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Showing posts from November, 2014

Changing Patterns in RE GCSE across Northern Ireland

Those who have been teaching for any length of time will know that curriculum reform is a regular feature of the educational world and it will be of little surprise for most RE teachers in Northern Ireland to learn that the content and assessment arrangements for GCSE and A level are currently under review, with new qualifications expected to be in place for 2016.  But as well as top-down reform, teachers in RE have a reasonable degree of flexibility to make adjustments in their provision of the subject from year to year. Indeed, from talking to RE teachers in different schools across Northern Ireland in recent years, I have had a sense that quite a few departments have been altering their provision for Key Stage 4 pupils - some changing exam boards and others changing their module choices - and so I was interested to investigate further in order to discover the extent of the changes over the last four years. Figures published by the  Joint Council for Qualifications  (JCQ) give the