Setting the Gold Standard

This year the debate about the GCSE results has extended beyond the day of the results. Usually the morning of celebrations is followed by the afternoon debate as to whether real standards have dropped. The debate then ends and it is business as usual. However the events of last week open up a debate about functional literacy that reaches far beyond the impact on individual schools.


This is not to minimise the impact on individual schools and their students. I have personally witnessed this however the significance of the events this week goes well beyond schools.

In the world of adult learning the focus for many years has been on the number of adults who are not functionally literate and numerate and this has been extended into whether we have the skilled workforce required for the 21st century. There are numerous reports that have addressed these issues.

All these reports assume that there is a standard that could be used to measure functionally literacy and numeracy and a minimum skill level. In respect of skills in Adult Learning world the standard that has been adopted is NVQ Level 2 and it is assumed that you have achieved the standard required to become a skilled worker, albeit with further training, if you have an NVQ Level 2 or you have 5 GCSEs A*-C. If you have not reached this standard then there is lots of funding available you to do so, once you have reached this standard then that funding tends to disappear.

Now I have long argued that adopting this approach is like comparing apples and pears. It is just about a reasonable argument that to demonstrate skills at NVQ Level 2 you do need a significant amount of knowledge, but it is not the ‘type of knowledge’ that is measured by a GCSE.

What however this current debate about the English GCSE exposes is that it is no longer possible to use the ‘exam system’ to determine whether someone has reached the level, which determines whether they are functionally literate. If the decision was made to increase the marked required to achieve a level C by 10 points, as appears to be the case, then that decision appears to be based on maintaining the ‘rigour’ of the exam system rather than on providing a gold standard for literacy.

We wait to see what Ofqual decides to do over the coming week. It will be interesting to see whether they factor into that decision these wider implications.

If they do not then when the next person gets up to say that x millions of adults in this country are functionally illiterate and lack ‘basic skills’, then someone should ask what do they actually mean and how do they know.

Is the e-portfolio movement running out of steam?

It was announced recently that the national e-portfolio in Australia had been cancelled and replaced by a ‘connecting and sharing’ forum. Is this a sign that ePortfolios in Australia is losing momentum?


I attended the national event in Australia a couple of years ago and came away from it with a suspicion that the e-portfolio movement in Australia is being ‘bogged down, with the same issues that affect the discussions about e-portfolios in Europe. There was still too much talk about what is an e-portfolio rather than what they can actually do. The discussion was also dominated by academics without any real attempt to engage the commercial sector.

The announcement about the new Forum in Sydney in September is also accompanied about details of two events. The first event examines ‘ePortfolios as Personal Learning Spaces’. There should be a question mark at the end because there is little evidence that anyone wants to use e-Portfolios as a personal learning space primarily because, in my view; they don’t see the point. This sort of solution has been offered across many Higher Education institutions in the UK but there is little evidence of widespread use.

The second event is about the ‘Using eportfolios for online & Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) assessment’ I am unsure what will be presented but they perhaps should have a look at the Recognise project recogniseme.ncl-coll.ac.uk/ which is already using an e-portfolio for RPL and it works.

I would suggest that the key questions that this forum in September needs to address, based on the lessons learnt from the wider e-portfolio community are;

• Why is the role of e-portfolio in relation to digital identity even being considered when there are far better and more ubiquitous applications that do this like Facebook etc?

• Is the e-portfolio community really being responsible in supporting ‘Do-it-yourself’ e-portfolio solutions when there are already e-portfolios solutions developed that work? I understand that there are clever people who can build a car from a kit but is that a sustainable model for the future production of cars!

The forum also needs to think about what is the point of re-inventing the wheel continually when there are already solutions that are developed that could effectively work in Australia. I am mindful there is a concern that many of these are developed by ‘commercial companies’ and therefore a dependency on these companies could develop. However by opting for internally developed solutions, all that is happening is that dependency on a company is being swopped with a dependency on a group of individuals in an IT department.

Why the development of e-portfolio needs to continue to be pursued is that is tantamount to the ‘bleeding obvious,’ that technology should be able to bring real benefits to assessment and specifically the assessment of vocational skills. The current paper based systems are indefensible in how they divert people from real teaching and learning to bureaucratic activities; their cost and their impact on the environment. However the e-portfolio community should start taking a more responsible approach to moving this whole debate forward or else it will run out of steam.

