#595: Greening the Curriculum

"It's not good enough that sustainability is restricted to a few subjects and that most of our teachers and lecturers don’t know enough about it. Our education system must teach the truth and prepare us for the future, because we are the future."

Teach the Future – A youth led campaign sponsored by the NUS

Produced by OCR as part of the preparations for the development of the new qualification.

Greening the Curriculum.

#566: A new OCR Blog on Nature Education in School

This is an excellent blog by Kim Polgreen and Joe Boyle of the University of Oxford. 

It was written for the OCR Blog and relates to the continuing preparations for the GCSE Natural History.

There's a focus on what Secondary schools can do in their own grounds and at low cost to offer potential for students to develop their thinking around natural history and its value.

They say:

From what we see in our own community in Oxfordshire, the fact that the GCSE has been mooted and now been confirmed has changed the conversation. Natural History is now a legitimate subject for teenagers to study at school.

And while we wait and prepare for the GCSE, there is a growing recognition of a more urgent set of “business drivers” for secondary schools to engage with nature and promote nature education. Student stress and mental health problems, student absence, teacher retention, inequality of attainment, parent stress, and even excess building heat and outdoor heat in the summer – these are all becoming overwhelming challenges for school leaders that can be helped by nature.

The blog refers to some research they have done on the way that young people relate to nature. The research is linked to here.

It finishes with 7 principles for working with young people...

These aim to help teachers and schools take advantage of cited opportunities: for wellbeing, skills development, brain development, alternative settings for learning and community building.

These are excellent and the emboldened bits are the the bits I like the most. I think some resources which relate to these would be very useful going forward.

We await the first draft specification for further consultation.

1. Experience nature first-hand. Hands-on is much much better than pictures. Contact with soil and plants supports gut health. Different outdoor spaces support different students.
2. Address key school issues. Thoughtfully-designed nature engagement activities can be used to build confidence, resilience, community, attendance and attainment, with benefits resonating through the school community.
3. Work close to school. Nature is everywhere. Lack of funds for a big trip doesn’t preclude getting out into nature locally or in school grounds. There are lichens on the school walls, a huge variety of species on playing fields and verges, and birds everywhere. A pile of dead wood or a small pond creates a mini ecosystem. Visiting areas near school, within the students’ own environment, cultivates place-based connection.
4. Diversify views of nature. nature can be studied through science and geography, but also through art, literature, history, drama, religion, philosophy, economics and maths. Examining the varied interrelationships between humans and nature through human history offers many entry points.
5. Embrace co-learning. Teachers don’t need to be experts, they can become learning coaches, discovering with and from their students, using the many tools available. Nature is such an immense topic that we’re all learning all the time.
6. Mediate with care. nature engagement is best when it’s led thoughtfully: managing expectations, involving students in risk assessments, accepting variable behaviour and remaining calm and confident will build students’ confidence and enjoyment, and support their ability to learn.
7. Work together and celebrate difference. People approach nature in different ways. Some are quiet observers, others are active workers. Nature spaces can help collaboration, allow individuals to thrive, and develop mutual appreciation and respect.

Read more here.

And check out the wider work of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery.

#500: Still waiting...

When I started this blog back in January 2023 it looked like we might have a draft specification for the GCSE Natural History fairly quickly... we had had the original draft consultation and OCR were taking up the task of developing some resources and other support materials.

Image: Alan Parkinson, shared on Flickr under CC license

A new specification would need all the related documents, including sample assessment materials (SAMS), materials and training for teachers who might be considering teaching the course, a textbook perhaps and support for schools who might decide to go with a new and unknown course, compared with a subject like Geography which was well known and had all the support materials in place already (presumably). 

With the fieldwork that is going to be involved in the new qualification, this was going to need some additional thinking and this may also be one factor influencing schools given the cost of some fieldwork.

The National Education Nature Park has done a lot of work in this area promoting local and school-based work.

Still waiting then... and hoping that the next OCR Consultative Forum meeting may offer some news...  although unfortunately it's been scheduled for a day I can't make.

#463: Wildling App - launches today

The OCR blog has a post from Ant Rawlins.

He talks about the new Wildling app which launches today.

Wildling officially launches nationwide on 9 July, backed by some of the UK’s leading conservation organisations and individuals, including the RSPB, the Marine Conservation Society, Forestry England, and advisors such as Deborah Meaden, Ben Goldsmith, and Sir Tim Smit.

It’s a free app designed to make finding and enjoying nature simpler for everyone. Whether you’re in a city, suburb, or rural area, Wildling helps users discover local nature, explore ideas for getting outdoors, and find calming, inspiring content that can develop confidence and connection with the natural world.

