Hansard

If rhetoric could power Scotland, we could replace Torness by hitching Mr Russell to the national grid. Wind turbines suffer from intermittency, unlike the cabinet secretary. From his lips flows a limitless and inexhaustible torrent of self-justification and self-aggrandisement.

We have been told this morning that the implementation of curriculum for excellence is going splendidly. I presume that that is why one teaching union has been thrown off the management board, while another believes that the introduction of the new qualifications should be delayed by another year; why concerns continue about moderation; why Scotland has been withdrawn from international comparative studies; and why inspectors have been taken away from their statutory role and thrown into schools as shock troops to prop up the implementation process.

Today’s debate on the roll-out of curriculum for excellence comes in a week in which the Cabinet has negotiated with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities on limiting the reduction in teacher numbers next year to a maximum of 1,500, which comes on top of reductions this year, the precise figure for which will be known in a few weeks’ time, and reductions in past years that resulted in the previous cabinet secretary being replaced.

The Government has been shown to be complicit in bypassing negotiating machinery with the intention of presenting teachers with imposed changes to their terms and conditions, as set out in the McCrone agreement, together with a pay freeze. By congratulating the profession out of one side of his mouth while bargaining away teachers’ jobs and conditions out of the other, the cabinet secretary sacrifices whatever trust remains. That will make the process of delivering curriculum for excellence much more difficult from now on than it has been.

Even before the Government’s shabby COSLA deal, management of the implementation of curriculum for excellence was weak and inconsistent. If we roll back to 2005, a broad consensus had built up through full consultation and discussion that change was required to equip pupils to compete more effectively in a changing world. We all wanted to retain some features: the flexibility that already exists in the Scottish system—no one argued for a more prescriptive national system; the combination of breadth and depth that the curriculum offered; the quality of teaching in our schools; the quality of supporting material that helps teachers to deliver much of the current curriculum; and—above all—adherence to the comprehensive principle.

At the same time, the consensus was in favour of changes that would reduce overcrowding in the curriculum and make learning more enjoyable; would better connect the various stages of the curriculum from three to 18; would achieve a better balance between academic and vocational subjects; would include a wider range of experiences; would equip young people with the skills that they will need in tomorrow’s workforce; would ensure that assessment and certification support learning; and would allow more choice to meet young people’s needs.

Curriculum for excellence’s purpose was to introduce those changes without losing the existing system’s strengths. Agreement was substantial about what we needed to do to achieve that and we had the recommendations of an influential Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report to guide us. The pre-requisite for successful implementation was securing the full commitment and participation of the teaching workforce.

In turn, that meant well-staffed and well-run schools; support for reskilling and encouraging creativity among teachers through continuing professional development; improved pedagogy through mechanisms such as active learning, co-operative learning and better use of information and communications technology; more focus on the pupil’s needs—for example, through the use of real-life experiences; better connections between subject disciplines to ensure that young people made necessary connections in their learning; guidelines for schools and teachers—possibly in the form of an outline national curriculum that left the system flexible and creative; and an examination structure that underpinned all that flexibility and creativity while enabling pupil progress to be measured.

I do not claim that all the problems began in 2007 but, in the period since then, the implementation of curriculum for excellence has certainly had major problems. I will describe some of the most damaging problems. One is the absence of proper guidelines. The documents that were produced were overlong and too complicated, which left schools across the country struggling to interpret how the key concepts might be applied in practice. The cabinet secretary’s commissioning of summary documents is an implicit admission that the original documents were not fit for purpose, but concerns remain about a lack of clarity, especially on assessment arrangements and the timetable for the new qualifications.

Whatever the cabinet secretary says, the management board has not been an effective vehicle to drive forward change. Political rather than educational considerations appear to dominate the cabinet secretary’s mind, and the board’s role is widely seen in the profession to be that of a rubber stamp.

The role and status of key organisations in delivering curriculum for excellence is confusing and has been subject to sudden change at ministerial behest. The decision to merge Learning and Teaching Scotland with HMIE is the most dramatic example of that—no prior consultation on that took place with either organisation or the wider educational community. Perhaps the cabinet secretary was trying to rectify the evident lack of co-ordination between the two bodies, which was reflected in the failure to match journey to excellence—the very good resource and staff development tool that HMIE produced—with the educational psychobabble in the vacuous statement of experiences and outcomes from LTS. That failure has led to a loss of confidence among teachers and schools in the management of the overall process.

