Not content to wait for the results of the government’s curriculum and assessment review and a rumoured ‘GCSE reset’, a quiet revolution is already happening in schools. Those of us frustrated with the uncertainty surrounding curriculum reform are taking things into our own hands.
The School Directed Courses Consortium (SDCC) began life as a small forum for schools who had embarked on decreasing the overall number of GCSEs they offered. Their aim was instead to broaden their approach to teaching, learning and assessment and escape the outdated mono-focus on timed exams.
Some have been doing this for years: Bedales, St Paul’s Girls’ School, St Edward’s in Oxford. They blazed the trail, developing their own alternatives to exam-only pathways.
Coursework, portfolios, presentations and journals sit alongside more conventional assessment in bespoke, institution-specific courses, which UCAS has been happy to list.But they were largely in splendid isolation.
The King Alfred School in North London, historically progressive, wanted to follow suit. It established a coalition of the like-minded for mutual support and to share practice.
What we quickly discovered is that there is, it turns out, a rich appetite for curriculum innovation at Key Stage 4. While most easily accessible to independent schools, it is no longer confined to them.
When we talk about curriculum innovation, we mean giving young people real-world learning experiences and better equipping them for life after school, whichever path they embark on next.
Buoyed by support from Rethinking Assessment, the SDCC membership list has grown to around 100 interested parties (state and independent) who are at various stages on their journeys.
Exam boards see an emerging market and have started to replicate the model
Some already run internally-devised courses, others plan to do so and are being supported from those who are further ahead on this journey, and a number are plotting from the sidelines.
The location of the biggest SDCC meeting to date, which took place just 10 days ago, might raise some eyebrows. The exam-sceptics gathered, of all places, at the headquarters of Pearson-Edexcel on the Strand. Not to raise placards against the tyranny of the timed assessment, but to share practice and to hear from educators (and most importantly students) about their experiences.
Why should exam boards be interested and supportive? Well, one of the perennial questions for SDCC members is around accreditation. Teachers can write and deliver great courses, but students, parents and governors want to know that the students will be credited for their learning in the great game of CV-building and HE entry.
One way of gaining external credit for school-derived courses is to combine the content and activities that schools want to deliver with an accreditation wrapper like Pearson’s Higher Project Qualification (HPQ).
So, for example, at The King Alfred School, the Global Challenges course teaches students about climate change, migration and human rights, and then asks them to develop practical responses.
Our young people chart their social impact projects using the HPQ framework, and learning meets meaningful action in a way that also gets a student a Level 2 qualification.
Not all schools seek external accreditation for their courses. However, this does currently seem to be the best bet for the maintained sector, where school accountability culture demands hard, measurable outputs.
Exam boards see an emerging market and have started to replicate the model of content-plus-project-qualification.
Pearson are piloting a Science HPQ route next year, which will open the door to practical science projects. At level 3, they already offer extended projects in AI and sustainability. And they are piloting a double-HPQ route, which tracks and assesses the skills students develop over two years across two separate projects.
The SDCC stands to be an effective test-bed for future qualification pathways through its free-wheeling innovations. And it’s not hard to imagine how this practice could explode.
If school accountability measures could be broadened just a little to include HPQ grades, it would provide instant permission for all schools to diversify the student experience in a way that makes sense to so many educators.
Even as things stand, schools could take eight GCSEs to meet Progress 8 requirements and add in two HPQs into the ninth column.
In this context, the curriculum and assessment review is a real opportunity for the kind of bold, meaningful change schools have been crying out for but have sometimes struggled to define.
Best of all, it strikes just the right balance between a manageable evolution in accountability and practice on one hand, and a much-needed revolution in outcomes on the other.
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