4. Towards a coherent policy environment for Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence
This chapter analyses how the current policy environment in Scotland (United Kingdom) supports or hinders the implementation of its Curriculum for Excellence (CfE). Central to CfE’s aspirations is teachers’ capacity to be curriculum designers, and school leaders’ ability to lead the curriculum process in schools. There has been significant progress in supporting this capacity, but this work has become more challenging for schools, given the need to respond to multiple new initiatives at local and national levels. This chapter explores the misalignment between CfE’s aspirations and the system of qualifications, the need to get policies in place that deliver the right balance between curriculum autonomy and equity for students, and a need to align and perhaps simplify the many frameworks and strategies in the busy policy landscape. It concludes with recommendations that may pave the way to a more proactive and coherent policy environment.
The policy design and stakeholder engagement dimensions of the OECD Framework for Education Policy Implementation focus on issues in which policy makers have direct discretion and can act to facilitate curriculum implementation. Contextual or environmental factors, which condition stakeholders’ agency and ability to implement reform, are equally important but sometimes difficult to adjust in the short term. Part of the policy maker’s task is to consider them when designing the policy and when supporting the policy into implementation as they will greatly influence the change process.
Across many education systems, traditional understandings of successful policy implementation as fidelity to the goals and requirements of reform have required implementers of a policy to be recipients of policy decisions. Implementation was viewed as a straightforward technical process, and implementation “failures” in education were usually blamed on teachers and school leaders who were not doing what they were mandated to do by policy makers. Curriculum for Excellence (CfE), from the beginning, was a policy that implied significant shifts in the culture and structures of Scottish education to create a conducive policy environment to support a new vision of curriculum and of teachers as curriculum makers.
This chapter considers three major issues of the Scottish policy environment and the degree to which they support or hinder CfE. Significant progress has been made towards system leadership for CfE, leadership capacity for curriculum change and creating policies that enhance CfE. Some issues remain, however, including those related to policy coherence around CfE, particularly regarding assessment and evaluation, and system governance.
The success of curriculum innovations such as CfE, which require more of teachers than fidelity to centrally prescribed programmes of study, relies heavily on the capacity, culture and status of the teaching profession and the quality of school leadership (Gouëdard et al., 2020[1]). Systems that promote such local innovation and strive for the empowerment of system actors – including learners – require strong system leaders to drive a culture that is empowered and accountable, and who can present a compelling case for the education system to the media, politicians and the general public.
The flexibility and autonomy afforded to teachers and schools by CfE are highly valued by the teaching profession, and appreciated by parents and other stakeholders. In turn, most stakeholders interviewed by the OECD team saw teachers as highly qualified professionals able to realise CfE’s ambitions and agreed that significant progress had been made towards CfE implementation. There was positive feedback on the professional support provided to date to teachers and school leaders in support of CfE. Stakeholders endorsed the commitment in CfE to meet the needs of learners and the flexibility afforded to schools to respond to local needs and personalise their curriculum for learners. The OECD team also observed how leaders and schools used curriculum flexibility to deliver creative responses to the challenges posed by rural and island locations, in areas of dispersed populations and in small schools, through the use of consortia of schools and technology to support the principle of curriculum breadth for students (OECD, 2020[2]).
However, CfE flexibility can also be a double-edged sword: flexibility inevitably gives rise to variation, and in discussions, the degree of variation in how CfE was experienced by learners across Scotland (United Kingdom) was a concern. For system-level leaders, this concern was about a variation in quality across the school system. The OECD project on Education 2030 shows that many systems depend on local leadership for the design of curriculum at the school level to meet the needs of learners and support this flexibility with an appropriately robust evaluation framework (OECD, 2020[3]). For others who expressed concern about variability, the issue was the degree of variability in how the curriculum was organised, and consequences for student outcomes, and, importantly, system equity.
New research conducted with headteachers in Scotland as part of a Nuffield project highlights the degree of variation in how the curriculum is structured for students in secondary schools, for example. The research found that 82% of schools organise this phase of schooling as a 3+3 model (three years of Broad General Education [BGE] followed by three years of Senior Phase) as envisaged by CfE. But 18%, including all the independent schools in the sample, maintain the old 2+2+2 model (previous curriculum model divided into two-year periods) (Shapira et al., 2021[4]).
