Making Natural History

We are delighted to be invited to share the latest news on OCR's proposal for creating a GCSE in Natural History as part of the Eastbourne Schools Partnership's two-week festival of the environment designed to inspire a new generation of environmentalists. The Making Natural History online festival marks 25 years since the town of Eastbourne created and hosted the first United Nations Children’s Conference on the Environment back in 1995. 

At a session at 16:00 on Thursday 19 November our Director of Assessment Research Tim Oates CBE and OCR's Chief Executive Jill Duffy will be talking about the proposal for creating a GCSE in Natural History that our UK exam board OCR submitted to the Department for Education and Ofqual last month. Tim and Jill were originally approached by leading naturalist Mary Colwell about the creation of a new qualification and earlier this year OCR launched a six-week consultation on the proposal, which received a huge response including the thoughts from hundreds of young people.

Making Natural History is a free online event organised in conjunction with the Eden Project designed to encourage children’s understanding and love of the natural environment and help get them involved in its regeneration for their own benefit as much as for wildlife’s. Speakers and panel members include Baroness Floella Benjamin, Sir Tim Smit, the Executive Vice-Chair and co-founder of the Eden Project and Dr William Bird MBE, originator of Beat the Street. Organisations involved in the festival include Eco-Schools (the world’s largest ecological schools network), Millennium Kids, the Harmony Project, ecoDriver and the Natural History Museum.

All the events during the fortnight are free and will be recorded and made available on our YouTube. You can register for the OCR session now.

Visit the OCR website to sign-up for updates on OCR's Natural History GCSE proposal.