OxTalks will soon move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events.' There will be a need for an OxTalks freeze. This was previously planned for Friday 14th November – a new date will be shared as soon as it is available (full details will be available on the Staff Gateway).
In the meantime, the OxTalks site will remain active and events will continue to be published.
If staff have any questions about the Oxford Events launch, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
Education has been heavily impacted globally by the pandemic, yet educational knowledge and expertise do not seem to be strongly referenced in policy discussions and decisions about, for example, closing and reopening schools, the effectiveness of distance learning, or the most appropriate forms of assessment. Examinations policy in ‘normal’ times contains a number of tensions, for example, concerns to maintain standards while recognising improvement, along with questions of fairness, parental pressures, and issues around public understanding of assessment practices. These are heightened in crisis, generating intense public interest, raising questions regarding governance and regulation and increasing pressure on political leadership. This seminar presents findings from current research to offer some possibilities for understanding the sources of knowledge and the forms of expertise that were mobilised or not in relation to examinations policy in England in 2020, where the cancellation of national examinations, and outcry about the impact of the algorithm that replaced them, led to a very public policy reversal.