The same study found considerable differences in the year of schooling when students make their first subject choice. In the sample of headteachers, 14% reported that this happened in S1, 51% in S2 and 34% in S3. Clearly, the implementation of CfE in the secondary phase remains a work in progress, with schools moving at different rates away from what was. However, given the well-documented relationship between subject choice and educational outcomes in secondary schools, variation of this scale would be a cause for concern in any system. For Scotland, it is particularly worrying given the importance of subject choice in determining entry to higher education (HE). A study comparing differences in entry to HE in Ireland and Scotland showed that inequalities in entry to HE were explained by subject choice in Scotland, whereas in Ireland (where students take fewer subjects), they are more closely associated with academic performance (Iannelli, Smyth and Klein, 2015[5]). These particular variations are associated with some of the assessment and qualifications issues identified in the review. However, they are also a reminder that when schools exercise their much-valued “flexibility to meet the needs of students”, it may not always work in the interests of their students in the longer term, nor may it serve system goals towards equity.
A further challenge arising from the flexibility that is at the heart of CfE is the level of demand on teachers as curriculum makers in their own schools. It was clear to the OECD team that the teaching profession greatly valued this role; teachers saw themselves as active participants in the curriculum process, and they saw their work as reaching well beyond the technical delivery of the centrally prescribed curriculum. However, there is an obvious mismatch in the Scottish system between the curriculum-making role of teachers and the comparatively high class contact hours of teachers across the system. As noted in Chapter 1, teaching time has evolved in Scotland between 2000 and 2019: it dropped by 95 hours at pre-primary and primary levels, as part of a teachers’ agreement that introduced the 35-hour working week, resulting in a maximum of 22.5 hours of teaching per week for primary, secondary and special education teachers. Even with this decrease in net contact time, the maximum time that teachers at these levels can be required to teach is still longer than the OECD average (OECD, 2019[6]). The sustainability of this above-average allocation, together with the expectations that teachers engage in local curriculum development that in turn delivers the CfE ambitions for all learners, is an open question.
In discussions with school leaders and teachers about how decisions about curriculum are made at the school level, the needs of the students and the competence of teachers and school leadership were always referenced. But they also identified other factors. Finding time for teachers to plan collaboratively and to work together on moderation was mentioned as a challenge. The role of local authorities in setting priorities for schools and the potentially constraining roles of locally mandated approaches and initiatives were identified as significant factors for school-level curriculum planning and innovation. On the other hand, the scale and type of support for professional learning in schools, whether this was provided by a local authority or Education Scotland, was identified as positive support for local empowerment. The OECD team heard many positive examples of this taking place across Scotland.
Similar contrasting views of the Regional Improvement Collaboratives (RICs) were also expressed. For some school leaders, these were seen as an additional layer of “the hierarchy”, “another initiative to deal with”, or “some other group to report to”. Others took a more positive view, seeing them as an important support for local empowerment, an “important platform to share good practice”, and potentially a “successful meso-system” to support CfE work in schools (OECD, 2020[2]).
Other contextual factors may limit teachers and school leaders. Recent research about the implementation of health and well-being in CfE points to constraints experienced by teachers, for example, especially those working in schools serving high poverty communities (Hardley, Gray and McQuillan, 2020[7]). For teachers at the secondary level, the biggest constraint appears to be the spectre of qualifications (see discussion below). In common with other education systems, concern for the well-being of children and young people in society has led to new pressures and expectations for schools (OECD, 2018[8]). Recognition that students who feel well learn well is widely shared and schools have an important role, not just in responding to the well-being concerns of society but in actively promoting and supporting student well-being. In discussions with the OECD team, it was evident that education stakeholders, system leaders, school leaders, teachers and learners placed a high priority on well-being and saw the flexibility of CfE as central to school efforts to support and enhance it. This was particularly strong in primary education, where the focus on student well-being was shared by the children who met the OECD team. CfE affords schools the flexibility to focus on and promote well-being, but in some discussions, school-level actors noted that the complexity of some well-being issues – such as anxiety and other mental health concerns – were often beyond the capacity of schools to respond. This was even more evident during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
While well-being and the challenges of supporting the well-being of adolescents did feature in discussions with students, teachers and school leaders of post-primary schools, these discussions were more likely to move quickly to matters of qualifications, subject choice, and transition to the Senior Phase. The OECD team was struck by the absence of any explicit references to CfE from many of the discussions with post-primary leaders, with the notable exception of the four capacities, which were consistently mentioned as overarching aspirations for schools. It was equally notable that “successful learners” was given the highest priority of the four capacities.
