Having sat down and looked at many specifications we had selected a course to run with our students next year, and I pity other schools like mine (with a high percentage of SEN students) who are having to make a similar decision.

Readers of my blog may have picked up on my dislike of the BTEC qualification, although my gripe has mainly been with the way the qualification is run and the prices charged by Edexcel.  I had decided to drop BTEC because it doesn’t really suit students who are poor attenders or those with poor literacy skills.

We were to move away from BTEC and instead offer OCR entry level with OCR Gateway GCSE science alongside to challenge our more able students.  I was pleased with the match between the two courses and I was even starting to look forward to September.  However a game changing decision was announced by Mr Gove in June (on Sunday morning breakfast television, hardly the arena for important political decisions but then Mr Gove isn’t known for his consideration of teachers).  Modular GCSEs were being phased out with all examinations being placed at the end of the course.

This is a game changer for a special school with 100% statemented students.  Many of my students can’t tell you what we did last lesson and expecting them to remember work from two years ago is just too difficult, even with frequent revision sessions.  As a consequence we have made the decision to revert back to BTEC qualifications as the portfolio based, low pressure assessment technique suits our students more than a terminal examination.

It’s a shame that Mr Gove gave absolutely no consideration to lower attaining students or those with special needs, instead he just seems determined to take us all back to the good old fashioned teaching styles he experienced himself.   In the meantime we’ll go back to BTEC assignments and portfolios to give our students a chance to achieve a qualification they can be proud of.

Image © Mag373 on Flickr

I’ve removed the names and grades, but the colours tell you all need to know.  Red means the assignment hasn’t been started, orange means it has, and green means it has been completed.  No prizes for guessing which of these students have left my BTEC group, but what I’ve got to work on now is plugging the gaps for those students who have work missing.

I’m fortunate in that I’ve seen BTEC lessons in a number of schools (at least four or five that spring to mind) and I have yet to find a better way of organising catch up work (or come to think of it a better way of tracking who has completed what).

If you teach BTEC you have my sympathies, I have a much smaller number of students than many mainstream teachers, and I understand what the pressure is like at this time of the year.  I’d be interested to hear from anyone who has a better system of keeping pupils up to date, or a better way of recording who has done what.

I’ve been following BTEC Science for a few years now (this being the last) and in that time I’ve been subject to repeated external verification and a Quality Review & Development review.

From my QRD report:

There is evidence of accuracy and consistency of assessment decisions.  There is also evidence of effective internal verification at the site visited.

From my EV report:

All assessment decisions agreed. Good feedback has been provided on the front sheets and grades have been annotated on the learner work which is good practice.

All assignments have been internally verified and learner work has also been sampled by the internal verifier clearly demonstrating an effective IV process.

I am confident in my ability to run BTEC within my centre – so what went wrong?  On checking the commentary (an Edexcel term for mark scheme) that accompanied my OSCA2 activity I could see that I had all the technical questions relating to internal verification right.   The questions I had got wrong relate to the awarding of assessment criteria – basically my standards are too high!

Reading through the scripts again it becomes obvious how easy it is to be awarded the assessment criteria, which has always been my concern with the Science BTECs I have experienced.   I’m proud to say I won’t be lowering my standards and my students will continue to exceed the assessment criteria as they receive the best quality science education I can provide.

That’s why I couldn’t care less about failing my OSCA2 certification…

Running a site like this means I get a constant stream of emails from teachers who are teaching BTEC Science.  I’m fortunate that I also get out and about to visit lots of schools in my locality, and talk to many teachers that I meet through the ASE.  I have spent time working with schools to deliver BTEC science in such a way that the assessment is useful.  It should give students a chance to demonstrate their skills and knowledge in a vocational aspect, testing their science ability rather than their memory (or literacy) skills.

Let’s be honest.  We all know why BTEC is so popular.  Sure the teaching/learning style may suit some of the learners enrolled on the course, but the main reason BTEC is popular is that it offers two easy grade C’s.  Under pressure from leadership teams (who are in turn under pressure from government targets) schools have pushed many students through who fail to get grade C in traditional GCSE examinations.  If they do the work for BTEC they are guaranteed to get the grades.

