Education secretary Jenny Gilruth has said that the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) is working, a day after Tes Scotland reported on Education Scotland research highlighting concerns about a “lack of clarity” in the CfE.
During a 20-minute appearance on Mornings with Kaye Adams on BBC Radio Scotland today, it was put to Ms Gilruth that, among other perceived failings, the CfE had coincided with rising concerns from business and industry about “the often poorly prepared workforce that schools are producing”.
Ms Gilruth was then asked: “Do you think the Curriculum for Excellence is working?”
She replied: “Yes, I do. But it’s not only my view, it’s a view shared by the [Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development] who said in 2021 that [the CfE] was a strong curriculum and it was the right choice for Scotland.”
She added: “However, I accept the challenge in relation to how we can update and ensure that Scotland’s curriculum remains relevant.”
Ms Gilruth also responded to a question around the CfE coinciding with Scotland’s falling scores in the Programme for International Student Assessment (better known as Pisa).
She recapped on her update to the Scottish Parliament after the last set of Pisa results in December, stressing that Scotland’s performance in Pisa “was not acceptable and that we had to strive for improvement”.
Exams update in the pipeline
Maths is the initial focus of the action she is taking, and the education secretary said today that a “national maths specialist” had been appointed “to lead on updating the maths curriculum because we recognise some of the challenges particularly in relation to that subject”.
This will be followed by similar drives to improve English and health and wellbeing.
On concerns over the qualifications and assessment system in Scottish schools - and specifically the lack of external exams at National 4 - she said: “I have a range of reports on my desk in relation to reforming the exams system and we will give an update to Parliament in the coming weeks on that.
“And that gives a consideration of whether or not we should move away from the current model in relation to the number of final examinations we have in Scotland and move to a model that looks at much more continuous assessment in the future, which is what Professor Louise Hayward has recommended.”
Behaviour plan expected soon
The education secretary also said that a long-awaited national action plan on behaviour in schools would be published “by the end of May”.
Ms Gilruth gave a particularly robust response to the suggestion that Scots had once been proud of an education system that they believed the best in the world, and that standards had slipped badly since then.
She said: “I think there’s a bit of a golden-age mentality sometimes when we look back.
“Let’s be really honest about it. When I was at school 20-odd years ago, some young people were told to leave at the end of S4, they were told school wasn’t for them. Some young people were told not to go to university, they were told ‘that’s not for you’.
“We’ve now got a much more inclusive education system in Scotland - I think that’s a good thing. We’ve got far more young people from deprived backgrounds going on to university...but we’re also investing in early learning and childcare - record amounts. So we’ve transformed the way in which we fund Scotland’s education system.”
She added that “I do not shy away from some of the challenges we’ve talked about today, but I think there are real positives in the Scotland education system”.
Yesterday, Tes Scotland reported that a lack of clarity in CfE over the knowledge that pupils need to acquire as they progress through school could have “potential consequences for attainment and understanding”, according to research carried out by Education Scotland.
The paper, shared with Tes Scotland after a freedom of information request, outlines early findings from “a package of pilot curriculum reviews”, including maths, health and wellbeing, social studies and modern languages.
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