Thus the autonomy promoted by CfE depends not only on the capacity of the teachers and school leaders to respond to that autonomy with expertise in curriculum design. It also depends on the interaction between individual actors and institutions, and on local and other pressures placed on schools by the policy context and environment, the social and cultural context of the school and the wider societal well-being of children and young people. The autonomy of schools when it comes to CfE is affected by the external context; those constraints are not the same for all schools or sectors of the system.
Moderating and making sense of that policy context and environment for schools, managing constraints, and protecting that autonomy is part of the work of school leadership in the Scottish system. Scotland has prioritised the support and development of school leadership as a policy goal, and the OECD team had discussions with some outstanding school leaders who are exercising this autonomy. It was notable in those discussions that school leaders see their role as interpreting the policy context for their school to ensure that the school and the teachers are protected from policy incoherence and overload. Leaders see themselves as filtering what was relevant and appropriate for the school from the proliferation of policy initiatives at the local and national levels. Of note, in complex education systems, this has become a key role of school leadership (Pont, 2020[9]). School leaders appear to have strong local networks, particularly across local authorities and are committed to the communities and regions where they work.
The agency and empowerment of teachers to make decisions in the interests of the children and young people in their classrooms are highly valued in Scotland. An evaluation of the implementation of the recommendations of a review of teacher education in 2010 found evidence of progress in four areas. It found that teachers were more engaged with professional learning and had a greater sense of ownership of their own career-long professional learning. There was a greater focus on the impact of teacher professional learning on students with consideration of the needs of students informing decisions on professional learning. Notably for CfE implementation, it concluded that there had been a cultural shift towards more professional dialogue at the school level, and it found that there was a greater willingness than previously to try new teaching practices (Black et al., 2016[10]).
Interestingly, this evaluation identified two particular challenges for teacher professional learning. The first was the practical one of securing replacements for classes when teachers attend professional learning events. The second was the array of “competing national priorities” that colonised teacher professional learning. Prior analysis of the meaning of teacher leadership in the Scottish model for professional learning raised the issue that trying to pursue different and sometimes competing political agendas contributed to confusion in the conceptual underpinnings of initiatives to promote teachers as educational leaders (Torrance and Humes, 2014[11]). This “competition” was consistently raised with the OECD team as impacting teacher and leader agency at the school level. Managing those competing demands continues to drain the energy and capacity of teachers and school leaders. The OECD team was struck by how often school leaders described the gatekeeping and management of competing demands – as one memorably said, “the need to protect my staff” – as central to their role (OECD, 2020[2]). Freeing up some of that capacity to provide more leadership for and in schools, particularly to support CfE across all sectors of the school system, should be an important priority.
Building the Curriculum 5, from the series of CfE documents, proposed a comprehensive framework for ages 3 to 18 years for assessment across the education system as part of CfE (Scottish Government, 2011[12]). This representation of the framework has been accessed by systems and researchers worldwide as an exemplar of an assessment framework with a clear focus on the centrality of the learner and an articulation of the different purposes of assessment – again prioritising the focus on student learning. The role of teachers in the assessment process is notable in the framework. The document also stresses the need for a programme of continuous professional development (CPD) to support teachers’ assessment capacity to assess with confidence and consistency. The document acknowledges the importance of qualifications in the Senior Phase but notes that the “next generation of qualifications within CfE” will build on the same curriculum priorities and serve the four capacities of CfE. The importance of transitions in that context is also stressed – transition from BGE, and transition to further and higher education. The framework promises much in support of CfE; there is a strong alignment of principles and focus. Arguably, however, the promise has yet to be delivered.
