Teachers thrilled by new Vocational GCSEs
‘We’re pumped!’ yelled a jubilant teacher. ‘We love new stuff. These new vocational thingies are going to be great.’
An excited colleague chipped in. ‘It’s a virtuous circle of continuous improvement. The learning environment should never stand still. CSEs were great, but GCSEs were better. BTecs are wonderful, AS levels were exciting, but T levels were even better still. Every time there’s a change, things just get better and better. We’re so excited.’
A third cheerleader joined the conversation. ‘People think that it’s expensive to change qualifications and exams and lessons and text books. But those costs are just peanuts in the cause of helping young people to excel and to live their best lives. One brilliant advantage of online resources is that the syllabus can be changed so easily. And everything else – lessons, resources, exercises, tests, and homework, and so on – changes in real time. It’s very flexible.
‘The changes sometimes happen in the middle of a lesson. You can begin a lesson expecting to cover themes of trust and betrayal in Macbeth and find that the lesson has seamlessly morphed into covering themes of ageing and uncertainty in The Thursday Murder Club. It certainly keeps us on our toes. I love my job. You never know what will happen next.’
‘We’ve already started a nationwide supporters club on WhatsApp. For the moment, it’s called Vocation, Vocation, Vocation, but that will probably change. There is so much energy and excitement behind the initiative that we’ll be crowdsourcing new and better names all the time.
A fourth enthusiast could contain himself no longer. ‘One big advantage of the continuous change model is that evaluation and reflection are always pointless, because things move forward so quickly. So, we don’t ever review the old systems, because the findings would always be irrelevant. After all, the system is always improving itself all the time.
‘If we could change one thing about VGCSEs, it would be to bring forward the start date from 2029. That’s too far away. We need to keep changing all the time. Every mistake is a learning opportunity. We need to fail fast, in order to learn more. Things in education change all the time, every day, every day, all the time. When will central government catch up?’
Image: WOKANDAPIX - Pixabay
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