Meeting of the Parliament 01 May 2019
I do not accept that that is pupils’ experience. Mr Mundell’s question suggests that when a young person leaves the broad general education phase they dispense with any bit of knowledge or skill that they ever acquired in it, which is a ridiculous argument to advance.
The guiding principle is that qualifications are taken at the appropriate stage for the individual young person over the three years of the senior phase, which represents an intended fundamental shift from the approach of the pre-CFE era.
In 2002, in the national debate that preceded the development of CFE, it was accepted that because the system involved too much assessment, it offered too little to equip young people to handle a range of challenges in life. The intention was to create a new system that gave schools the flexibility to design approaches that reflected both their own needs and those of their young people.
The OECD recommended that change should be driven by the profession itself, rather than from the political centre. For me, that is a fundamental issue in the debate. The curriculum models have been developed by the teaching profession in consultation with education professionals around the country. Further emphasis is now placed on the autonomy of the teacher—a move that I fully support and which is central to the Government’s empowerment agenda, which is intended to foster collaboration and create dynamic and innovative curriculum approaches.
Liz Smith rose—