Hansard

No, they were not. They were caused by inaction by the previous Administration and Mr Macintosh’s colleagues. I did not want to be so churlish as to say that and break the positive spirit, and I regret that Mr Macintosh has done so. I revert to the positive Mike Russell, which is my natural default position.

Summary versions and professional practice guides for key documents have been produced and distributed to practitioners. Simple fact files—I have some with me as a visual aid—to help explain the changes to parents, employers and others have been published and made widely available. I wrote to the parents of every primary 7 child going into secondary 1 to explain what was taking place and to encourage them to ask questions.

The work of teachers and all those employed in our schools has paid off. The alleged catastrophe did not happen. Our pupils are still learning and teachers are still teaching—better than ever. The consensus that curriculum for excellence is the answer to the problems that we all agreed on at the start of this session of Parliament continues to grow—it is extending as more and more people see the curriculum in action in our schools.

We can now see the rewards of the work that has been carried out across early years, primary, secondary and special schools and colleges and their partners to make curriculum for excellence a reality.

There is a transformation in the links between early years services and primary schools. The number of partnerships with the third sector and parents to help children broaden their achievements through schemes such as the Duke of Edinburgh’s award has grown. Ever-growing partnerships between our schools and colleges help all children, but especially those in need of more choices and more chances.

We see a new confidence in the professionalism and leadership of teachers. People can turn to the engage for education website and see the blogs of Richard Coton, headteacher of Monifieth high school in Angus. He talks about going live in August 2009, a year ahead of the national timeline. He talks about it being a lot of hard work but says that the staff have shown professionalism and commitment. After a year and a half of detailed analysis and evidence, he believes strongly that pupils in the school are doing better and are growing much further as a result of curriculum for excellence.

It is not just Scottish teachers; international commentators spoke at September’s Scottish learning festival. Richard Gerver, co-founder of the international Curriculum Foundation, described curriculum for excellence as “spectacular”. Eric Booth, the well-known international educator and author, said that the changes were “historically unprecedented” and that curriculum for excellence—he was paying tribute to schools here—is an “unbelievable accomplishment”.

Of course the job is not complete. There are difficult situations ahead. I understand fully the concerns about the future of those representing teachers and others and I have maintained a strong dialogue with them.

I acknowledge the constructive and helpful position that the Educational Institute of Scotland has taken at every stage throughout the past few years. It has questioned, challenged and criticised, but its commitment, together with its principled and reasonable approach, has led to significant improvements in the implementation programme.

The management board has managed this incredibly complex programme with true determination and it is much better equipped to do so given that we continue to widen its membership. The board, like me, is clear that as we move ahead, we will require serious thought as to each step that we take, which is being given.

We are supporting the programme in every way we can, but we agree that the implementation of the programme is not an end in itself. Curriculum for excellence is a methodology. It provides the starting point for all attempts to improve learning. I have made it clear that I welcome and support all those who are ambitious for further improvement.

Ambitious subject experts such as those in the Royal Society of Edinburgh and many others are being listened to. I regularly meet those who have views that challenge curriculum for excellence. As part of my 10-point plan, I established 18 excellence groups and asked them to report to me in early 2011 on how we can make further progress in developing excellence in every subject area in the curriculum.

Ambitious parents need our support, too. Our partners in the national parent forum want to consult parents in every local authority to get their views on how parents can become fully engaged, not just in the improvement of their child’s education but in the improvement of the education of every child in their area.

I will support those consultation efforts as I support the forum—I spoke at its conference last week. I am ambitious, together with parents, teachers and the whole community, to tackle some of the endemic problems. As I said when I launched our literacy action plan, poor literacy skills are a result of deep-rooted societal issues within Scotland, but our early years services and our schools can make a real difference. We know that, so let us use curriculum for excellence to demonstrate our optimism and confidence in those services and to help to turn around unacceptable statistics.

I am ambitious for our teachers. The Donaldson review’s findings will progress positive and far-reaching issues for initial and on-going teacher education and development and will help us to overcome the difficulty of teacher unemployment.

Much has been done, but much remains for us to do. Last month, I announced the creation of a new agency—the Scottish education quality and improvement agency—that will bring together the support and challenge functions of HMIE and Learning and Teaching Scotland in a new body that will have at its heart the need to ensure that curriculum for excellence is supported to achieve our ambitions.

We must examine the structures through which education is delivered and ask whether they conform to the ambitions of curriculum for excellence and give our schools the best and most effective arrangements for implementing curriculum for excellence. Can we help our schools to maximise the resources that are available to them in difficult times, to give the best possible educational experience? For example, are schools using information technology to the best effect, not just to engage and interest their pupils but to ensure that the options for their pupils are as wide and varied as they can be? Those questions will exercise us now and over the next few years, but we must talk about our system’s strengths—what has really worked in it and what we can build on to ensure that it works better.

I visit many schools and meet many parents and teachers. I will touch on what I learned on four recent visits. In West Linton, I attended a parents evening in the old primary school, which is soon to be replaced by a new primary school—one of the 300-plus schools that are being built under the Administration. The parents there were keenly engaged in and keenly questioning of curriculum for excellence, but any doubts that they had were swept away not by me or even by Scottish Borders Council’s effective curriculum for excellence officer but by the children, who put on an inspiring short performance that demonstrated how they learned.

At Paible school on the island of North Uist, I saw the best demonstration of the four capacities that I have ever seen—an ever-changing noticeboard that was full of pictures that the young people had taken, which illustrated what it was to be the four elements in the four capacities. It showed how it was possible to be a successful learner, a confident individual, a responsible citizen and an effective contributor on the island of North Uist.

In East Kilbride, I saw challenged young people who linked their capacities and their interests by celebrating the musical “The Sound of Music” and ensuring that they understood the world through the eyes of the characters in that film. Those young people have tremendous difficulties, but their joy and enthusiasm in the classroom were infectious.

On the first day of the school term, I visited Cardinal Newman high school in North Lanarkshire, whose young teachers I had heard make a presentation at a conference on teacher education. The teachers were so excited about their prospects of teaching differently that I had to go to the school. I found a school that was fully engaged in curriculum for excellence, which was not listening to the naysayers and the doom-mongers, which knew that what was happening among its teaching workforce and its young people was a step forward in Scottish education and which was determined to deliver the best in Scottish education.

Those are only four out of many schools. In each one, I see the importance of curriculum for excellence. Yes, there is more to do; yes, the exam timetable must be adhered to—we are doing that; and yes, we must listen to and respect concerns. However, we have something that is of great importance. It is not just me who says that; the whole Parliament said that in 2002 and 2003. We now have the opportunity to stick to that commitment and to continue to do the right thing for Scottish education.

I move,

That the Parliament congratulates the teaching profession and all who work in or are part of school communities for their unprecedented efforts in successfully continuing the roll-out of the Curriculum for Excellence across all primary, special and secondary schools from August 2010; recognises the need for a long-term commitment to the Curriculum for Excellence, and confirms that commitment from this parliament.

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