Building the Curriculum 5 is not a single document but a set of documents that provide additional guidance on different aspects of the framework – reporting, standards, recognising achievement, and quality assurance and moderation. An analysis of these documents shows that their focus is on the BGE rather than on the Senior Phase and that the guidance is at a high level, with considerable local autonomy proposed (in line with other aspects of CfE).
In the decade since the publication of the assessment framework and supporting guidance, one of the most notable successes has been the realisation of that commitment to the professionalism and agency of teachers in the assessment process. The National Improvement Framework (NIF) sustained that commitment; assessment is one of the improvement drivers, but the judgement of teachers is identified as central to that process. The new census-based standardised assessments (Scottish National Standardised Assessments [SNSA]) are presented as low-stakes to provide teachers with diagnostic information on children’s literacy and numeracy to support teachers’ assessment and plan for effective teaching. In avoiding the pitfalls of high-stakes testing in the school system, Scotland has positioned teacher’s professional assessment work as pivotal for the quality of student learning. The controversies around the P1 assessments (reviewed following their first round of implementation) focused on the appropriateness of assessments of this kind for children in P1, how the data might be used at the national level and notably, the suitability of assessments of this kind for the play-based curriculum advocated by CfE for this stage of learning.
As the SNSA continues to be rolled out, Scotland now has a well-developed and widely shared view of the centrality of teachers in the assessment process. The agency of teachers in assessment and the focus on providing teachers with tools (including census-based assessments) to support their judgement is a particular strength of the system, and one that is internationally regarded. The development of teacher assessment literacy through CPD and a new focus on assessment in teacher education programmes has resulted in greater confidence in teachers in their own assessment practice. That level of professionalism was striking in discussions with teachers (OECD, 2020[2]). The review of the P1 assessments also noted that the majority of teachers felt prepared to use the data and found the training useful, even if they were less positive about the quality or usefulness of the assessment data presented to them (Reedy, 2019[13]).
Within BGE, there is an explicit attempt to align curriculum and assessment through the use of levels and, since 2016, the benchmarks to support teacher judgement. Originally called “CfE benchmarks”, these are now widely referred to as simply the “benchmarks” and are described as the articulation of the national standards for each level (OECD, 2020[2]). While the addition to the benchmarks was broadly welcomed in the system, they pose both curriculum and assessment challenges. As a tool to support teacher judgement, the benchmarks may be useful; however, despite explicit instructions to teachers and schools not to use them in this way, there is a real risk that they become the proxy curriculum – a checklist of content to be covered to meet the expectations of a particular level.
While the CfE levels and benchmarks are described as tools to support planning for learning and guides for teacher judgement, they are also the basis on which achievement is to be reported nationally; thus, the reports on the NIF, for example, reference aggregated data on the percentage of students achieving each level as reported by schools. While this data is interesting, reporting it on a national scale and tracking small changes in percentages as evidence of improvement or otherwise may not be giving the system the robust data needed to monitor student achievement. Some observed that the practice of reporting on levels might be giving rise to an impression of a rather static system or one that is at best inert, and at worst, not improving.
There is general confusion, confirmed by the stakeholders interviewed by the OECD team, as to what data counts when it comes to student learning. Given CfE’s focus on the four capacities, the absence of data on how well students are achieving in three of these – the capacities beyond “successful learner”, which are harder to assess – is also noteworthy. The OECD team received much anecdotal evidence about how CfE appears to support and develop the four capacities during interviews with learners, their parents, teachers and system leaders (OECD, 2020[2]). Beyond its own observations and examples in validated school self-evaluation reports, the OECD team observed no systematic evaluation data to support a judgement as to whether the aspirations articulated in the four capacities 20 years ago are being realised.
