The Scottish government’s team of international advisers will be telling it to “stay the course” and “consolidate and go deeper” with key policies such as Curriculum for Excellence and the drive to close the “poverty-related attainment gap”, says a member of the 10-strong team.
According to Professor Carol Campbell, a member of the International Council of Education Advisers (ICEA), the extension of the funding to close the attainment gap until “at least 2022” - announced by Nicola Sturgeon in the Programme for Government earlier this month - is “extremely important” given “every country has a history of short-term initiatives”.
Professor Campbell - a leadership and educational change expert based in the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, Canada - told Tes Scotland the Scottish education system was “making good progress”.
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“What you look for in a good improvement strategy is incremental, slow, steady growth because that’s sustainable,” Professor Campbell said. “If there’s a huge leap, you might celebrate that but you’re also worried about it because - while it is nice to have a big gain - the small ones are usually more sustainable.”
She added that, based on the data the ICEA had seen over the course of its latest two-day visit, there was evidence the attainment gap was starting to close. However, it was “a long-term task”.
Two of Campbell’s fellow international advisers, professors Pasi Sahlberg and Andy Hargreaves, have been quoted this week as saying that it could take 15 years before Scotland would see a dramatic reduction in the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged pupils. First, there would be “sustained gains over many years”, said Professor Hargreaves, followed by a “growth spurt” because all the different strategies put in place would come together.
Professor Campbell said: “All reform strategies reach a period where they have to consolidate and go deeper. Curriculum for Excellence has been around now for 15-plus years. There have been the changes in assessment and leadership. It is time to consolidate and let these embed.”
The Scottish government has, however, announced an independent review of the senior phase of CfE, looking at how it is being implemented for young people in S4-S6 and identifying potential improvements.
The announcement - made in response to an inquiry by the Scottish’s parliament’s education committee that heard about the narrowing of the curriculum in S4 - prompted the EIS teaching union to warn against a radical overhaul. Like Professor Campbell, EIS general secretary Larry Flanagan called for “a period of stability and consolidation”, adding “any review must recognise that further enforced national changes would be hugely disruptive”.
Professor Campbell said if there was “clear evidence something had to be changed or revised”, this would have to happen. But she added: “What you don’t want is change for change’s sake. The type of changes that are now in place in Scotland really require time for the children and young people to benefit and for all the adults involved to develop and grow their knowledge and practice.”
