Ofqual

Andrea and Claire are going to love this because they know I say all my sayings that when you see a certificate in a salon, just because it's all shiny and sparkly, all that glitters is not gold.

look for that regulated qualification badge, Ofqual, SibTac, whatever, then you know you're okay.

But you know, we work, as you know, with a lot of spa partners now and a lot of the spa directors and spa managers don't even know what that looks like.

And we've actually got quite a few.

Within the Understanding Grading Toolkit on the Teacher Hub, we've got a short guide to reviews of marking, the different types and how to ask for them.

This sort of short practical guidance we really hope teachers can use and start to make use of, which comes straight from us, from Ofqual.

So just to finish off with something that might not obviously be linked to teaching, but is a really important issue for schools and colleges at the moment, which is cybersecurity.

So in the schools that you've taught at, Bobby, how much is this on teachers' radar at the moment?

Understanding how the grade boundaries are determined and focusing on the learning rather than the marks is probably key, right? Absolutely.

So once again, a huge thank you to Bobby for joining us and for giving a great insight into what's on teachers' minds throughout the year when it comes to qualifications.

Whatever else you take from this episode, Ofqual's going to be showing up throughout your year.

Not just in August when results are published, in October with cyber guidance, in November with coursework support, in the spring with exam season resources.

So they can be accessed from the PSHE Association.

There's a shrinkated version of the student guide on the Ofqual website.

And If anybody is interested in doing or delivering test anxiety intervention with a targeted group of students, then I've put together some training intended for people without a background in psychology or cognitive behavioral intervention to be able to quickly equip themselves with the skills they need to deliver it.

If people do the trading kind of fully, it takes about eight hours, but that's not to say that everybody will go through it with the same sort of level of rigor.

Yeah.

But there are people that do claim their courses are VTCT or Ofqual approved and they put that logo and it's not approved.

Oh, do they? Oh, I've

had, again, a client came to us saying they've had their level four and to try and get onto a level five i look at the level four it's not real right and it's got just the vtct

But I also saw music as central, not marginal, to their education, something that would help them understand life, learn to see and listen to the world more deeply.

Of course, music can be learnt and played in many ways, but the recent Ofqual report, which shows A-level music entries falling by four point nine percent, should tell us something uncomfortable about what we value.

The number of young people also taking arts GCSEs in state schools has fallen by just over forty percent since twenty-ten.

It shouldn't surprise us that in an education system increasingly driven by grades, employability, and measurable outcomes, music can look like a luxury.

Yeah, and we spoke here on Woman's Hour just a few weeks ago about functional skills and how it does help, um, people who are struggling with resits.

It's interesting because if we look at the other side of the spectrum, we've got the head of the exams regulator, uh, Sir Ian Bauckham, who's chief executive of Ofqual, saying he believes maths grades are actually rising because of improvements in teaching and reforms which were brought in by Michael Gove, who was often seen as quite a controversial education secretary, certainly by teachers.

Yeah, this really is a tale of two stories.

So i- if you look at the stats for the amount of people that, students that are going into A levels to study maths and further maths, it's really popular.

presented.

We have the data from Ofqual.

which is obviously England only as the English regulator, but more importantly is only the qualifications that count in 16 to 19 performance tables.

Then we have the JCQ data, which also covers Wales and Northern Ireland.