What annoys me is schools who spoon feed students the answers, who reduce the work to tick lists of information to be presented.  In my opinion there is a subtle difference between “Create a TV advert to advocate the benefits of renewable and non-renewable energy” and “Make note on renewable energy”.  For many students now (especially the ones who BTEC is targeted at) ‘make notes’ is translated to ‘copy out of a book’, and no actual learning or understanding takes place (in fact quite often no teaching takes place either!).  I’ve seen schools set up BTEC factory days (they call them catch up days) where they pour in staff support, and students sit and write with text books (no teaching or practical work).   I’ve even see BTEC sessions where the teachers more or less tell the students what to write – can you imagine this happening in a GCSE examination?

Is this the kind of assessment we want for our learners?  Of course Edexcel loves BTEC – charging  £70+ a student with the school doing all of the work (setting & marking assignments), and the fees are paid up-front so they are laughing all the way to the bank.   It’s a shame that BTEC Science has fallen outside the remit of the Wolf Report reviewing vocational education, regardless Edexcel continue to delude themselves about the worth of this qualification…

From Edexcel “Professor Wolf stresses that Science was outside the remit of her Review, and will be encompassed by the National Curriculum Review which is currently underway. We know that BTEC Applied Science has become a valuable approach for thousands of students and offers a valid progression route through to A Level Applied Science.”

I live in hope that the curriculum review brings a change in the way science is assessed, a move away from vocational qualifications meaning copying from books, and one where examinations test science ability rather than memory and literacy skills?

Do you agree with me – come and leave me a comment (click on the title above if you receive this by email) and then fill in the boxes at the bottom of the page.

Image ©freeloosedirt on Flickr

I teach BTEC Applied Science (level 1) in the special school where I work.  I introduced this course because I had students who were working at the bottom end of GCSE ability and had seen how previous cohorts of students had been failed by the language and literacy demands of AQA Core Science.  I hoped that portfolio based assessment would be more appropriate for students who struggle to retain information for any length of time, whilst still keeping a significant level of challenge. I also thought the freedom to set your own assignments was a good thing.  The administration involved with running a BTEC is a chore, especially when you are the sole science teacher in your school and you rely on the goodwill of other schools to help you with hurdles like internal verification, but I thought the results would be worth it.

Earlier this year my first group were awarded their qualifications.  They did pretty well with a selection of results from passes to distinction.  They were a very suitable group for this course – they tried hard, they had excellent attendance and enough of them could work independently.

Following the success of BTEC, the course was introduced to other groups.  These groups of students do not have the same excellent attendance that the previous group had (for a variety of medical and other genuine reasons).   This means that progression through the course has been slower than I would have liked, with frequent catch-up lessons for the significant number of students who have been absent (most of whom are unable to catch up without teaching input and time to do so).  Looking across my spreadsheet of assignments, I see many gaps that students have to go back and complete (a familiar picture to anyone who teaches BTEC I’m sure!).

Is it fair that students who manage to get themselves back into lessons are rewarded with mountains of work to catch up with?

Is it fair on the more able students that progression through the course is slower than it should be because we keep getting derailed by catch-up lessons?

As a school we use Fisher Family Trust data to set aspirational targets for our students.  We have to look at progression guidance data from the National Strategies team and we have our own internal target setting system using CASPA.  We are (in common with schools across the county) being strongly encouraged to increase our ‘measurable output’ in terms of key stage 4 accredited qualifications.  We are an outstanding school because of the attainment of our students (amongst other things) and because of our commitment to these students.

Is pushing students (sometimes pushing very hard) to get a better qualification always in the best interest of the child?  Is there a conflict between strands of the ‘Every Child Matters’ agenda – between enjoying and achieving?  Which is the most important?

For some students, simply attending school and sitting in lessons is a huge achievement, but we are encouraged to get them to jump through more hoops to make ourselves look better.  Until this system changes, can we really say we are acting in the best interests of the child?

I’d be interested to hear comments from readers of my website who find themselves in similar situations. (If you are reading this in an email or feed reader, click the title at the top of the screen and you should be taken straight to my site where you can leave a comment)

As with the other modules, we’ve released our resources and assignments for others to use or adapt.  We’ve tried to link lessons together and put practical work in to our scheme to make it more interesting/motivating for students of all abilities but if  you have any suggestions or ideas for improving it further please take the time to let us know.  Remember that this scheme is an outline scheme written for our students, and you will/should have to personalise it to suit the needs of your students and departments.

