{"id":7804,"date":"2020-11-01T10:34:48","date_gmt":"2020-11-01T10:34:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7804"},"modified":"2020-11-01T10:34:48","modified_gmt":"2020-11-01T10:34:48","slug":"its-the-exam-boards-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2020\/11\/01\/its-the-exam-boards-stupid\/","title":{"rendered":"It's the exam boards, stupid"},"content":{"rendered":"

As slogans go, \"It's the exam boards, stupid\" ranks up there in the imbecility stakes with the AUT's pay-campaign from the 1980s: Rectify the Anomaly<\/em> which unsurprisingly failed to attract the government's attention, or public sympathy. \u00a0But this does seem to be the preferred stance of a number of people I come across when discussing climate change education in schools. \u00a0\"If only!<\/em>\", they say, \"If only we could persuade the examination \u00a0boards to put climate change into exams, then teachers would have to teach about the issues in schools<\/em>.\" \u00a0\"Because, you see<\/em>,\" they go on in that ever-so-patient condescending fashion reserved for explanations to the dim-witted, the elderly and foreigners, \"Teachers all teach to the test<\/em>\".<\/p>\n

Well, they don't. \u00a0Primary teachers certainly don't and the better secondary ones neither. \u00a0But that's not my main objection to this slander and counsel of despair. \u00a0I'm not against exam boards setting questions to do with climate change and ecological problems. \u00a0I just don't see it as the driver of change in secondary school teaching.<\/p>\n

This raises the question that no one seems to want to discuss: examine what, exactly? \u00a0What are the exam boards to ask questions about? \u00a0Are these going to be about factual matters related to the here and now? \u00a0For example, about the increase in atmospheric CO2 since the industrial revolution? \u00a0About how the greenhouse effect works? \u00a0About greenhouse gases and their different potencies? \u00a0 About different climatic zones? \u00a0About the differences between weather and climate? \u00a0About what the Paris Agreement says? \u00a0And so on and on.<\/p>\n

These are easy questions to pose, and exam boards (in England anyway) already examine some of these in geography and the sciences [*]. \u00a0It would also be possible, but much trickier in a pen and paper test, to examine likely issues such as how the IPCC's scenarios will play out as the economy adjusts to the demands of net-zero by 2050, but these stray into politics and values which is why you can see that examining facts is so attractive. \u00a0But knowledge of facts is not the prime determinants of action.<\/p>\n

And anyway, none of this is what young people want schools to be dealing with. \u00a0They want likely futures to be discussed, and the roles that people will have in determining these. \u00a0Good luck examining that at 16 in anything but a superficial manner.<\/p>\n

......................................................................<\/p>\n

[*<\/strong>] The King's research report in 2019 about the state of environmental education in secondary schools in England was not all that impressed by what exam boards got up to. \u00a0The details are here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As slogans go, \"It's the exam boards, stupid\" ranks up there in the imbecility stakes with the AUT's pay-campaign from the 1980s: Rectify the Anomaly which unsurprisingly failed to attract the government's attention, or public sympathy. \u00a0But this does seem...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7804\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}