So, we’ve reached that bit between Christmas (results days) and New Year (erm, new year) when it’s a case of tidying up what’s done and looking ahead to what’s new – planning and trying to find a place for everything.
The world of qualifications being what it is, nothing stays the same for long and I already know that there are some qualification changes and additional assessments within qualifications that we already offer.
A big chunk of the preparation I do at this time of year involves contacting teaching and curriculum management staff to find out what they have planned, what will have the biggest impact on the Exams team and what we may have negotiate where I don’t think we can manage what’s requested.
Good communication with curriculum teams shouldn’t be underestimated in terms of making the Exams Officer role easier. Whether you are in an FE college like I am, a school or an alternative type of centre there will be many times throughout the year where you are going to need to clarify, confirm or question what you are asked to do. Establishing those communication channels now can only be a positive as the year progresses – especially where there are new members of staff who are yet to understand how the organisation works.
Looking back on twenty years in the job, I can’t claim that I was great at communicating with teaching staff at the start. That was partly because we were there as ‘support staff’ and so I very much did what I was asked/told, even if it seemed there was a better way to do things or another way which would have made more sense. This, of course, put me and the team under pressure.
Now, the first thing I will do when teaching staff come back to work after summer break is to gather information on the big events which will impact the rest of what the Exams team can do – usually mock exams and functional skills testing weeks (we dedicate a week each to English Reading, English Writing and Maths during the first two terms) and then factor these in to a schedule of key dates and exam series information.
I was two emails into this planning when there was already a clash of weeks for one of the English assessments and the Maths testing week. A quick Teams chat with curriculum staff means that it’s back with them to negotiate with each other about who gets the week they have asked for and who is going to change their plans.
I’ll liaise with Maths and English staff the most, but we are a multi-campus college with seven different faculty areas and need to be accessible and amenable to teaching staff from all those areas to get what needs doing, done. My team is structured so that individual staff administer a specific curriculum area. This means that from registration/entry to results teaching staff will have a named contact and when we get to the crunch point of claims and results good relationships will have been built up throughout the year. We need this to be able to sort out the issues which invariably arise.
It’s important to know who’s teaching what as we derive most of our entries from data rather than teaching staff needing to request it. To this end, it’s important that we spend time looking at what courses are being offered and what they entail. Understanding the curriculum and how it works took me some time: there was no one to show me how it worked and so it was a case of learning it myself over a few years. Looking back that seems madness. Understanding what’s being offered is the key to knowing what needs to be done and who we need to contact about it. (Mind you, back when I started, we used to enter or register anyone who teaching staff asked us to without reference to the data – and then work backwards to correct the data once the results were received, which seems mind-blowing now!)
Of course, as well as receiving information we must give it out as well. The Exams Officer role is basically the go-between from awarding bodies to teaching staff and there is the need to interpret the regulations, guidance and processes from one end of the process and apply it to the other.
The world of qualification admin is awash with terminology and abbreviations and sometimes it feels like we are practitioners of a dark art. It is perfectly acceptable (and understandable) that teaching staff don’t use the same terminology as Exams staff – witness the amount of times a member of your teaching team has used the term ‘re-mark’ in relation to A-levels and GCSEs. Converting the terms that awarding bodies use with Exams Officers into information for teaching staff might just be one of those dark arts…
Now that we’ve considered who communicates with Exams Officers, and who we need to communicate with, let’s consider how we communicate.
I hate to say it, but I am big on emails! A lot of our internal systems produce emails for workflow – so we receive on-demand exam entries, requests for testing slots and claims via email triggered by those systems. This makes it easy for me to monitor the workload that the team has, but also allows all of us to refer to information in a standardised way where we have queries or need to refer to original requests.
I know that emails get a bad rap, and I once went on a time management course which said that you should only read your emails at the start and end of the day (gulp). However, I have mine open all the time although I have turned off the notifications which appear when you get a new email – sometimes the temptation to click on the newly-arrived email notification is too much, especially when you can see the title and first line of content!
The beauty of emails (I think) is that they are completely traceable, searchable and time stamped. I use the search function in Outlook an awful lot. With so much information floating around, conversations with many different staff and specific groups of people it’s not possible to retain that information without some written record and emails serve this purpose well. Quite often I’ll have a fleeting notion that “I know something about that learner” but it won’t be until I search in emails that it all becomes clear.
Of course, emails are good for me because I am largely sat at a desk all day – not quite so good for teaching staff who spend 20+ hours a week standing in front of students. I suppose this is where knowing broadly how your organisation works is helpful. For example, I wouldn’t usually be tempted to send many emails on a Friday afternoon knowing that our delivery is much reduced, and staff are usually out the door on the dot of 4pm. Much better to write the email and then delay delivery until the next working day – especially when we all need to be aware that we are not expecting staff to answer emails during their non-working time.
Other than that, I am not sure whether I am lucky or unlucky that my desk is next to the main thoroughfare within our admin block. Quite often teaching staff or curriculum managers will come by and ask a question, which I am fine with. If I have tasks which I need to fully concentrate on it’s a bit of a bind, but I tend to hide myself away somewhere else when that’s the case. We’ve recently had a re-jig of the office and I’ve replaced the six-foot cupboard next to my desk with something half that height and re-named it ‘the socialisation station’. That’s on the premise that I would much rather speak to someone when I am sat at my desk with a notepad and access to computer to look things up than have one of the dreaded corridor conversations when someone asks you to do something or find something out. By the time I’ve been wherever I am going and returned it’s almost certainly fallen out of my head!
I’ll attend what we call ‘Golden Hours’ with teaching teams to update them on new processes and things they need to know. These are allotted times when teaching staff within a curriculum area get together to cover different topics. In days gone by these were usually in person – and sometimes still are – but now these are mainly via Teams.
Ultimately, good communication is whatever works for you and your organisation. I think Exams Officers are generally people who want to know what’s happening and when (hands up if you love a schedule and a list with ticky boxes) and so communicating with colleagues on the teaching side will always be key to getting things scheduled and done.
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