Cera Murtagh examines what the most significant educational reform for a generation means for Scotland
It’s been billed as the most radical reform of the Scottish education system for a generation. After a process that has so far taken four years and spanned two political administrations, the brand spanking new Curriculum for Excellence should be finally set for take off. During the lead-in time, we have become accustomed to hearing its merits espoused by politicians and by now expectations are high. The principles behind the ambitious initiative have enjoyed relatively widespread and cross-party consensus. But as time ticks on and the point for the curriculum to become a reality approaches, how will the theory translate into practice? How will the grand plans be implemented on the ground and what will it actually mean for Scottish pupils, teachers and parents?
“I think A Curriculum for Excellence (ACfE) is going to be a sea change in Scottish education and the idea of it is that we really improve the educational outcomes for all of our young people. So we want the curriculum to be more coherent, more flexible and more enriching, focusing on the needs of each and every child,” says Maureen Watt, who inherited responsibility for ACfE in May 2007 when she became Minister for Schools & Skills. And with the task of bringing stakeholders on board to see it taught in schools by August 2009, it will be no small challenge.
The new curriculum is designed to adapt the Scottish system to the requirements of the twenty-first century. This follows a broad move towards softer skills and interdisciplinary learning taking place at many levels of education internationally. With the current pace of technological change, it is argued that many of the jobs that pupils will have when they leave education do not even exist yet so we must equip young people not just with knowledge of traditional subjects but with skills for life – the ability to problem solve, to be dynamic and to interpret information critically.
Based on the four ‘capacities’ that all young people should strive to become – ‘successful learners’, ‘confident individuals’, ‘responsible citizens’ and ‘effective contributors’ – the curriculum aims to produce more well-rounded, work-ready individuals. There is a greater emphasis on practical, vocational education and lessons are to be firmly planted in the real world, taught in a way that is enjoyable and relevant to students’ lives. Learning should also become a deeper process based on more than simply passing exams. But the reform is intended to be less of a big bang and more of a subtle shift. It is a change in the way education is delivered and not necessarily in what is being taught.
Buzz word heavy though it may be, few argue with the aspirations behind the curriculum. But how is it being received at the chalk face? For the prime deliverers of the initiative, teachers, many feel the ideals are sound but when it comes to putting them into practice, uncertainty abounds. “It may be better at primary level than at secondary but ACfE in secondary schools is characterised by ‘What is this?’ ‘What does this mean?’, ‘Where are we going?’ and ‘How are we going to do this?’ The word which is used most often in relation to ACfE amongst teachers is vagueness,” says Jim Docherty, Depute General Secretary of the Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association (SSTA). A headteacher in an Edinburgh secondary school who asked not be named echoes these concerns: “It will take incredible leadership to convince teachers. This is the biggest initiative in Scottish education probably in the last 15 years and amongst teachers there is skepticism and cynicism. Staff need to be convinced that turning our schools upside down will lead to better outcomes for kids.”
Of course, the reform was never intended to be a prescriptive, top-down process. Guidance was issued to teachers in the form of draft ‘outcomes and experiences’ that detail the educational experiences and outcomes a child should have at a given stage in their schooling. But when reading the documents, deciphering what they actually mean can be a challenge. Many teachers find the guidance incredibly woolly, shedding little light on what they themselves have to do.
How does the minister respond to these claims? Speaking to Holyrood magazine, Watt says she fully appreciates these concerns but that the change is about empowering teachers – about giving them the autonomy to teach the new curriculum in a way that suits the individual students before them rather than directing them with a step by step manual. “I think everybody’s fully on board with the changes
I think everybody’s fully on board with the changes 
because we’re giving teachers back their professionalism. We’re saying, ‘you know your children best, you know how best to get across the subjects you need to teach and we’re asking you to be professional and work in teams to deliver the curriculum’. But having said that, teachers are not a homogenous group so different local authorities and different schools within local authorities are at different stages along the way with ACfE”. By disseminating best practice from ACfE pilots that are going on, Watt says teachers will also get more information and support to implement it.
So given the perceived fuzziness of the guidance, is there anything really new in ACfE? One of the key changes is the move towards interdisciplinary education, teaching subjects in a joined-up way. The reforms propose cross-curricular work like projects on sustainability that could cut across biology and geography departments and require teachers of different disciplines to work together.
But what will this shift mean for the traditional subjects as we know them? The Royal Society of Edinburgh had previously raised concerns about the impact on the integrity of disciplines like science which were taken on board by the Government. Likewise Lindsay Paterson, Professor of Educational Policy at Edinburgh University, a high-profile intellectual and critic of ACfE, fears that in the longer term the reform could signal the demise of distinct subjects being taught in schools. “I think there’s a lot of people that want to abolish subjects and abolish disciplines altogether. Now that’s not officially the line but there’s certainly a strong push towards that. My view is that that would be absolutely disastrous in fact. Disciplines are not just arbitrary prejudices; they are actually what human beings have evolved over a long period of time as useful conceptual frameworks. They are the way in which we understand the world… Now I think, though it’s not officially in ACfE, it’s there in-between the lines and there are certainly some very prominent people trying to argue for the ending or erosion of disciplines as distinct entities in secondary schools. And in the end I think that would be disastrous for effective learning,” the Professor warns.
