May 03 2009
Finding a way through Curriculum for Excellence
My school will be implementing something along the road towards the new CfE outcomes for Science for S1 after the summer holidays. I don’t know how far down the road we will go in our first year of implementation, it’s unclear if anyone has the answer to that yet at this stage.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, assessment seems to be an issue already. It’s disappointing as I thought perhaps there would have been sufficient flexibility in our approach to allow the classroom teacher to assess pupils against the 4 capacities when it came to report card time.
There may be some consensus in the need to get away from the treadmill of racing through a course to meet the requirements of an exam, but so far all I can see is the potential for a “core” science curriculum to be taught in same way by all members of the department and “extension” topics where creativity and opinions of pupils may have some input into what and how a specific outcome progresses.
The “core” science would be assessed as it always has been, with formative assessment of the additional outcomes. This assessment policy by committee does not live up to my hopes for CfE. How are other schools planning to implement CfE in Science?
