“The effectiveness of the overall curriculum reform and associated reform of qualifications and assessment will depend on doing the right things, in the right order, at the right time.”
So says the latest and final paper to be published on the “curriculum improvement cycle” (CIC) - the “systematic approach to curriculum review” recommended by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development in its 2021 review of Curriculum for Excellence and taken forward by Education Scotland.
And this is what Ollie Bray, the Education Scotland strategic director leading the Curriculum for Excellence review, keeps coming back to - because, while it might seem obvious that you have to do “the right things, in the right order, at the right time”, we are, he says, “just not very good at it”.
Balancing an entire education system
This is, says Bray, in part because of the way Scottish education is structured, with different bodies responsible for different aspects of the system, be that professional learning; initial teacher education; qualifications; or inspection. But all those parts of the system have to work in concert in order to achieve successful curricular reform, he says.
The paper - published today and entitled Working Together to Make Change Happen - therefore talks about the importance of the “broader educational ecosystem” and warns: “If just one component is misaligned, it can disrupt the balance of the entire system, creating confusion and inconsistency for practitioners, learners and policymakers alike.”
Of course, Scottish secondaries have painful experience of this.
It was the misalignment of the curriculum and qualifications in upper secondary that led the OECD to conclude that, while CfE had been implemented in primary and lower secondary, its realisation was “less consistent” in upper secondary.
Headteachers also complain of other inconsistencies, including being encouraged to embrace a wider range of qualifications in order to better cater for the roughly 60 per cent of students who will not go on to university - but still being judged on passes in more traditional academic qualifications such as National 5s, Highers and Advanced Highers.
The paper calls for future performance measures - such as any future inspection framework - to “incentivise the system to achieve the aspirations of the curriculum and not create unnecessary barriers and bureaucracies that are counterintuitive to the aims and purpose of Scotland’s curriculum”.
It also calls for “national and local government to work together to agree a single set of national performance measures that can be used for improvement purposes”.
Teacher-education institutions, meanwhile, will have to “adapt” in line with the changes that emerge from the CIC - and they should also strengthen the “understanding of curriculum making”.
Reducing high-stakes assessment
On qualifications, the “curriculum should inform the assessment and examination system, not the other way around”.
The paper adds: “When high-stakes assessment dictates the curriculum, learning can become focused on narrow exam requirements, particularly in the secondary school broad general education.”
However, the paper acknowledges that timelines for the CIC must “align with the qualification design and development process”.
The Scottish Qualifications Authority - which this autumn will become a new body, Qualifications Scotland - has been set the task of rebalancing assessment in Scottish qualifications to reduce the reliance on high-stakes exams, and also undertaking “rationalisation” of qualifications in the senior phase.
In summer 2025 - before the summer break, Bray hopes - “a single combined timeline” will be published by the government, Education Scotland and the SQA. The timeline will set out clear deadlines and milestones for the arrival of the “evolved” curriculum, as well as when revised qualifications will be available.
How far has the curriculum review progressed?
As of this month, the CIC paper says all 13 projects under the “contexts for learning” banner - which includes all eight curricular areas - will have embarked on the review process.
Five projects are at the second stage of the review process (“engaging and co-creation” with teachers) and include numeracy and maths; literacy and English; literacy and Gàidhlig; health and wellbeing; and science. The remaining eight are expected to enter stage two by September.
The model for reviewing the curriculum involves four stages: analysing existing evidence (this could include national test results and SQA data, for example); engagement and co-creation with teachers; implementation; and monitoring and evaluation to ensure the changes have been enacted.
The paper published today is the third released by Education Scotland and focuses on how curricular change will happen.
The first paper made the case for change and the second recommended scrapping the current technical framework - which includes CfE’s “experiences and outcomes” and benchmarks - and replacing it with a “know-do-understand” model that uses a so-called “big ideas” approach.
It is expected that curriculum review cycles in Scotland will span 10 years, starting and ending with an exercise similar to the “national discussion” on Scottish education, which reported in May 2023.
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