It’s suitable for families, first-timers, educators, and anyone looking to reconnect with nature, and feel better for doing so.

You can download the Wildling app for free from our website.

Wildling has been designed to make it easier for people to engage with the natural world, and that has clear value across many areas of education.

By helping students explore nature where they live, the app can support learning across a wide range of subjects. It’s not about replacing lessons, but enhancing them with real-world experience.

This joins apps such as Melissa Harrison's Encounter app in providing people with a chance to identify and record their encounters with nature, which will be useful for geography as well as for the GCSE Natural History when and if it finally gains approval to be added as a new qualification option.

Thanks to Kerry Sage for the tipoff to the blog post and app.

#373: OCR - Clarke Curriculum Review - ahead of the Francis Review

A cross posting from my 'At the Home of Geography' blog. This follows my work as Vice President: Education of the RGS.

We are preparing to submit evidence and support the consultation for the new curriculum review to discuss what we hope to see in a future curriculum with respect to the geography entitlement and the nature of what is studied. This will involve us discussing and consulting with the many stakeholders the RGS has.

There will also be some who want to ensure that there is space for the GCSE Natural History in the curriculum mix of course.

This report, chaired by Charles Clarke, and created by OCR takes a look at the curriculum and assessment ahead of the forthcoming Francis review. 

I had a look at the document as part of my work preparing for the RGS's support for teachers and gathering their views.

A review of the 11-16 Curriculum and Assessment, chaired by former Education Secretary Charles Clarke.

Report is here. (PDF download)

Written by Paul Steer, Head of Policy at OCR.

I've been fortunate to work on a few things linked with OCR's work over the years, and serve on their Consultative Forums for both Geography and Natural History.

This is one of several documents currently being explored as part of the work we are doing at the RGS on the Education Committee. It was produced after extensive involvement of stakeholders and 2000 young people.

Main findings (from OCR website):

The report’s recommendations include calls to:

• Reduce the number of assessments used at GCSE, spread them out across the two years of key stage 4, and review the appropriate use of non-exam assessments
• Reduce the content of the GCSE curriculum, allowing more time for the study of broader skills and competences
• Introduce a benchmarking qualification, taken on screen, in maths and English to highlight gaps in students’ knowledge and provide structure to Key Stage 3
• Redesign the English Language GCSE as a matter of urgency, and include a broader definition of English skills including media and spoken language

The report arrives as the current Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has commissioned a government review into curriculum and assessment, chaired by Professor Becky Francis. 

OCR is sharing the report and key findings with Bridget Phillipson and Becky Francis.

The report has generated a great deal of positive reaction. Geoff Barton, Chair of the Independent Commission of Oracy in England, said: “This report provides an important, evidence-based agenda for the new government’s curriculum and assessment review, and provides a welcome opportunity to keep what’s good in our education system but improve what’s not good enough.”

#363: Schools Week 'confirmation' of 2026 delay

Given that the next stage of consultation on the curriculum and other statutory steps have not yet been taken and it's September 2024, first teaching from 2025 was not going to happen, but the date has apparently been changed on OCR's timeline, according to this Schools Week post.

#300: Talking Natural History

The 300th post on this blog has an update on the progress on the specification.

Earlier this week I spent an interesting day in Cambridge discussing the GCSE Natural History as a member of OCR's Consultative Forum. This is a group of people who share an interest in the new specification and the subject itself, and are drawn from a whole range of backgrounds. We were given a little window on what has happening to prepare the new subject for first teaching...

There were some familiar faces as well as some new friends to meet. We had some good conversations on our table.

We had an update on the context within which the new specification will be appearing - this was similar to the OCR Geography Forum meeting that I'd attended the month before. 

Time is tight to complete all the required steps for accreditation in time to start teaching the specification in 2025, and it may slip into 2026 - the timeline is very compressed from now on.

We couldn't be told too much about the specification as the content was embargoed ahead of a consultation which will hopefully take place this month.... or be opened this month. 

We saw a few likely sections presented as broad headings, which suggest a slight change in emphasis from the original conception of the course, and were also asked to choose which of the potential example habitats which students might be shown that we liked. I can't share any of this at the moment.

When the consultation does finally appear, we will of course be all over it here. We will be recommending to people with any sort of interest in teaching the course that they respond if they want to have any influence on what is (and isn't) included. More on that as it comes...

We were given a flavour of what might be involved, and also discussed some options for an assessment model. This will be crucial to uptake as the subject will need to find its way into crowded option blocks, and the timing for inclusion in these, and allowing for teaching time is tight. I referred to my previous experience with the OCR Pilot GCSE Geography, and the use of different types of assessment as well, including the possibility of a Pre-release booklet.