The OECD team was struck by the contestation around data on student learning more generally and by the absence of robust, authoritative longitudinal data (outside the data collected on qualifications) to inform decision making at the system level and to inform wider society, communities and parents about the outcomes of CfE. The public in Scotland has access to lots of data about the education system, including details on the numbers of students attaining CfE levels and qualifications at each level of the framework of qualifications, as well as NIF evidence and case studies of school improvement. This commitment to data transparency at every level of the system is good practice but is not matched by the quality of the data available. More robust and better quality data on student achievement over time in Scotland would better support public debate and political decision making in the future. It would also be a better reflection of the high priority given to education by the Scottish Government, the media and the public.
Robust system-level data are needed on how well children are learning and progressing, in order to support the implementation of CfE and inform curriculum reviews and developments at system and school level. Scotland needs a single source of truth (SSOT) approach to student achievement; SSOT approaches ensure that in any system or organisation decisions are made based on the same evidence and data. A step towards this would greatly enhance the system’s overall stability, and support measured responses to external system data such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which only provide a picture of performance for 15-year-olds, not capturing those in the Senior Phase.
While the four capacities remain the stated goals of CfE, as noted, three of them remain comparatively under-evaluated relative to “successful learner”. What does progress towards the other three capacities look like at each level, or even in each phase? How can Scotland know that CfE is delivering on its ambitions for Scotland’s children and young people? As part of a re-assessment of the original vision of CfE, some work might be undertaken to develop some specific and contemporary success indicators or a matrix of success for each of the four capacities that might be tailored for multiple audiences, including learners. Using this matrix as the basis for other research and evaluation measures would give coherence and focus to data collected on the impact and effectiveness of CfE.
The NIF contains data that aims to measure progress of the system at the national level. The framework and its data do not appear yet to be well supported across Scotland as providing a full picture of education system performance, or on its progress or full breath of the richness of CfE. The absence of robust data on learning outcomes and progression on the four capacities leaves the system vulnerable to reliance only on international assessments for system intelligence. Participation in these kinds of international assessments, such as PISA, should complement data collected and reported regularly at the national level. Of note, the absence of this kind of data to support decision making in the attainment challenge has also been recently documented (Kintrea, 2020[14]).
The Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA), in collaboration with stakeholders, designed new national qualifications to align them with CfE and to certify learners’ achievement in developing the four capacities as well as the skills for learning, life and work. The new National Courses and qualifications aimed to provide high standards and a formal acknowledgement of learners’ achievements while ensuring at the same time continuity with the breadth and depth of learning sought at earlier levels of CfE. The qualifications were first introduced in 2013/14, then revised in 2016/17. In line with efforts to adopt a broader definition of educational success, the availability of vocational qualifications and the Foundation Apprenticeships emerging from the Developing the Young Workforce: Scotland’s Youth Employment Strategy (DYW) are also an important development and appear to be widely welcomed by stakeholders even if implementation is at an early stage (Scottish Government, 2021[15]).
It would seem the ambition for reformed national qualifications to align with CfE has not been fully delivered to date, despite the early commitment in Building the Curriculum 5 and the work of aligning National 4 with Level 4 of the curriculum. One of the clearest indicators of a misaligned assessment and evaluation system is when stakeholders say, “We don’t want to do this but the examination/test process makes us do it.” The OECD team heard this many times in the course of discussions of CfE, especially with stakeholders from the secondary system (OECD, 2020[2]). There may well be historical reasons why the qualifications did not develop as originally planned as part of a unified 3 to 18 curriculum, but the current two-stage secondary phase that has evolved is now the most significant barrier to implementing CfE for learners in secondary school. Indeed, the backwash from the misalignment in the secondary stage may even be felt in primary schools, as concerns about readiness for subject choice and examination success were mentioned by primary school parents and school leaders (OECD, 2020[2]) (see also Chapter 2).
