This paper sets out the main findings of the International Instructional Systems Study (IISS), conducted by the UCL Institute of Education and funded by the Center on International Education Benchmarking (CIEB). The study examined the instructional systems and intended curricula of six ‘high performing’ countries and two US states. The study ultimately focused on nine specific aspects of those systems: the aims of the education system; how centralised or decentralised management of the instructional system is; principles and methods of accountability; what compulsory and optional subjects are included in the programmes of study; the degree to which curriculum is organised by discipline or integrated across disciplines; whether curriculum is common or differentiated; how twenty‐first century skills are embedded in the curriculum; the clarity and content of curriculum for secondary vocational pathways; and how assessments are created and what stakes they have and for whom.
This paper considers feedback in the context of modularised programmes in higher education in the UK. It is argued that the self-contained nature of modular assessment may limit feedback dialogue between staff and students to assignment specific issues, and may impede student progress towards holistic programme level aims and outcomes. A feedback profiling tool was developed to categorise feedback on draft and final work. The analysis of feedback on 63 samples of draft work and 154 samples of final work showed different patterns. There were more feedback comments on draft work, and the feedback comments were dominated by advice and critique, while the feedback comments on the final work were overwhelmingly dominated by praise. This pattern of feedback is problematised in terms of feed forward from one module to the next as students work towards the development of programme level outcomes. Ipsative feedback (on progress) and feed forward in terms of disciplinary specific skills and programme level outcomes are recommended to enable students to act on feedback on end-of-module work, and develop students' capacity to recontextualise disciplinary specific skills throughout a programme. Some developmental applications for the feedback profiling tool are also suggested.
Although the direct links between education and reducing recidivism in prisoners are problematic, there is little argument that education is a factor in promoting reintegration and rehabilitation. There is a current focus in prison education on education for employment, and yet there are no recent or unambiguous data about the skills levels of the prison population. The most often quoted figures are both 15 years out of date and deeply flawed in terms of their comparisons with the general population. This article sets out a new study that takes the mandatory initial assessments carried out on every new prisoner between August 2014 and July 2015 and compares them with the national Skills for Life survey conducted in 2011. This provides us with some hard facts about the English and maths skills of the past year's intake of prisoners. The conclusions argue that while the numeracy skills of prisoners are better than previously understood, the cohort has extremely poor literacy skills, and addressing these needs should be a priority for government.
Although England was not included in the International Instructional Systems Study because it was not a high‐performing jurisdiction by the Study's definition, contributors largely were England‐based. Analysing the Study's nine overall aspects of instructional systems, this paper finds that England is out of step with many of the high‐performing jurisdictions, largely deliberately and at the behest of recent and current governments. It is at the deep end of centralisation, its curriculum is not much integrated, and its accountability system is high‐stakes test and examinations based coupled by an exacting inspection system. Many of the changes are recent and therefore have not had a chance to bed down, so whether they will result in improvements in international tests such as PISA, TIMSS and PIRLS remains to be seen.
The Centre for Education in the Criminal Justice System (CECJS) at UCL Institute of Education recognises that, in order to design a coherent prison education system, it is necessary to have an informed understanding of the current educational levels of the learners. Until recently, information available on the levels of literacy and numeracy skills of the prison population was considerably out of date, and therefore unhelpful to the current context. However, from this current and ongoing work we are beginning to gain an updated picture of skill levels. In November 2015, CECJS released an initial analysis into prisoners' basic skills levels based on the ‘mandatory assessments' in English and maths in 2014/15. This paper builds on that analysis using the official data gleaned from the 2014/15 Individualised Learning Record database, which is both consistent with, and supplements, the information from the prison education providers. The paper is structured to first validate the overall findings of the initial report regarding skills level of the incoming prison population. It examines how the assessment data is used by providers to inform placement of prisoners on appropriate basic skill courses, and analyses the progression trajectories of prisoners. It then details the performance of prisoners on basic English and maths courses, including their progression and achievement. The findings suggest a system that is failing to deliver education to its most vulnerable learners in prison. The majority of prisoners, including those with the lowest skills levels of English and maths, do not progress to higher levels and are insufficiently challenged. Of those prisoners enrolled on courses of study, only half complete and often only at levels lower than their previously assessed levels. The conclusion provides recommendations for policy makers and urgently calls for more research.
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