Image: A La Ronde, Devon - Alan Parkinson - shared under CC license

#266: Natural History GCSE and Climate Literacy

A new post on the OCR website from Professor Sylvia Knight.

She talks about the connections between the proposed specification and climate literacy.

"Whilst the Natural History GCSE is not and should not be a ‘climate change GCSE’ (in my opinion, the Statistics GCSE is actually best placed to be delivered entirely within a context of climate change), the inherent and intrinsic links between climate change and the natural world, in terms of impacts, adaptation and mitigation, are too numerous for climate change not to be near the core of the new qualification.

The Royal Meteorological Society (RMetS) is the UK’s Professional and Learned Society for weather and climate. We believe that every student should leave school with the basic climate literacy that would enable them to engage with the messages put forward by the media or politicians or to make informed decisions about their own opportunities and responsibilities when it comes to climate change mitigation and adaptation, and also to equip them with the knowledge and skills required for the green jobs of the future."

Worth reading...

#200: OCR Consultative Forum #1

I've had some chance to digest and read through my notes from my attendance at the first GCSE Natural History Consultative Forum. 

I have previously been a member of the OCR Consultative Forum for Geography for some years and always find the meetings valuable.

The first meeting started with introductions to people with a wide range of experience and expertise, broadly in the area of Natural History. Some of them have been involved in various stages of developing the various documents that will ultimately become the subject criteria / draft specification that teachers will work with, along with various publishers.

There were a number of discussions that followed some presentations earlier. One of them was on the National Education Nature Park which I've signed our school up to.

It ended with a few discussions, where the ideas of the forum were gathered on a number of key questions.

Here's one for you to think about.

What support would you need, and what do you think will help overcome some of the natural uncertainty about starting to teach a new specification?

This is the 200th post on this blog. 

I started it as part of my preparation for potentially teaching the new subject when it appears. There are another two hundred posts in draft, and as the 2024 develops it would be good to think that we might see the subject criteria released so that the awarding bodies and publishers can start working on resources. I have a Google Drive folder full of resources, ideas, reports, images and field guides.

I'm going to explore a few habitats during the Christmas break and aim to put together a guide to how they could be used as a focus for student exploration.

As a final aside, it was good to see the progress made on the GCSE in British Sign Language (BSL). This was first announced in 2019, and the pandemic has been blamed for the delay.

The BSL Subject Content was released a few days ago - we need the Natural History GCSE to reach this point next.

The size of the document and nature of the contents may give some indication as to what will emerge, although the nature of the subject is a lot more 'political' and contested and defining elements will be less simple.

#76: Natural History Podcasts #3 - Jill Duffy

I came across this podcast while searching for some other OCR related materials.

It features the CEO of Cambridge Assessment: Jill Duffy, who I met at the most recent OCR Consultative Forum for Geography (I've been attending these for many years now, initially as an employee of the Geographical Association, and then as an independent consultant and now as a teacher who uses the Hodder textbooks that I helped to write).

She is talking about the proposed specification and answering questions from young people about it.

#59: OCR Graphic

While checking for relevant Tweets (I do a monthly search to see what people may have been saying about the new qualification) I came across this OCR image that I hadn't seen before. It's a useful image to use perhaps in future.

The choice of images here may also be interesting as it may show the short of direction that OCR is looking at... what they consider to be Natural History-related images...

#22: OCR Survey - what are your thoughts?

On the GA Facebook page earlier today. A request for some thoughts. Please give your views as it will help shape the final specification and the support.

As it says on the survey's start page:
We have been working hard to prepare for the launch of our new GCSE in Natural History.

We would like to ask you some questions about the support that you would like to see in place ahead of teaching GCSE Natural History. We will be showing you a number of different resources designed to support teachers in delivering this qualification at different stages. We would like you to think about how useful each of these resources is in supporting the delivery of this qualification.

This survey will take you around 10 minutes of your time and you feedback is really appreciated. Your feedback will help to provide the right support package for teachers.

Go to the Survey directly here.

If you choose to complete the survey you will also get some clues as to some of the proposed support package and the thinking around who will teach this.

The support package questionnaire makes several mentions of different support for geography teachers and biology teachers suggesting that they think this may be a qualification taught jointly between those two departments.

#2: OCR"s Natural History Hub

At the time of starting the planning and draft posts for this blog, the awarding body OCR set up a hub to share the work that is being done so far on the qualification and the development journey of the progress towards the official approval. 

I presume that updates will appear here first, so I have followed the various accounts and also set up Google Alerts for various terms.

