#705: Timeline

From the Cambridge OCR Hub.

Still quite a few unknowns...

#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.

#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...

#33: In the Media

The OCR Hub has a slowly growing list of articles.

These are presumably going to be added to as the time gets closer to the appearance of some draft specifications, so keep an eye on the website. 

I'm hopeful there might be some more activity soon. 

The hub seems to have been dormant for quite a while. This does really all need to become much more active as the year progresses, as we need to start seeing some documents before too long if they are to be consulted on and developed by teachers and publishers.

At the time of posting, there hasn't been too much activity here, but I would imagine that this area will grow as we get closer to the stage when the draft specifications emerge.

#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.