Health and social care - Why teach all the i.e. content if candidates don’t need to use it?
23 March 2020
Sarah Ash, Subject Advisor for Health and Social Care
In the specification we state that everything that follows an i.e. must be taught. If you teach your learners all the i.e. they will be in a stronger position to access the higher mark bands in the internally assessed units and in the exam as they have the breadth and depth of knowledge needed.
Below we expand on this information to support you when giving guidance to your learners. So here’s a few good reasons why the i.e. is so important.
Teaching the i.e. gives depth of knowledge
The i.e. are a required specific learning that enable students to get the broad knowledge they need to be able to respond to the tasks in a model assignment, or meet the marking criteria, and also the depth of understanding. (See section 2.1 Guidance on unit content).
Your students cannot respond fully to the command verbs without the opportunity to explore the specification in full, and can end up unable to access all the marks that are available to them.
Students have the choice about what to write
Enabling your students to access all the required subject matter ensures that they have more information to draw from when deciding how to respond to the questions in the task. Knowledge is a tangible asset and an important tool in writing assignments.
With a broad and deep understanding of the specification students are empowered to confidently make choices about what to focus their piece of work on. It supports the creation of individual pieces of work.
By owning the knowledge, your students can create an individual piece of work. They can choose the most appropriate method to present their work. It is their time to shine, to show just how much they have learned and understand.
In an exam you wouldn’t expect to see students writing the same extended answer as one another, you wouldn’t want to see this in a piece of extended writing either. By teaching all of the i.e., the final work submitted then becomes unique to that learner.
Prevents work being too similar that could raise concerns about over guidance
Without covering all the i.e. in the specification your students work begins to look the same. For example if you choose to only teach your students two factors of communication then your students will all have written about the same two factors of communication. You have narrowed their choice and the work loses its individuality.
The other concern is that the similarity in the work could cause the moderator to think that too much guidance has been provided or maybe a template has been used and this could be viewed as malpractice.
So have the confidence to teach all the i.e. and provide your students with the marking criteria – let them fly!
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About the author
Sarah was a teacher of health and social care for ten years. This is her main subject area and her degree and PGCE qualifications are in this subject. She has also taught child development along with several other subjects at KS3 and moderated on the A Level Health and Social Care for another awarding body. Sarah worked in secondary schools and a sixth form college in Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex teaching KS4 and KS5 and as a teacher in a care home for young people aged 16-18 and supported them in preparing to leave care. She now works as a subject advisor in our Cambridge office.
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