A Cambridge Assessment seminar provided the following detail on the new GCSE:

Environmentalist and campaigner Mary Colwell began working to address a gap in education content in relation to nature and our environment nearly 10 years ago. In 2019 she began exploring how to make this vision a reality and gathered the support of MPs, environmental organisations and over 10,000 signatures on a UK Parliament Petition for the development of the secondary school curriculum. 

With the support of Tim Oates CBE, Director of Assessment Research and Development, Mary has worked closely with OCR and Cambridge Assessment, the Natural History Museum, The Wildlife Trusts and others to explore the purpose, design and delivery of a GCSE in Natural History. In 2020 a proposal was submitted to the Department for Education (DfE) for the development of this new qualification. 

At this Cambridge Assessment Network seminar, Mary addresses her reasons for embarking on this campaign, including the lack of understanding of nature and its impact, the challenges we face in the future and the important role education can play in overcoming them. 

She is joined by Tim Oates to discuss the process of developing a proposal around this new qualification and the steps involved in helping to shape early thinking about what a Natural History GCSE might look like.

There was a consultation which had the following results:

Keep an eye on this over the year(s) to come as this will be an important element of the development work that is under way.

#1: Welcome to the new GCSE Natural History blog

Welcome to this new blog to provide some support for those teachers who are thinking about preparing to teach the new GCSE qualification in Natural History which was announced and confirmed at an event in the Natural History Museum's Hintze Hall on Thursday April the 21st 2022.

The GCSE in Natural History was the idea of Mary Colwell as far back as 2011, who was able to draw in a range of supporters including Caroline Lucas of the Green Party, and secure the interest of awarding body OCR and Cambridge Assessments who wanted to develop and offer the new specification should it be given the necessary approval.

Mary shared her original idea with Tony Juniper (previously of Friends of the Earth, but working with Natural England at the time) who wrote a piece for 'The Guardian' newspaper in June 2011.

Unlike biology, this would not be a largely theoretical subject disconnected from the real world, but more practical, including basic identification skills in, for example, butterflies, trees and fish. 

The basics of how to recognise different bird songs, soil types and fossils could be offered. So could learning about the work of the great naturalists, Alfred Russell Wallace, Charles Darwin and Gilbert White, and not only how they found wisdom from observation in nature, but also how they were moved by the natural world they investigated.

Learning about the work and motivations of pioneering conservationists such as Charles Rothschild could also be included. Taking notes and making sketches of wild plants, insects and birds outside would not only boost knowledge but add new dimensions to learning.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2011/jun/09/natural-history-gcse-greener-future 

A survey from the Co-Op in September 2011 backed up the desire of young people to learn more about nature.

At the time of the original article, Tim Oates had suggested that climate change should not be part of the curriculum, despite being a strong supporter of the new GCSE which has also now been dubbed as a 'climate change GCSE'.

I heard Mary speak about her plans for the new specification at an event at the Linnean Society to mark the FSCs 75th Anniversary just ahead of the start of the pandemic. 

I talked to Mary about the potential implications for geography teachers in those schools where there was pressure on curriculum subjects or blocks which were occupied by geography. There were also concerns about whether this would be offered in schools. Imagine schools moving from a subject with a track record of exam success to an 'unknown' subject, for example.

Who would teach this specification, and how would they be trained, and who would provide the resources? Who would decide on the 'powerful disciplinary knowledge' for this 'new' subject.

In April 2022, Anthony Bennett and I opened a Facebook group for those who were interested in potentially teaching the new specification and within a few weeks it had grown to almost seven hundred members. It now has over seven hundred members.

As someone who has a huge library of books which are connected with natural history, nature, art, poetry, music and other cultural connections, I'm looking forward to seeing how they can be drawn into the creation of resources, but also to encourage young people to read more widely. I can see the development of an anthology of reading with extracts from a range of books being particularly useful perhaps, along with support for fieldwork and more technical support materials. This would sit alongside any official textbook - it will be interesting to see how a unique 'voice' for the subject is developed.

We shall see how this community develops over the years ahead as the ideas of Mary Colwell take shape in the hands of those whom OCR draws in to help develop their specification, support materials, training and sample assessment materials.

I hope that as we move through 2023 we will start to see the next steps in the process: draft specifications and other resources perhaps. After almost a year in the hands of an awarding body, I hope there has been a lot of discussion and consultation with appropriate experts. I would imagine there is also work underway to write the approved textbook for those teaching the new resource.

This blog will form part of an unofficial set of resources for teachers, which will be fleshed out over the next two and a half years.

Posts will be tagged so that when people are ready to start planning, this blog can be a source of secondary information and hopefully provide inspiration for planning.

Always happy to be consulted and be part of the process as well.

Image: Natural History Museum - Hintze Hall - Alan Parkinson, shared under CC license