Hansard

I welcome this morning’s opportunity for the Parliament to endorse members’ commitment to the curriculum for excellence and to improving the educational opportunities of our children and young people. The summer of this year marked the formal dawning of the curriculum for excellence but, as the Parliament has previously recognised, the teaching approach that is central to the curriculum for excellence has been embedding in our schools for a few terms, particularly in primary schools, where child-centred, multidisciplinary learning has been unfolding. Reflecting on my own years at primary school, I think that the best teachers already recognise the value of that approach, and that imaginative, engaged teaching has been taking place in some classrooms over generations.

The curriculum for excellence is much more ambitious than that. Arising out of a national debate on education in 2002, it seeks to ensure that every child and young person who goes through the Scottish education system will leave a successful learner, a confident individual, a responsible citizen and an effective contributor. It aims to offer a more flexible learning path and to simplify the curriculum. It gives teachers more professional responsibility as well as freedom and flexibility in teaching, and it enhances their role as educators. The curriculum recognises that learning should not finish when young people leave school, but that schools should give them the skills, the belief, the confidence and the ambition to do more and to continue to achieve in their adult life.

I recently returned to my old high school, Beath high school in Cowdenbeath, during its centenary celebrations. There I saw the principles of the curriculum for excellence in action, as the school used the occasion of its centenary to study a range of subjects throughout the curriculum. That led to a slightly strange experience for me. As I walked into a classroom of first years, the teacher asked, “Class, who’s studying the 1980s?” There was a show of hands and the teacher said, “Well, this is Claire Baker, whom you’ve been investigating.” I have become part of the curriculum in areas of Fife, which is quite strange.

Beath high school gave me a good education, which enabled me to achieve the exam results that I needed to be able to go to university. However, on my recent visit I noted a change in the young people. I was at school at a time of teacher strikes and school budget reductions, and there was a feeling of hopelessness and lack of opportunity among too many young school leavers. That is a familiar picture of the 1980s, to which no one wants to return as a result of the current tightening of budgets. It was not just the lack of those factors that made a difference in Beath high school; I thought that the young people whom I met were more confident, more optimistic and more focused on the possibilities for them when they left school. The Parliament has helped to achieve that, by seeking to provide direction and renewed focus on the value of a Scottish education. The curriculum for excellence is a key element.

There is agreement in the Parliament that the curriculum for excellence is the right direction of travel. We all want to see it—and our young people—succeed. However, its implementation has not been smooth. The concerns of teaching unions reached a low point when the SSTA was removed from the management board for threatening to hold a ballot on industrial action. During the summer, the EIS voted to pursue a work-to-contract policy and to co-operate with the curriculum only within a 35-hour working week. There was concern about preparedness and course content, and there were tensions about workload. Confidence in subject readiness was and still is a significant issue, particularly in the science subjects—Elaine Murray spoke with insight about that in a previous debate.

The lack of confidence in LTS’s ability to provide relevant support and materials is also concerning. Recent criticism of the LTS website, which is meant to provide teaching support and resources, is of particular concern, because the criticism focuses on a lack of support for, and up-to-date, relevant information on, teaching literacy. It is unacceptable at this stage to respond that the website is a work in progress. The cabinet secretary must address the issue.

There remains a lack of clarity about assessment arrangements, which must concern young people and parents whose children have begun their first year at secondary school. We have the national assessment resource, but it offers no detail of the exams that young people will sit. I do not commit Margaret Smith’s speeches to memory, but I remember that during our previous debate on the curriculum for excellence she said that young people should not be used as “guinea pigs” in education. Of course, a cohort of young people must be the first to go through the system, but that is why it is important that those young people and their teachers have the most information as soon as possible. Parents need to be confident that every school has a clear exam route to higher education. Although entrance to university will continue to be centred on highers and fifth and sixth year qualifications, the national qualifications will be the gateway to choices.

The reliance on supply teachers continues to cause concern about teaching consistency and commitment to the new curriculum. The teaching workforce must be maintained at a level that supports the new curriculum. If reports that there are 1,500 fewer teachers are accurate, that is worrying. The curriculum for excellence was never a money-saving option. Although it has been introduced in a financial climate that was not predicted, there must be proper investment in teachers. The new curriculum presents teachers with new challenges in teaching and assessment, and teachers need time and support if they are to deliver the curriculum effectively.

Everything that I have talked about is happening against the backdrop of the upcoming budget. There are already tensions as schools begin to struggle with budget cuts. In Fife, the SNP-led council sacked all the playground supervisors and passed responsibility for playground supervision to headteachers. At the same time, cuts were made to devolved school budgets. Headteachers have been left in an impossible situation. In many schools, support staff are supervising in the playground, so the time that they can spend in the classroom is reduced—by up to 10 hours a week in some schools.

There is a lack of coherent thinking in education. Cuts are being made because they save money on the balance sheet, but little time is taken to consider the negative consequences of decisions, which might be detrimental to education and the introduction of the curriculum for excellence. It is good that we acknowledge the progress that has been made, but the debate cannot take place in a bubble. Next week we will know the scale of cuts that are being made to education and the new environment in which the curriculum for excellence must be delivered. I do not doubt the professionalism and commitment of teachers to making the new curriculum work, but there must be a parallel commitment in the budget.

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