What to make of the 'new' Ofsted

The education press is awash with stories about the new Ofsted regime. These include claims, that for FE College, 61% of inspections have received a lower grade than the one previously awarded and stories that some institutions are taking legal action, with respect to the actions of the inspection team.



I can only speak from my experience and I have recently been in contact with two of the centres who use our e-portfolio, one fully and the other partially, who have both been awarded outstanding grades in virtually all aspects of their provision. This means that two of the three training providers in the South West, awarded outstanding grades, both use our e-portfolio.


It would be easy to say, especially in this blog, that it is the e-portfolio that makes the difference but that would seriously distort the truth. What would be true is their use of the e-portfolio, demonstrates their openness to embrace innovation particularly through the application of technology.


However what really makes the difference is the quality and commitment that runs throughout both organisation and their level of ambition. One of them Didac took the bold step of purchasing their own training centre two years ago and investing in high quality equipment, for a relatively small skill area. At the heart of Didac though is not a building but a leadership team that really cares for their staff and students. As one of their team said recently it is rare to have a boss, who when he has not seen you for a few days, texts you and wishes you well for the weekend.


The other organisation is Reflections Training academy that rather than resting on their laurels following a good Ofsted, pushed ahead with embracing technology; improving their facilities and driving up achievement rates.


In terms of the Ofsted process both organisations speak of very rigorous and intense experiences with lots of contact with students and observations of delivery. You get the sense that the inspectors really got to know the organisation which I imagine is virtually impossible with a large college. The best the inspectors there can do there is to hope that their examination of the performance figures, highlight an issue that they can follow and that this leads them to practice, that is indicative of the organisation. It is a tall order.


I am in no position to comment on the validity of the inspections that are being contested, other than to say that in the ongoing debate about Ofsted we do not lose sight of the organisations that fully deserve their grades good and bad.

Qualifications Free(d) for All

There has always appeared to be a hidden ‘scandal’ about the way that qualifications are developed and then marketed in the UK. Registration and examination fees have grown incrementally each year, to the point where some High schools are spending the same amount on exam entries than they do on the salaries of five teaching staff.



This would be just about legitimate if the money from the fees, was ploughed back into the education system, however the truth is that there are cases where the money has disappeared directly into the pockets of individuals.


There was a point where this looked like it was all getting sorted out. The previous government had introduced the Qualification Credit Framework. Underpinning this approach was the notion that units of learning were to be shared and therefore the ability of awarding bodies to ‘own’ and market qualifications was starting to be eroded. However one of the first actions was to remove the quango responsible for the implementing the QCF and declare that the business of developing and designing qualifications should again directly be the responsibility of awarding bodies.


So cue for big celebrations amongst all the large awarding bodies because they can again sit back and watch their profits again start to steeply rise. However there are dangers to the market economy and there is news that there are new players starting to enter it, who are beginning to challenge some of the ‘big players’. Losing the ability to award qualifications for a small sector like for example furniture skills, may not fundamentally shake their foundations but like a small hole in the dam it has the potential to have a significant impact, not least in demonstrating that all Goliaths have their David.

Hunt for the missing JISC funded e-portfolio initiative.

Ever heard of LIPID; PortisHEead; ePISTLE; FILE-PASS; ELP; Flouish; Reflect 2.0; PDP4XL2; PC3; SRC; Co-genT; EPPSME; SAMSON; TELSTAR; FASTTECH; MABLE; and PIOP Phase 2 and 3?


Perhaps more importantly do you know where any of them that are currently been used and have had a significant impact on the use of e-portfolios to support the delivery of HE and FE programmes? By significant impact I mean being used across an institution or even a whole faculty or department?

The common feature of all these projects is that according to JISC, all these projects use Pebble pad as their e-portfolio and the subject of investigation or development. In some cases the investigation is wide ranging such as examining the use of e-portfolios by SMEs. In other cases the focus is very narrow e.g. LIPID is about exploring how to take data from the student management system used by Wolverhampton University and make it available via a web service to the Pebble Pad e-portfolio system.