The consultation on the new qualifications was mishandled. It sent out two messages: that the higher would remain the gold standard; and that the Government would prevent schools from presenting cohorts of students for certification before S4. The transmission of those messages resulted in two main problems that have bedevilled the implementation process ever since. Quite understandably, teachers up and down the country want to know what the exams will look like and have been looking for materials similar to those that they are familiar with under the current arrangements to support the new exams, even though that is at variance with the approach that is envisaged in the curriculum for excellence.

The straitjacket that prevented schools that wanted and can manage earlier presentation caused one set of problems, but the clarification from the cabinet secretary that was reported in last week’s Times Educational Supplement Scotland could end up making matters worse. If the cabinet secretary’s U-turn has the effect of allowing schools up and down the country to move S3/4 to S2/3, the overall coherence of CFE will be jeopardised.

The materials that Learning and Teaching Scotland has produced as exemplars have not been tried and tested, many of them are of variable quality and only a small proportion of them have been kite-marked. On top of that, many teachers have reported difficulties in accessing suitable material on the LTS website, as is evident from last week’s TESS.

The quality of CPD is not what was promised, because of a lack of effective national co-ordination by the national CPD group. There is a lack of clarity about moderation arrangements, which was a major subject of concern at last Friday’s association of primary heads conference. In the absence of guidance, schools are being left to interpret what CFE means for them. They are developing their own curriculum models because there is little co-ordination even at local authority level, never mind Scotland-wide.

The ministerial response to those problems seems to be to deny that they exist—that is what we heard from the cabinet secretary—or to come up with gimmicks, some of which have backfired spectacularly. The 10-point plan, the suspension of inspections and the deployment of HMIE to support schools, with schools being asked to put up their hands if they need help, have not delivered for anyone. The withdrawal of Scotland from international comparative benchmarking of pupil performance leaves Scottish parents with no yardstick against which they can judge the performance of the system, as opposed to that of their child’s school, until the equivalent of standard grade. That is disgraceful.

I believe that CFE has been diluted. Instead of being encouraged to be ambitious, too many schools have become risk averse; they are waiting for someone to tell them what to do. The cabinet secretary will no doubt accuse me and my colleagues of being negative, but his speech demonstrated clearly that this emperor has new clothes. He should look at the TESS blogs to find out what rank and file teachers say is going on in schools. Many teachers say privately that they are deeply worried about the way in which the implementation of CFE has been allowed to drift. If we add to that the assault on teachers and education that the Cabinet has been bargaining for, the auguries for the successful implementation of CFE are not promising.

Let us be optimistic. What does the Government need to do? The key thing is to ensure that assessment and certification support learning and not the other way round. Exam structures and content need to reflect the needs of pupils and what teachers, using their professional judgment, feel it is best to teach. For too long, we have focused too heavily on examinations to the detriment of teaching young people skills. We need to escape the domination of examinations, which is detrimental to all other considerations.

We need a robust examinations system to measure the performance of individual pupils. That is essential. However, our schools system needs to deliver much more if some young people are not to be left behind. Let us use CFE to achieve a better balance between academic and vocational subjects, to provide a wider range of experiences to equip young people with the skills that they will need in tomorrow’s workforce and to offer more choice in meeting their individual needs.

CPD should not be aimed just at upgrading teachers’ subject skills; the focus should be on pedagogy—improving their skills as teachers. In addition, we must involve parents as well as professionals in taking forward the reform and must explain its implications at every turn.

It would be a serious mistake if we were to agree that the curriculum for excellence is being rolled out successfully. It is not. Many teachers and schools are implementing the reform extremely successfully and delivering sound education, and I congratulate them on their work, but the Government’s management of the implementation has been gaffe prone, complacent and incompetent. The loss of teachers and the threat to conditions of service will put the whole process at risk.

I move amendment S3M-7379.1, to leave out from “for their” to “2010” and insert:

“on their efforts to take forward the Curriculum for Excellence; notes the ongoing concerns among teachers about the lack of clarity over assessment arrangements and, in particular, the concern among secondary teachers over the timetable for the new qualifications that have not yet been resolved; believes that further work is required on benchmarking and moderation; is gravely concerned at the impact of current and anticipated cuts in schools budgets on the resources available for implementation of the Curriculum for Excellence; recognises the need to work with, and fully support, the teaching profession and to involve parents to a greater extent;”

09:40