Several messages asking for exam marking recommendations. I’ve never outsourced but I know many who have used @ChapterEdu and they come highly recommended. A few things to note when outsourcing marking:
💫 ensure to carry out due diligence to ensure… ⬇️
The company are legitimate and able to trade as such.
💫 Exercise caution around any explicit mention of exam board specialisms. Examiners are breaking terms of appointment if they use their role in a commercial capacity:
💫 Ask questions around the company’s rigour to ensure their data is reliable. If public funds are going to be put to outsourcing marking, it’s crucial that it’s going to result in data that will be at least more reliable than any possible teacher bias that may have occurred..
In-house.
💫 where recommendations have been made, finance departments will ask the question establishing credibility. Ensure that the company is transparent and recommendations are from schools as opposed to individuals, in the same way you would approach references.
💫Finally, consider the opportunity cost. Marking as a collective task within depts is one of the most effective ways to get to grips with the mark scheme. Have conversations locally and make use of dept time if you can because it’s excellent CPD.
🧵 Lots of talk around workbook design as a way not just to create a shared language at departmental level, but also minimise workload so teachers can focus on the important stuff: tailoring their lessons for their students.
A few materials to help ⬇️
Spending some time in departments discussing how to create a format that supports your subject and builds familiarity and knowledge over time.
🧵 I’ve been thinking about collaborative curriculum development and why it’s so important..
💭 the *perfect* English curriculum doesn’t exist, because it needs to attend to context- context of who it will serve, but also who enacts it.
💭 this is why diversity of thought, underpinned by solid frameworks for difficult conversations make for *amazing* subject level debate in departments.
💭 It also means that the *what* is synonymous to the *how* of curriculum. Understanding curriculum as several micro- level implementation processes is a helpful way to begin to consider navigating the process of change.
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I’ve spent the last few months increasingly interested in how we communicate in schools: to develop professional relationships, instigate change, make judgements or decisions, or aid improvement over time. As a great deal of our work in schools is intangible, the discourse..
We choose to engage in is in some part the vehicle through which we identify and drive change. As Annie Dillard states, ‘how we spend our time is how we live our lives,’ as in #StopTalkingAboutWellbeing, I highlighted what a difference conversations can make to..
Having a sense of purpose at work. It’s the reason I am not a fan of an email: