The ‘new’ Guiding programme has now been in use
in most parts of the country for just over a month, in some parts for
longer. Now that most people have had a
very brief chance to experience using it for real, what has the feedback been?
Well, an honest reflection of the online
traffic would be, that although a few people who had doubts before trying it
remain strongly and vocally negative about it, many more are either only
unhappy with one or two specific aspects of it, or are happy with it so far -
early days though it is, and despite the lack of actual statistics to back
these impressions.
Yes, there are some issues which are regularly
referenced – the programme is inflexible.
And for Rainbows in particular, having to do 6 Skill Builders, each with
5 topics, plus 18 hours of UMAs, in two years – means that they have gone from
inventing most of their own activities and traditions, to now having to ‘do
programme’ most of the time, most weeks, if they are to give their girls a
chance of Gold Award. Girls who join
Rainbows at 5 ½ or later will probably not be able to do Gold Award, unless the
unit runs extra sessions such as activity days or sleepovers, and the girls
have good attendance levels, including the key SB meetings. For those who join Rainbows later there will
be the chance to do some Skill Builders, to do Interest Badges, and to perhaps
pick up a theme award or two – but not time for all the SBs.
The other frequently-raised issue is absences –
with a Skill Builder only being completed when a girl has done all 5 of it’s
activities, the girl who is off on one of the weeks when the unit are doing SB
activities will fall behind. The unit
will have to judge how to do catch-ups – whether to have the occasional meeting
laid aside where the girls can get into small groups each repeating a specific
activity, or whether activities can be sent home, or whether the SB remains
incomplete until the next time there is a group doing that SB which she can
join in with (though the latter could only be an option for Brownies, Guides
and Rangers, not for Rainbows)?
Some Leaders are unhappy that, with the cards
supplying most of the activity ideas and the instructions, they now have much
less to do at unit meetings - where once they were coming up with all the ideas
and then out front leading them, now the ideas are already provided, and the
girls to some extent lead themselves, aided by the cards. Although this is familiar to Guide Leaders
from Go For Its, it may be less so with Leaders from the other sections. Or there are disgruntlements at the need to
arrange equipment for activities (whether bought, borrowed or whether the girls
bring it in themselves). Although the activities
have been designed to be low cost (doubtless in an attempt to head off
complaints on expense grounds), some equipment is, naturally, required – mainly
post-its, paper, balloons, plastic bottles etc – which has to be acquired and
transported to the meeting place, unless storage allows. But you can’t do a whole programme with
nothing . . .
And the recording on GO is unnecessarily slow
and painful, especially for Skill Builders.
It’s nonsensical that we have to log into each girl’s record, then
plough through a long list of Skill Builders, at each level, to declare the one
she is starting. And having done that,
we have to click away from the page and then click back in order to start
logging the first activity she has done.
And if she has done all of them, then it’s not enough to just mark the
five activities as complete and assume the system will twig that the entire SB
must automatically be complete – no, we have to click away from the page before
clicking back into it, and we then have to log in each girl’s record to confirm
that the Skill Builder is indeed now complete!
A general complaint is that ‘one size does not
fit all’, Leaders want the right to make up their own activities and count
these as UMAs. Who knows whether Guiding
will flex on this anytime soon – whilst I can see the temptation to allow some
flexibility, I fear that it wouldn’t be long until some units were doing more
‘own UMA’ than they were ones from the programme, on the ‘give an inch and
they’ll take a yard’ principle. And we’d
be back to ‘this week’s festival is’, or ‘craft club’ again.
There are fears that new Leaders will be
reliant on cards, and will not know how to think up an activity, plan it,
obtain the resources, and lead it unaided.
So if those are the negatives, what are the
positives? Well, they seem to be:
Busy Leaders have found the cards really
useful, as a grab-and-go resource, with clear equipment lists, instructions
already planned, suggestions for extension activities.
Inexperienced Leaders have found them great too
– a lot of the planning already done for them, instructions in a logical order,
background on what is being done and why.
Assistant Leaders and Young Leaders who have been nervous of trying to
plan and run activities themselves, are now more confident to take a card, read
it through, and then lead it with the girls.
Common Standard is being hailed by
Commissioners – they reckon that once the new programme is in place, it will be
far easier for them to spot those units which need support, because the online
recording will show whether units are providing a balanced programme with the
girls showing signs of regular progress, etc – and any unit which isn’t
regularly doing UMAs and SBs is, automatically, not offering the programme they
should, and thus struggling. Leaders
will have to list all the girls in their units in order to credit their records
with activities done – even in late February/early March . . . often called
‘census time’ . . .
Common Standard amongst units too. With so many units doing the same package of
activities, units will be working at an appropriate level of difficulty for the
age group (neither too advanced nor too babyish) and girls will be getting
similar opportunities whichever unit they join – there will be fewer ‘good’
units or ‘poor’ units – they’ll all be up to a particular standard - and this
achieved by bringing the struggling units up to a standard, not pulling the
achieving units down to ‘lowest common denominator’.
Continuity has also been seen as a positive –
in planning transitions, being able to assure the girls that there will be many
more things that will be familiar when they get to the next section, and much
less that is unfamiliar - helps with encouraging girls to give the next section
a try.
The activities themselves have been broadly
popular with Leaders and with girls in all sections – there are numerous
unsolicited reports of girls enjoying activities (even ones their Leaders
feared their girls might not enjoy) and of Leaders finding new ideas or new
ways of teaching old skills amongst the selection, or being inspired to add to
or extend the activities on the cards.
Most of the activities are both accessible to
units urban and rural, and affordable. Equipment
has been kept to a minimum, and is usually either things that can be borrowed
(like tents or hand tools) or are inexpensive (like sticky notes, balloons,
plastic bottles). Many units who have
started the new programme have reported that they have been spending noticeably
less on equipment and resources for unit meetings than they used to, without
any corresponding reduction in programme interest or engagement.
As a Guide Leader of a small Guide unit (which
has been running the programme since mid-August) – most activities are running
significantly shorter than billed, for us.
The other week, in our 90-minute meeting we did 80 minutes of UMA
activities (30+30+20) and still found ourselves playing a game for over 20
minutes to fill in time, plus holding Horseshoe at the start and end of the
meeting. On that basis, we won’t be as
pressured for time to fit everything in as we thought we might be, and could
slacken off on the number of UMAs we do next term, or continue to crack on for
now, and be able to spend most of the summer term doing outdoor adventure. Some of this is numbers-based – with only two
groups to demonstrate what they have done, or compete against each other, or
whatever, activities naturally take less time than they would for four or 5
groups.
As a Brownie Leader of a large unit (over 20
members) we are finding that things are running within time, but we do have to
keep activities moving, so that girls regularly have something new to be doing
and early finishers of a particular stage aren’t hanging around bored whilst
waiting for their more deliberate sisters, or those who did not get first shot
of the equipment – but the activities usually provide a ‘next thing’. We haven’t clocked up as many UMAs with the
Brownies so far, as we have focussed on this term’s Skill Builder, and have had
Monday holidays - but I’m happy that we will be able to clock up enough UMA
hours over the three years to allow the chance of Gold Awards for any Brownie
who wishes to try for one.
Yes, there are pros and cons. But then, there were always going to be
whatever programme was introduced, it was only a question of which ones they
happened to be this time. And of those
reacting to it, some people were always going to be negative due to the natural
knee-jerk anti-change reaction which humans have, whatever the programme
happened to contain and however it was introduced. Outwith that instinctive reaction, it appears
that many more are either happy with it barring a specific concern, or happy
with it overall, than are heavily critical of it.
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