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Date: Mon, 04 Jul 2005 23:10:31 +0100 From: "Angela Drew" <[log in to unmask]> To: "Kim Chandley" <[log in to unmask]>, "Nicola Morrow" <[log in to unmask]> Cc: "Gabbie Allnutt" <[log in to unmask]>, "Stephen Borthwick" <[log in to unmask]>, "Roger Gill" <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: Critical Thinking Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Dear Kim and Nicky, Thanks for this. You have both queried why decisions about the course are, apparently, being taken late. I should explain that the OCR has only provided the radically revised new AS syllabus in the course of this year; the textbooks that Gabbie has devised the course from were only published at the end of May and the INSET courses for the staff teaching this new syllabus were only available in June. We do not have a choice about teaching Critical Thinking because it is unlikely that pupils will be able to study at Cambridge or get into competitive courses in History, Law and Medicine in future without it. Gabbie has done an exceptional - and indeed heroic - job in constructing a course using a textbook that she has only just acquired and feedback from the courses that colleagues have been attending in the past two weeks. Her request has not fallen at a time when there is a HODs' Meeting but it came in response to advice that MCC had received at a course at the end of June. He, like the other CT teachers, is willing to take on the daunting task of teaching this new subject for the benefit of the pupils - and he is prepared to spend a considerable amount of time over the holiday preparing his lessons - but he has requested support in terms of interim feedback from the exam board from a January Module. The other CT teachers also identify this as a training need. It is very unusual for the College to ask teachers to teach a subject at AS level which is so far outside their training and experience - and whilst I feel that it is highly debatable whether pupils will feel a great sense of pressure taking a skills paper (for which they cannot revise and for which there is only one practice paper) three days after their Christmas holiday, I know with absolute certainty that it will be a tremendous pressure on the Critical Thinking Staff to leave the decision unmade until the next convenient HODs' Meeting. Hence, my request to HODs for views. I will therefore have to take a decision at the end of this term for CT for Jan 2006 on the balance of the arguments and put AS January modules for all subjects for Jan 2007 on the agenda for the next HoDs' meeting. Regards Angela