Sarah Millington, subject advisor for Health and Social Care and Child Development

In her first blog, Sarah Millington shares some strategies that can help students overcome challenges within the subject.

This blog gives me a chance to introduce myself. I’ve worked in the educational field for 20 years and taught Health and Social Care with OCR for 16 of those years. I’ve worked alongside some amazing teachers and worked with students so that they achieve to the best of their ability. I want to be able to use my teaching and moderating experience to help support teachers, and I'm looking forward to doing this as a subject advisor.

As any teacher knows there are challenges, and no two days are the same.

Key challenges within the subject area

Over the last two years, students have experienced fewer exams. They struggled to know how to revise, how to recall information and how to apply that information in the correct way. 

In Cambridge Technicals, Unit 2 and Unit 4 in Level 3 Health and Social Care are the areas where I’ve seen students struggle the most. So here are a couple of ideas that I’ve discovered can improve results and give students confidence.

Unit 2 and legislation

When you mention the word ‘legislation’ to 16 year old students, their faces go blank! When you think about it, why would a 16 year old have any in-depth knowledge about legislation? But it is something they need to know about and be able to apply. 

One way that I have found really works to help students apply knowledge about legislation is to introduce to a character right at the beginning. This helps students apply it to real life. 

• Give out a character of a person/pair/group of students. Use a range of characters to provide a variety, (such as an elderly person, a disabled person). Each character will be linked to a protected characteristic group. 
• The student will build a description of the character. This will include the person’s background, ethnicity, gender, what they look like, where they work and live. 
• Students can then start describing one or two key experiences of prejudice their character has experienced (this could be linked to where they live, workplace, on transport). 
• Ask questions. Where would they get help? What should be in place to help them? (policy/procedure/legislation).
• Introduce different pieces of legislation and link a piece of legislation to the experiences the characters have had. 
• This can lead to a discussion and a chance for students to present their findings to the rest of the group. 

The character can follow the lessons throughout the unit. I would create a mock paper to test students’ knowledge and revisit the paper to look at their responses and build on low mark areas.

Unit 4 content

Many teachers of health and social care are not biology specialists, me included. Most of my students didn’t study biology at A Level and hadn’t looked at an anatomy diagram in over a year.

Some of Unit 4 can be learnt independently. Revision card and terminology tables can also be used. When it comes to exam style questions, students need more depth, and know how to apply knowledge when it comes to longer written response answers. 

Here’s how I tackled it: 

• I started by teaching the basics of one system, with label diagrams and complete terminology sheet. We would discuss what we can remember. Students would be set research for what we had covered ready for a mini test the following lesson. 
• As lessons continued, I would build on knowledge, test, and retest. Each time we visited a system we would add more to these and highlight areas where we needed to gain more knowledge. Students were given ideas on revision aids (posters, cards, quizzes). When I had covered a complete system, I would set a test using a range of written response questions. 
• When the whole unit was complete, I would plan a mock exam. You could see how the revisiting of knowledge had helped the students increase in confidence with revision and recall. This also showed when the actual exam result reflected the mock result. 

Remember - what works for one student may not work for another. Students need to see an improvement to motivate them to carry on in their studies. Regular testing and reviewing helps them see this.

Other helpful suggestions from teachers

Moderating the Cambridge Technicals for two years, I met teachers from other centres and saw that they wanted to show what they had been doing and what their students have achieved. They wanted to share, and they wanted to support and be supported. Here are some of their suggestions:

• contact nearby centres and start a network 
• attend exam board Q&As 
• attend the free CPD: funding is tight so get it while its free 
• use the two free moderator visits for Cambridge Technicals 
• ask the moderator, that’s what they are there for 
• shout if you need help 

To start with, check out all our upcoming health and social care CPD events.

Stay connected

If you have any questions about health and social care, you can email us at vocational.qualifications@ocr.org.uk or tweet us @OCR_Health. You can also sign up to subject updates and receive information about resources and support.

About the author

Sarah has joined OCR after teaching Health and Social Care and Child Development over a period of 16 years. Having been a teacher, subject lead and moderator within her career, she has planned and developed subjects to meet the need of her students to allow them to become independent learners, focusing on effective teaching and learning skills. She has experienced and survived several qualification changes: GCSEs to Cambridge Nationals, and A Levels to Cambridge Technicals. Sarah is looking forward to bringing this experience and knowledge with her to OCR.