The disconnect between the qualifications in the Senior Phase and CfE’s philosophy hinder the relevance of the first and the power of the second. Many stakeholders interviewed expressed doubts as to how well the public understands the greater diversity in qualifications now available in schools. Notably, the OECD team was struck by the absence of any reference to National 4 and National 5 in discussions on assessment and qualification in the Senior Phase. Stakeholders agreed, on the other hand, that there remains one accepted and widely understood measure of success in the Senior Phase – the attainment of five Higher qualifications. The OECD team noted that in discussions on the Senior Phase, and much of secondary education, the four capacities are displaced by the five Highers as the purpose of the curriculum at this stage. Notably, learners, particularly those who had attained their Highers and are now working towards Advanced Highers, commented that they had set aside any aspirations towards the four capacities to undertake the “two-term dash” for their Higher qualification and the rote learning needed to attain these qualifications. Learners spoke positively about accessing vocational qualifications as part of their Higher experience. Interestingly given concerns about curriculum breadth in CfE, learners saw these vocational options as giving them a broader experience (OECD, 2020[2]).
The final stage of secondary education poses some complex policy challenges. A recent review commissioned to support reform in that phase of education in Ireland examined trends across nine jurisdictions (O’Donnell, 2018[16]). While there were some common features identified – explicit attempts to integrate vocational studies into what have been traditional academic tracks, for example – the differences between systems at this stage are striking, reflecting national priorities for education and economic and social development, among other contextual factors. Because this phase is the “frontier” that leads to economic, civic and social agency for learners, it is subject to the greatest level of public and media interest. This interest focuses in particular on the assessment arrangements for this, the final stage of schooling.
Designing an assessment system that can serve the multiple purposes of qualifications at this stage is challenging and generally involves trade-offs between purposes. Not all can be given the same priority. But qualification arrangements should at least not actively undermine the aims and purposes of the wider system (OECD, 2013[17]). Is this happening in Scotland? The OECD heard mixed views on this. While, on the one hand, there is general acceptance that there is more work needed to better align qualifications in the Senior Phase, there was little appetite for more reform. The impact of COVID-19 on examinations across Europe has given new impetus to the reform of traditional end-of-school examinations. The pen and paper format has come under some scrutiny, but so too has the degree to which they prepare learners for the uncertainties and challenges ahead. Scotland’s early decision not to proceed with the Highers and Advanced Highers in 2021 and to rely instead on teacher judgement of evidence of learner attainment as the basis for these high-stakes awards will be important in informing next steps for these awards towards better alignment with CfE (Priestley et al., 2020[18]). For many developed school systems, the vulnerability of traditional examinations, and the degree to which systems had to mobilise teacher judgement to support graduation from school and transition to further or higher education, has re-shaped debates about the future of high-stakes assessment.
In a recent address marking the tenth anniversary of his review of teacher education, Graham Donaldson suggested that the last decade in Scotland had seen increasing confusion about the role of assessment in student learning. He suggested that Scotland now had a “confused set of practices” (Donaldson, 2021[19]). The OECD team would extend that analysis to include a somewhat confused set of policies, with some distance to travel to deliver on the promise of the integrated framework proposed in Building the Curriculum 5.
Many systems include school evaluation processes in their assessment and evaluation framework, thus connecting the quality of schools with the quality of children’s learning and achievements. The approach to inspection of education in Scotland had a long history of innovating with and for schools, particularly in supporting school self-evaluation. While the responsibilities for inspection of education is not the focus of this OECD review, the team was struck by the absence of references to inspection or to Education Scotland’s role as Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education (HMIE, part of Education Scotland) in considerations of CfE as a school-led process. The unusual configuration of an inspectorate of education as part of an organisation that is also responsible for supporting school leaders, curriculum design and support, teacher professional learning and a range of other initiatives is noteworthy, particularly in a system where the autonomy of schools in curriculum making and in planning for teaching and learning is so highly valued. Across countries, school evaluation and inspection systems are important means of managing the tensions between local flexibility and national consistency. In recent years, many systems have moved to more decentralised models of inspections, including school self-evaluation and the development of self-evaluating networks of schools (in particular, local authorities, for example).
The design of CfE as a framework for learners from the ages of 3 to 18 years was innovative for Scotland and visionary for the international community when it emerged in the early 2000s. Almost 20 years later, CfE is still remarkably relevant to Scotland’s aspirations for a high-quality, future-oriented education for all its children and young people. The implementation of CfE across schools since its launch depended not only on dedicated support from teachers, leaders and the wider education community. For CfE to be implemented effectively, other policies and structures of the school system needed to evolve alongside to ensure that CfE was not a moment-in-time initiative but a reform that would be embedded and sustained. Scotland has made significant progress towards this kind of policy coherence for CfE. But more work remains.
