In March 2018 I spoke at a conference on improving Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence (CfE). Soon after, education secretary John Swinney suggested this was the latest “attack on CfE” and he rebutted the claims.

The education secretary was perhaps perturbed by headlines that stemmed from my contribution, of the “CfE is dead” variety. Sadly, headlines do not capture complexity. Behind the headline was a cogent argument for why, where and how Scottish education needs to be reformed and, instead of connecting, the education secretary chose to deny and rebut - to brush aside the evidence.

I had also stated that CfE “started life already intellectually behind, and from thereon in was not nurtured by those who conceived it and those who were supposed to nurture it. However, its spirit remains alive.” So there was a note of hope in there, too.

I was keen to tell teachers that CfE would not, and should not, last many teachers’ whole professional careers. It is often said that the world is changing faster than ever before; the curriculum of today is the economy of tomorrow. As such, the curriculum needs ongoing reflection, review and revision. It also needs consideration of all the views offered, as well as international examples and a sound understanding of education history and the economics in which education operates. 

In 2000, Unesco’s World Education Report gave some purposes for schooling:

• To know (academic achievement and exams);

• To do (skills);

• To be (self-actualisation);

• To be together (community cohesion and society formation).

One might suggest these align well to the often-scorned - for their supposed vagueness and the interchangeability of the adjectives and nouns - four capacities of CfE: “successful learners”, “responsible citizens”, “effective contributors” and “confident individuals”.

However, this interpretation was retrospectively applied. Indeed, it has been suggested that CfE’s capacities - which are now often parroted without much thought given to them - came from an idea tabled in a single meeting late in the design of the nation’s curriculum.

When we look at CfE’s overview of the nation’s curriculum it has no firm basis. The values of CfE, for example, were not defined in an educational context - they are the same values that are inscribed on the ceremonial mace in the Scottish Parliament. And even then these were not formed by research-led enquiry or open consultation: Parliamentarians’ values were chosen late in the making of that mace, and left to the silversmith to decide.

Yet those words have since filtered through public policy in Scotland and been enshrined in Scottish education policy. Many schools blindly lift those values and make them their own. What does this say about education? That we are still blindly following rather than questioning where education should be headed?

We need to remember that the primary purpose of education is not control, but empowerment and enlightenment. And this is the question we need to keep asking of Scottish education: could a revised curriculum be more enlightened and enlightening than what we have just now?

Neil McLennan is a senior lecturer and director of leadership programmes at the University of Aberdeen