By Nick Broome
While working with Hair and Beauty, I discovered some confusion existed concerning the use of eTracker, causes for concern and Progression Audits.
Causes for Concern are a very useful tool with which to build a picture of a student’s performance including attendance and behaviour. These should be seen as means by which behavioural, etc issues are seen to be challenged and recorded without the need to, in the first place, resort to formal discipline procedures. That said, of course, such an approach depends upon the scale of the breach of discipline occasioned by the learner. Hopefully, CFC’s become stepping stones towards a stronger-based formal discipline.
Just writing CFC’s are only half the task. To make them effective, staff need to go into eTutorial and create an action plan which clearly sets out what is required by the learner, using SMART targets.
In a similar vein, the completion of Progression Audits seemed to cause confusion amongst the staff I work with. Essentially, Progression Audits should be brief and to the point. If Student ‘A,’ for example is working well, is up to date and on course to successfully complete the course then state just that. If however, Student ‘B’ is not working at the correct level, has missed several sessions or in any other way is risking either failing the course or at least not achieving his/her target grade then a similarly short entry to that sort of effect should be logged in the Audit. IF the student is at risk of failing the course, he/she should be shown at risk in the audit. The next stage, as with cfc’s, is to create a SMART action plan in that student’s eTutorial giving the student very clear requirements which he/she must fulfil.
There are some students who were labelled ‘at risk’ for no reason other than attendance. Some may have had hospital or other medical problems preventing their attendance but still they are keeping up to date with work. These therefore, should not be shown ‘at risk’ UNLESS they really are so far behind or their work is of such a poor state and they are not attending then ‘at risk’ needs to be applied.
I find the Hair and Beauty staff very professional, committed and caring, who work hard. Another great example of embedding maths was observed where one teacher created starter activity based on geometry (I learned much about angles and haircuts)!
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