Among the most notable efforts towards coherence was the positioning of CfE as one of the three supporting pillars of the education system alongside Getting it right for every child (GIRFEC, 2006) and Developing the Young Workforce: Scotland’s Youth Employment Strategy (2014). The three pillars of support present as a significant and coherent structure – a pillar for what and how children learn (CfE), a pillar to support children’s well-being (GIRFEC) and a pillar to support children and young people into meaningful work (DYW).
The absence of policy coherence is fragmentation. In fragmented systems, potentially high-impact reforms are launched, but within a relatively short period of time, they are invisible in schools and classrooms as teachers and school leaders have learnt that this “game-changing” initiative will be followed by another one soon. Although Scotland’s is not a fragmented system, the OECD analysis identified two particular challenges for the coherence of CfE.
Discussions with the OECD team identified some initial attempts to support CfE that have, over time, become barriers to implementation. The policy space between the three pillars of Scottish education (DYF, GIRFEC, CfE) has become crowded with new policies in recent years. Additional policies and initiatives have been introduced, such as the Scottish Attainment Challenge in 2015 and the Joint Agreement on an Empowered System in 2019. The emergence of the Regional Improvement Collaboratives as part of the education policy landscape since 2015 is also noteworthy.
A recent report of Scotland’s International Council of Education Advisors also noted the efforts made to balance and integrate CfE and NIF without one being eclipsed by the other (Scottish Government, 2021[15]). While this is sage advice, it also points to the challenge faced by school leaders who have to balance the competing demands of two pillars, both ostensibly sharing the same purposes. The 2021 National Improvement Framework and Improvement Plan offers a new policy map of the system with the pillars replaced by “strategic frameworks”, with five of these identified in Figure 4.1 (Scottish Government, 2020[20]). The figure places the NIF as the central framework, the others as support.
A further – and different – “map” of the policy environment was offered to the system early in 2021, when Education Scotland published guidance on the empowered system (Education Scotland, 2021[21]). This is not mentioned in the up-to-date NIF policy map. An empowered system, according to the guidance, is where learners, teachers and leaders exercise and take initiative within and beyond the classroom in support of improved outcomes for learners. The empowered system is presented as an eight-piece jigsaw with separate guidance documents for each partner in the jigsaw to reflect on empowerment in their own context.
Source: Scottish Government (2020[20]), Achieving Excellence and Equity - 2021 National Improvement Framework and Improvement Plan, https://tinyurl.com/kf3xtp49 [accessed on 21 April 2021].
For school leaders, teachers and the general public, these moving maps of the policy landscape and the emergence of new or revised initiatives and priorities generate a continuum of perception (OECD, 2020[2]). At one end of this continuum is a dynamic and responsive system focused steadfastly on student learning and improvement; at the other, it can be driven by political or media criticism. The challenge of policy coherence and of locating the system on that continuum is not confined to Scotland. Education systems may suffer from “initiative overload” as rapid social, technological and economic changes place increasing pressures on schooling. In countries like Scotland, where there is strong public confidence and interest in education, these pressures can be particularly acute.
The OECD team heard a number of system stakeholders, including policy makers, researchers, teachers, school leaders, and parents, refer to increasing media hostility towards education in Scotland. For some schools, this resulted in moves towards conservatism in decision making to minimise the risk of any controversy. For leaders, it gave rise to a constant concern as to how an action or lack of action might be perceived by the media and, increasingly, on social media platforms. This is not a uniquely Scottish experience but added to the political priority placed on education, it makes for a high-pressure and sometimes hyperactive system, where the policies and initiatives may well be ambitious and well-constructed policies in themselves, but how they work as a policy system may not be immediately evident.
