The Huddle: Is our education system failing and should Curriculum for Excellence be scrapped?

In light of recent statistics showing worsening performance in reading and maths, we asked our panel of experts if it was time to overhaul the curriculum.

Andrea Bradley, general secretary , EIS
Is Scotland’s education system failing? Absolutely not. Does the Curriculum for Excellence need to be scrapped? No – although some refreshing, focusing on de-cluttering and the anchoring of assessment for learning rather than performativity and accountability, wouldn’t go amiss.

Scotland has a good education system, with a dedicated, highly qualified professional teacher workforce. We hold our teachers to some of the highest professional standards in the world, our comprehensive system is designed to offer equality of opportunity for all, and a high percentage (almost 96 per cent) of young people go on to positive destinations after leaving school.

Of course, Scottish education faces challenges. Under-investment in schools, the weaponisation of education policy for political ends and, the impact of poverty on young people’s education and life chances, are persistent challenges that are hard to overcome. But our schools are the bedrock of our society. Invest in them, and we invest in young people and the future of our country.

Lindsay Paterson, professor of education policy, University of Edinburgh
Scottish education is not failing. In recent rounds of the Pisa [Programme for International Student Assessment] tests, it has been above the European Union average in reading, and average in mathematics and science. But at the beginning of the century, it was well above average. So it could reasonably aim to achieve that again, emulating England which is now in the global top ten. 

The source of the decline is the neglect of knowledge, but Scottish policy is still vague on what knowledge is. To enable students to acquire knowledge, the curriculum has to be structured, progressive, and detailed: structured into subjects, progressive by specifying what students ought to know at each stage and detailed enough to enable teachers to write lesson plans. Skills are important but depend on knowledge. All of this should be based on cognitive neuroscience. We know far more about how people learn than ever before, and yet this scientific revolution is absent from Scottish policy.

Lorraine Davidson, chief executive, Scottish Council of Independent Schools
Scotland’s education system is greater than the sum of its parts. The principles behind Curriculum for Excellence are still relevant but it’s time to admit the implementation has fallen short.  There is world-leading work taking place across our independent, local authority and specialist schools. But to harness the full potential of the system requires politicians and policy makers to be bold enough to work with the independent sector which includes schools for children with complex needs, grant-aided schools and fee-paying schools.

We have pioneered skills for life qualifications and entrepreneurial courses which we are sharing with state schools across the country for the benefit of all learners, and our specialist schools have unrivalled knowledge of how to support young people with complex needs. Early next year the Scottish Council of Independent Schools and School Leaders Scotland will co-host the biggest ever gathering of independent, state and specialist schools to consider the challenges and opportunities for Scottish education. Our delegates will provide solutions because we will have all parts of the system in the same room. 

Graham Donaldson, government adviser and honorary professor, University of Glasgow
Scottish education is not failing but clearly must do better. The deterioration over time in Pisa, particularly in mathematics, must be addressed. That said, we need to learn from Pisa and not overreact. In reading, for example, only two EU countries perform better than Scotland. 

Today’s challenges are about much more than Pisa, however. Education must remain relevant in a world that is being transformed daily, particularly through AI. Our young people will need to be knowledgeable, creative, critical thinkers and communicators who have strong values and are digitally and socially confident. These purposes, including a strong base of knowledge, are central to Curriculum for Excellence but are not being sufficiently realised in practice. 

Overblown criticism and ideological debates divert attention from more fundamental challenges. We need to reassert ambitious purposes and be relentless in their pursuit. 
Above all, we must embed and uphold high expectations for all young people. 

Gavin Yates, executive director, Connect (Scottish Parent Teaching Council)
Too often in public policy debates comes the clarion call to just do one thing that will solve all the problems. It’s lazy thinking and fatally flawed.

Simply scrapping Curriculum for Excellence won’t solve the issue of the shortage of specialist teachers, the paucity of support for children with additional support needs, the levels of poverty faced in too many communities in Scotland or an exam system which values memorising essays over showing genuine understanding of the syllabus. 

Many issues in education are compounded by failures in other parts of the state. Young people are waiting years for ADHD assessments or mental health interventions. 

Complex problems need joined-up, evidence-based solutions, not knee-jerk soundbites. We have the choice to do the hard work of genuine change which is expensive and difficult or pretend that by solely changing a curriculum that the ills of Scottish education can be excised. 

Cameron Wyllie, former principal, George Heriot’s School
I think ‘failing’ is a bit strong, but there is no doubt that Scottish education is in decline, and some of our young people are indeed being failed. Gone are the days when everyone in the world knew that our schools were top of the class. Part of this downward trajectory is indeed the fault of Curriculum for Excellence (not a curriculum and, it would appear, nothing to do with excellence). 

We need a radical rethink of our young people’s curricular provision – much more emphasis on knowledge and much more on skilled teacher-led pedagogy, which would require a totally different approach to teacher training. 

Of course, the curriculum is only one symptom of this chronic, wasting disease – we also need to deal with violence, attendance, our approach to Additional Support Needs and the need to give far greater autonomy to individual schools and their leaders. We should look carefully at the highly successful changes in England. Ha! As if that would be allowed.

Chris Chapman, professor of education, University of Glasgow
As a country we are bold and imaginative thinkers. In education, whether it be Curriculum for Excellence (CfE), leadership and governance or teacher education, we are strong at commissioning reviews, diagnosis and analysis, and designing national policies but weaker at initiating and supporting change. 

CfE is a bold reform which, for understandable reasons has been adopted across the system with varying degrees of success. CfE continues to cause debate and controversy without visibly establishing the extent of its impact. Undoubtedly, CfE has the potential to be transformational but bold reforms require high-quality implementation, and the absence of high-quality implementation results in “controversy without impact”. This describes the case of CfE . 

Given the emerging global challenges we face, CfE provides a signpost for the future. It is no coincidence that some of the highest performing systems in the world have looked to the Scottish curriculum, and followed our lead, adopting CfE principles, whilst opting for a different route for implementation. We should focus our attention on the quality of implementation rather than vacillating over the curriculum pathway we have taken. 

Keir Bloomer, educationalist 
Between 2022 and 2025, Scotland’s performance in Pisa fell in reading and maths but rose in science. However, none of the changes is statistically significant. In other words, no firm conclusions can be drawn from these short-term changes. However, Pisa was first introduced in 2000. Looking at changes over the full period reveals a very different story. Scotland’s scores have declined substantially in all three subjects.

There are serious legitimate criticisms that can be directed at the implementation of Curriculum for Excellence. The principal guidance offered to teachers in the Building the Curriculum papers and, more importantly, the way in which the content of the curriculum was specified in the experiences and outcomes were seriously deficient. However, the decline was already evident before the programme got underway. Scotland’s education system was among world leaders in the 1980s and even into the following decade but, as Pisa demonstrates, problems were becoming evident in the 1990s.

The central cause of Scotland’s decline is the lack of emphasis placed on knowledge. This means more than facts – ideas and concepts are also forms of knowledge. Until the promotion of knowledge again becomes the central function of the curriculum, decline will not be reversed.