This scheme hasn’t been trialled with students yet – it represents a work in progress.  If you use our scheme and you find any mistakes, please let us know so we can upload corrected versions for all to use.

(You can send me messages and files through the contact me form above).  Copyright information is available here.

It is interesting to see that the book is quite different from the Edexcel one.  Note that I say different, not better.  How you rate the book will depend on for what you intend to use the book, and the teaching styles of the department.  The emphasis of the book is more of a teaching resource than a reference resource.  As a result there is less factual information and content in the book, but more ideas of assignments.  For those that are serious about the vocational aspect of BTEC, the book also links topics with appropriate science careers, and is probably worth keeping a single copy in the department for this reason alone.  I’d rate the quality of the assessment tasks more highly than Edexcel book (especially P1,M1,D1 of the core physics module! If you’ve got the Edexcel book you’ll know what I mean!)

As I said above, how useful this book is will depend on how you deliver BTEC within the department.  The Edexcel was more of a traditional text book matched to BTEC, almost with assessment material added as an afterthought.  The Hodder book feels much more like a teaching resources, and has more teaching sequences that you could use with students, or that students could follow independently.  Of course using the text book as the primary teaching method could mean significant investment in a resource that could be out of date as soon as the specifications change again.

Would I buy the book?  I think in my last review I made my dislike of text books obvious.  Whilst they are useful for cover lessons or occasional use, I can’t imagine a modern and forward thinking department using text books as the primary teaching method.  I’d recommend science departments to check out both of the BTEC books and buy a set that most suits the use to which they will be put (e.g. cover lessons)

I bought a copy of this text book having co-developed a scheme of work for the new BTEC specifications.  I was interested to see what the book looked like, and how it covered the BTEC assessment criteria.

The book provides a useful but not essential resource to support the teaching of BTEC Applied Science.  The book is printed in colour and the content is matched to the requirements of the course, giving it an advantage over generic text books.  Activities are matched to the content, but there tends to be very little in the way of activities apart from the assessment tasks.  The assessment materials don’t include scenarios or assignment briefs, but do provide a useful illustration of what level of work would be required for each of the assessment criteria.

Are they worth buying?  I’ve spent 15 years teaching without using text books, I passionately believe that there are many more engaging and stimulating ways to teach students than referring to text books.

I would however recommend having a copy of this on the shelf so that teachers can refer to it when they aren’t sure of the content, or when setting/marking assessments.   Teachers new to BTEC would benefit most from this resource and the security it brings.  It might also be worth having a class set of these to use for cover work, or for occasional use as a reference material.

One point I’ve not made is the unfair advantage that Pearson holds over other publishers as owner of Edexcel.  Is it right that the exam board also publishes text books and teaching materials to accompany the course? (Some might think that they already make quite enough money from getting teachers to do all their marking and work for them!)

Have a look at the samples available from Pearson and leave a comment telling me what you think of these materials.

As with the biology module, we’ve released our resources and assignments for others to use or adapt.  We’ve tried to link lessons together and put practical work in to our scheme to make it more interesting/motivating for students of all abilities but if  you have any suggestions or ideas for improving it further please take the time to let us know.

This scheme hasn’t been trialled with students yet – it represents a work in progress (more of a skeleton scheme that we hope individual teachers will adapt to personalise the leaning experience of their students).

If you use our scheme and you find any mistakes, please let us know so we can upload corrected versions for all to use.

(You can send me messages and files through the contact me form above)

The popularity could have something to do with being the near the top of the Google search results for BTEC Applied Science resources.

Good news.  I’ve continued working with Wheldon School in Carlton, Nottingham.  Working together with Helen Cawthorne we’ve looked at the changes from September 2010 and written a biology module, complete with assignment briefs and a full set of resources.  As with other resources we have shared them with the hope of raising the bar in science teaching across many schools.  Please treat these resources as a work in progress – they haven’t been tested with students yet! (The module could also be used with current specs with some tinkering).

This is our interpretation of the changes and implications for schools.

Please leave feedback if you find these resources useful – hearing from others is a good motivator both for myself and the other teachers involved.

For free teaching resources use the pull down [Teaching Resources] menu at the top of the page.