Three audience members (some physical others virtual) share their thoughts and questions arising from #CoeCam Professor Rob Coe's sold out lecture on the validity of England's accountability data, hosted by Cambridge Assessment.
A political view
Education policy and politics writer, John David Blake,followed #CoeCam on Twitter and YouTube and talks here about what he learnt about the role of government and social media in accountability.
"It seems very much in keeping with an age in which social media has reconfigured the ways teachers talk to each other that I am writing a blog post about an event I engaged with the first time via Twitter and second time via YouTube. That event was Rob Coe’s recent lecture to Cambridge Assessment about the validity of England’s accountability systems in education. And social media had its own part to play here, as Coe made clear that it was via such media, given a platform at the very first ResearchED conference, that his conclusions on the unacceptably imprecise quality of lesson observation data reached out across education and changed the way Ofsted went about inspecting schools."
Read John's full blog
A view from the NAHT
A #CoeCam audience member from the National Association of Head Teachers describes how taking the politics out of education could improve accountability.
“Start by thinking about what matters, then think about how that can be captured.” These were the words that stood out most strongly in an absorbing couple of hours in the company of assessment guru Professor Rob Coe. It’s a message that echoes the views of many school leaders up and down the country. Many school leaders view assessment with suspicion. Not because they fear scrutiny but because, like Professor Coe, they would say that the mandarins who tell them what to assess have the wrong view about what matters. It’s one thing to be held accountable, it’s quite another to be held accountable by data that also doesn’t help you to do your job any better.
Read the full NAHT blog
A teacher's view
Secondary school maths teacher, Robert Smith, shares his thoughts and further questions arising after #CoeCam - hosted by Cambridge Assessment with Professor Robert Coe speaking about accountability.
It was a typical Thursday evening in October when I travelled to Downing College, Cambridge with a colleague from another South Leicestershire school. The seminar suggested that it would probe deeply into the form of accountability which has built up in England. I was particularly interested to see how it would be 'critical' of Ofsted’s role and framework, and also how it would explore issues of validity and dependability in 'data on the system'. The talk started with Tim Oates introducing Professor Coe for a discussion of how schools can compare themselves to others. If you haven’t seen the TEd Talk on Big Data here is the link: Kenneth Cukier - Big data is better than data There are more and more bits of data collected by more agencies, they are all hungry for data and for ways to use it. The problem I see is that the education system is part of a complex social situation, there is lots of data on all aspects of it but how can we measure “it” – whatever “IT” happens to be at any given moment.
Read Robert's full blog
Now share your thoughts using the commenting function below, or tell us what you think on Twitter using #CoeCam. You can watch Professor Coe's lecture, in full, at the top of the page.