Curriculum for excellence guidance was ‘self-evident lunacy’, MSPs hear

Attempts to de-clutter Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) were ‘self-evident lunacy’ because it involved more and more layers of bureaucracy, educationalist Keir Bloomer has told MSPs.

In a meeting of the Scottish Parliament’s Education and Skills Committee, the education convener with the Royal Society of Edinburgh said the recent OECD report into Scottish education had revealed the mountain of bureaucracy.

“We have not been successful at de-cluttering,” he said.

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The OECD, he said, had found “four capacities, twelve attributes, 24 capabilities, five levels, seven principles, 16 entitlements, eight curriculum areas, four contexts for learning and 1,820 experiences and outcomes.

“That is self-evident lunacy. We have allowed mountains of guidance, much of it very badly written, nearly incomprehensible, to accumulate over the years, and that now stands in the way of the decluttering of the curriculum.”

He welcomed John Swinney’s recent announcement that guidance would be streamlined, but added: “It’s slightly unfortunate the recent attempt to do something about it has resulted in the issuing of a further 99 pages of guidance.”

Susan Quinn of the Education Institute of Scotland (EIS) said the interpretation of guidance had also been inconsistent. “We know that some local authorities took a very firm approach to it, ‘we’re all going to do the same reporting system’ and we were back where we started, with schools being told what it should look like for their young people regardless of the context they’re in.

“There are others where the local input has not been helpful, because it’s been just ‘it’s there, design your own things. We would probably contest there’s a happy medium.”

Bloomer described guidance as “a weasel word” because sometimes it means instruction, and sometimes it meant advice.

Strategic guidance should be “limited in nature”, he suggested, while “the suggestion element needs to be teacher led.”

An overall strategic plan, which has been lacking from CfE, was the responsibility of government, he said.

“Either you trust the teaching profession or you don’t. The whole philosophy of Curriculum for Excellence is that you trust the profession,” he said.

“You supplement that with a limited amount of strategic advice and you trust the profession then to implement it.”