Learning group in my school we have been exploring ‘Stretch and Challenge’ […]
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Experimentation is the essence of learning science. Learning science without practical work is like learning literature without reading books. This has been the mantra for science teaching, in the UK at least, since universal science education began in the 1980s. But with school and college budgets reducing, practical work is under scrutiny as never before, […]
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