Others in the field welcome the move, however. Pamela Munn, Professor of Curriculum Research also at Edinburgh University, wholly rejects the claim that it will lead to the disappearance of discrete subjects. “I think, particularly in secondary schools, there should be greater interdisciplinary work and for me, you can only do good interdisciplinary work if you know about disciplines. So when some people say, ‘Oh we’re not going to be teaching history anymore or we’re not going to be teaching geography anymore’, that’s nonsense and what is really important is that young people and teachers themselves start to see how by taking different lenses off each subject you can get a better grasp of a problem or an issue. So if you’re thinking about climate change, you’re going to do that through geography, you’re going to do it through history, you’re going to look at what the social impacts are going to be. So that should be better but it does take quite a lot of organising and confidence on the part of teachers to get together on these things,” she says.
Won’t these changes place extra work on teachers and require a major overhaul of the way they work? According to the minister, teachers are already working in a very different style to the past to keep up with the way students now learn in the twenty-first century so ACfE won’t require a huge cultural change: “It will require them to work differently. When you and I went to school, the teacher stood in front of the class and told you things, but even now there’s much more emphasis on knowledge and understanding rather than just rote learning to pass exams. So I don’t think it will require too much of a cultural shift. But it’s actually, it’s marvelous to see in primary schools and where it’s happening in secondary schools that the children are actually much more in control of their own learning and the pace of their learning and because they discover one thing, they realise that they don’t know that and go on to discover something else so teachers are often more facilitators, really and children are discovering themselves.”
Content aside, as the deadline for implementing the curriculum creeps up, practical issues are a more urgent concern. With any policy initiative, grand plans can be put in place but without the money to back it up, little will happen. In the case of ACfE, resources in the form of teacher training, professional development and basic time are fundamental to making the curriculum a reality. And at a time when a number of local authorities in Scotland face serious financial difficulties, implementation could be a struggle.
For teachers groups, resourcing is the key worry at this point. Ronnie Smith, General Secretary of the largest teaching union in Scotland, the Educational Institute of Scotland warns: “In a sense there could hardly be a less auspicious time for this to be happening. A number of local authorities are undergoing serious budgetary constraints and as usual, it’s the soft underbelly that’s being attacked first and in-service training and continued professional development are in the firing line.” Likewise Brian Cooklin, President of School Leaders Scotland says: “As a development in my entire career, ACfE is the one with the least resourcing.”
John Stodter, General Secretary, Association of Directors of Education in Scotland admits that resources are an issue: “There are resources for professional development, it’s just that most authorities are in very tight financial situations so these may be some of the areas they’ve actually looked at reducing. As we get closer to full implementation there will be resource demands, there’s no doubt about it.”
So amidst such dismal financial reports, what is the likelihood of the curriculum being implemented in schools by next August? According to Lindsay Paterson, there are two extreme possibilities: “One is that nothing happens, actually, that in the face of having to teach a course starting from August 2009, in the absence of any of all this centrally provided stuff, teachers will simply have to fall back on what they have already. So all the fuss then comes to nothing very much. And there’ll be a few extra projects and a few cross-curricular things, interdisciplinary work but really beyond that, very little. I think, realistically, that may well be what ends up happening. The other possibility is that the inspectors will start inspecting according to the criteria implicit in the ACfE documents and they will start inspecting in that way from next autumn. So they will start handing out really quite drastically negative judgements on schools that do simply make minor modifications to what they’ve been doing for ten or twenty years. And in that case, there will be some very serious confrontations, actually. Because the schools will say that they might like to do the things that ACfE says but they can’t afford to because they don’t have the time or the resources and the inspectors will say, ‘well, if you don’t do these things then you’ve failed the inspection’ – and then what happens? Now I suspect that latter option won’t happen because that’s far too controversial and unhelpful and destructive. I’m afraid the more conservative outcome that I mentioned first is the most likely – that far less is going to change than the originators of this whole process imagined.”
Others in the sector believe the curriculum will come into practice but are calling for a more phased implementation and feel the August 2009 deadline is far too rushed and unrealistic. Docherty of SSTA argues: “It’s not too late to say ‘why don’t we put the date back to 2012/2013?’. We shouldn’t be forcing young people in Scotland into untried and unchartered waters of education until we have some form of recognition that what is on the table is going to work and is going to be better than what we have now.”
For the Edinburgh headtacher, the timescale is politically driven, designed for the curriculum to be fully in place ahead of the next election: “The likelihood of it being implemented by next August is very slim. If I was a betting man, I would say rather than August 2009, it will be August 2010, one year before the next election. This way the Government will appear to be listening to stakeholders. I believe that was in the master plan from day one. That tends to be the way of things with education initiatives.”
Consultation on national qualifications to accompany the curriculum is ongoing and Watt stresses that the Government will listen to stakeholders’ concerns on the timescale: “At this stage we have the timetable for next year but we will be responsive to the feedback we get from teachers and others.”
As the launch date approaches, opinion surrounding the new curriculum is clearly mixed. While most welcome what the reforms will do, the practicalities of putting them in place are not so straightforward. With less than a year to go, some fear that the most ambitious reforms in Scottish education for a generation come with an equally ambitious deadline. Change, of course, is often met with resistance and the curriculum will surely require something of a cultural shift in our schools. And cultural shifts don’t happen overnight.
No one has commented on this article.
Related news items:
|
Holyrood news 
d.com is the premier destination for the political, public sector and business elite who come to the site for breaking stories and news coverage. Click onto political media watch for a summary and links of the best of the day’s political stories from other news providers or a review of the past weekends papers. 