Traditionally, Scotland has seen its education system as a source of national pride and granted great importance to educational issues in the political debate to a degree that would be the envy of many a system. This pride has contributed to the broad commitment to CfE and to Scotland’s evident ongoing commitment to improving education in general. The importance afforded to education is also notable in the appreciation that system leaders and stakeholders show for their own role in education, and in the constructive approach that most actors adopt within the numerous governance boards, committees and other advisory groups. The high priority given to education is also reflected in the degree of political debate about education and the positioning of education as a key priority not just for the Learning Directorate but for all of the Scottish Government. The issue of unclear CfE ownership and responsibilities raised in Chapter 3 can aggravate the effect that the political debate has on CfE, meaning that contestation about CfE becomes inevitably political and urgent. There is pressure on senior leaders to react quickly to issues and debates.
As a consequence, Scotland’s CfE exists within a busy policy landscape; the volume of documentation, policies and reviews is high and can sometimes be associated with policy overload. The OECD team was struck by the volume of guidance (and subsequent clarifications and additional guidance) that streamed from Education Scotland in particular. At one level, this is understandable given the extensive remit of Education Scotland. However, it may also be indicative of a system in constant reactive mode. The OECD team noted the absence of a policy review cycle – an identified timeline within which issues or concerns about aspects of CfE would be addressed in a process of systematic and scheduled review – which has proven valuable in similar education systems, although it is not present in many.
Such a systematic approach can also ensure that curriculum issues and controversies can be raised but then flagged for inclusion in the next review rather than requiring immediate, and often political, intervention. Recent work by the OECD looking at how different systems manage curriculum decision making showed that managing the momentum of this process can be challenging. Table 4.1 summarises some of the challenges highlighted by these systems and the strategies they use to tackle them. A key challenge is to identify a timeframe that is effective for the aspirations and structure of the system. Some countries have found that a ten-year timeframe may give system stability but at the expense of responsiveness. Others, that a process of rolling review can allow for an agile response as issues arise, but in turn generates constant change and updating. For systems that value consensus on curriculum, the time it takes to build consensus can delay much-needed reform (OECD, 2020[2]).
Scotland has not decided how or when it will conduct reviews; to date, including this one, reviews have been in response to a controversy rather than planned and proactive, and they have drawn on expertise external to the system.
While external perspectives can be useful from time to time, building internal system capacity for curriculum review, and trust and confidence in that capacity should now be prioritised for Scotland. A cycle of this kind requires three essential supports. First, it needs a systematic approach to data collection on the impact of the curriculum, as discussed earlier. Second, it needs access to independent research on an ongoing basis. And third, responsibility for the cycle of review needs to assigned to an agency accountable to government and wider stakeholders that acts as owner and champion for CfE and where accountability for its quality and sustainability rests. Ironically, in Scotland’s system of many layers of agencies and organisations, this is a current gap.
This chapter considered the policy environment needed to support and sustain the implementation of CfE; not just the kinds of policies needed to enable effective implementation, but the alignment between them that can give teachers and school leaders the agency to design the learning experiences promised for Scotland’s children and young people by CfE 20 years ago. The originality of CfE at the time of its development and its continued relevance and influence on the international stage continues to influence international curriculum policy; affording autonomy at the school level within a national framework is now widely used as a curriculum design principle (OECD, 2020[2]). Other systems share the implementation challenges of these approaches.
This chapter identifies four challenges for Scotland in ensuring that the policy environment is conducive to the aspirations and implementation of CfE. The capacity of teachers and school leaders to be curriculum makers at the school level has developed since CfE was introduced, supported by a range of CPD and support materials. The review found that the capacity of teachers and school leaders and elements of system leadership were being constrained by multiple initiatives in a busy local and national policy environment. The promise of assessment aligned with CfE has not been fully realised, and the OECD is further supporting Scotland in this area via dedicated working paper options for Scotland to move forward with assessment and qualifications (Stobart, forthcoming[22]). This gap is the most significant barrier to implementation in the secondary education level, with the backwash from qualifications in the Senior Phase shaping the experience of learners more than the aspirations of CfE. This alignment challenge extends beyond assessment. While the policy environment is crowded with multiple initiatives, gaps and misalignments remain – such as that in assessment, for example – and where new policies are introduced (or old ones revisited), alignment and coherence is an issue. Another gap in the policy environment is an established systematic review cycle for CfE supported by robust data and evidence.
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