Congrats and good luck! :)

@sainsburys - I know a cup of tea makes everything better but I still don’t think this is an acceptable substitution attempt!

Many people on low incomes have a smart phone in place of a home Internet connection. Being able to get online isn’t a luxury these days.

And as we teach more students on average we have more parental concerns and complaints to deal with. In short, I completely and utterly disagree with your point of view!

The threat of an Ofsted “deep dive” hangs over all subjects and all departments have to be equally prepared for them, regardless of whether Ofsted is likely to actually see them or not.

Students are required to choose subjects from different “buckets”so there is no guarantee that they’ve chosen the subject because they like it and plenty choose it for the wrong reasons and end up hating it.

As head of a small department I have fewer staff to manage but also fewer staff to delegate things to. We teach every year group and all the planning has to be done by 2 people, who are also responsible for all of the dept clubs and intervention sessions

Our class sizes at KS3 are all the same and in non-core subjects we have more classes that we see less often, meaning teaching more students so more kids to know, write grade sheets about, etc. We have smaller classes at KS4 and 5 in some cases but not all.

In what way do you think teaching non-core subjects is less work? I would strongly argue otherwise!

Ouch! I hate these questions because I find it hard to calculate, but I don't think I was at 60+ hours! I guess it helps that we didn't get a deep dive...

There’s 3 of us at my school but I have no idea regarding the bigger picture!

Drop a mark band, I’d say

Fancy! But the missing question mark upsets me

The point isn’t to make children miss out on anything. The point is to inconvenience parents who have the power to vote/lobby their MPs

Pascal

I think they are all called Computer Science. You’ll be able to check on the exam board websites.

Yes, when I did the A Level (which was available before the GCSE) it was called Computing.

Love this idea 😊

Surely the only answer here is to reduce workload to allow teachers the headspace to engage? Appreciate that this is probably outside of the OP’s remit but I can’t see another solution!