Just for information Pebble Pad was developed by Wolverhampton University but became owned and marketed by a commercial company called Pebble Learning.

I am sure the majority of the money that JISC awarded all these projects went directly to the HE and FE institutions involved and not to a commercial company and I am sure all the money was used and accounted for properly, however it seems right for JISC consider, as is the case with all educational institutions whether they pass the value for money test?

I welcome the fact that all this money has been invested in e-portfolios but to return to the theme of the last blog ‘So What?’ The real question for JISC, amongst others to answer, is have the projects they have been funding been seeking to answer the right questions?

The E-Assessment or the So What question?

This week sees the 10th anniversary of the international ePortfolio & Identity Conference and welcome and the second ePortfolio World Summit. It should be a time for celebration however if you read reports like the one below on the LEAP 2A specification for e-portfolio data exchange http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/elearning/Leap2AReviewReport_Final_1.3.p then you would have to conclude that the e-portfolio movement is in real danger of losing its way if it has not done so already. The report is littered with examples of interesting initiatives but the authors find it difficult to come to any conclusions because of the lack of users.



It is worth asking why this is the case when intuitively the development of e-portfolios is an idea that makes such apparent sense. There are potentially huge savings in people’s time and in resources however that is if you consider that the primary purpose of e-portfolios is to support assessment.


The reality will be that at this 10th conference there will be little attention given to this subject and instead there will be the normal focus on e-portfolios and their role, as providing people with their digital identity and then the inter-operability and ownership questions that flow from this.


I have always been baffled by why interoperability is such a big issue for the e-portfolio community. It does not appear to be such an issue for the Apple and Microsofts of this world, who particularly in the case of Apple delight in ‘forcing’ software developers to create applications that work on their devices only.


Is interoperability really such a fundamental issue when individuals are happy to put their content in different places, provided that it can be easily exported to other places and where appropriate links can be made to enable their data, so that it flows between different systems using API links.


With respect of ownership, is it so critically important that the owner is always in total control of their data, particularly when it is being used as part of an assessment. Surely one of the big benefits that e-portfolios bring to assessment is the way that they make the whole process more transparent, to those that have the rights to view evidence because of their role in the assessment process.


So it is not surprising that if all e-portfolios are about is creating digital identities, then users are saying So What and not using them. From our perspective if you do create e-portfolios that have a real purpose, often in the context of assessment and where that e-portfolio is supported by an admin tool that enables you to control who does what and when, then they are used.

Can an e-portfolio really help?

I have been Chair of Governors at a large High School for the past five years. One of the initiatives we have introduced is for Governors to have direct access with departments in the school. This week I had the priviledge of listening to an revealing discussion between two of the more experienced teachers in one department. They have been responsible for helping develop study and thinking skills across the school. Their reflection was that having done this for a couple of years, they prehaps had disadvantaged their students because whilst they had really become engaged in learning, they may have unwittingly walked out the classroom without the information they needed for their exam.

There were real echoes here with the e-portfolio debate, around the question of just how useful they really are. Is an e-portfolio something that encourages individuals to discover and capture using multi media a variety of learning experiences or is it a means for individual's learning to be assessed for a specific purpose.

Of course there had can be elements of both however if an e-portfolio is being used for assessment there has to be a real sense that records should be opened to others for external scrutiny. There are of course questions about how this is done, but in all the systems we have designed there is always the fundamental pedagogical question that needs to be addressed, which is who owns the portfolio. If it is fully owned by the individual then how reliable is the assessment?

I can imagine the cries for those that espouse the benefits of livelong learning portfolios who will argue the importance of holding your learning documents in one place. However how many of us really need this and furthermore when do we actiually look at work we created in our various historical learning episodes.

If you don't face this fundamental question of ownership then e-portfolios creators will be constantly haunted by the So What question. Is this all about just creating a more interesting storing space than an attic.

We are very clear e-portfolios are there for a purpose. To actively support people with their learning journeys through the provision of interactive learning plans; an easy means to gather evidence and where required to put permissions in place for others to interact with the portfolio.

If they are not we might be reflecting like the teachers about whether we have actually missed the point. Like it or not examinations and assessments exist and well designed e-portfolios can help.