{"id":8013,"date":"2021-12-01T08:33:41","date_gmt":"2021-12-01T08:33:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=8013"},"modified":"2021-12-01T08:33:41","modified_gmt":"2021-12-01T08:33:41","slug":"natural-history-and-the-dfe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2021\/12\/01\/natural-history-and-the-dfe\/","title":{"rendered":"Natural History and the DfE"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The DfE is saying nothing about the chances of the GCSE in <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-admin\/post.php?post=7876&amp;action=edit\">natural history<\/a> getting approval. \u00a0The proposal \u00a0is \"with ministers\" I understand. \u00a0But what advice are they getting from civil servants do you suppose? \u00a0The fact that it wasn't announced at COP26 seems ominous for its prospects. \u00a0<span class=\"\">I know almost everyone thought that <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-admin\/post.php?post=7969&amp;action=edit\">Nick Gibbs\u2019 going<\/a> would unblock all kinds of initiatives, but I wasn\u2019t convinced, seeing \u00fcber conservative civil servants in the DfE's curriculum division as the problem. \u00a0Their arguments are likely to be that the proposed GCSE is a poor fit with how we (ie, DfE) views what schools are for.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>I was, therefore, struck by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetimes.co.uk\/article\/e3f06f9e-4bc0-11ec-a89c-4bee41baeb9c?shareToken=95990173b658d0a6dafb89c22c92a257\">this article<\/a> by Kate Bingham in The Times. \u00a0In it, she writes:<\/p>\n<p>\"Th<em>e machinery of government is dominated by process, rather than outcome, causing delay and inertia. There is an obsessive fear of personal error and criticism, a culture of groupthink and risk aversion that stifles initiative and encourages foot-dragging<\/em>.\"<\/p>\n<p>She might have been writing about the GCSE proposal.<span class=\"\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"\"><span class=\"\">And so we wait. \u00a0Incidentally, the more I listen to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/mary-colwell-1202779\/?originalSubdomain=uk\">Mary Colwell<\/a> talk so eloquently about the benefits of the proposed GCSE, the more it sounds like a sound rationale for a complete revision of secondary science education.<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The DfE is saying nothing about the chances of the GCSE in natural history getting approval. \u00a0The proposal \u00a0is \"with ministers\" I understand. \u00a0But what advice are they getting from civil servants do you suppose? \u00a0The fact that it wasn't...<\/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-8013","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\/8013","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=8013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}