Education and Culture Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Official Report 533KB pdf

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Curriculum for Excellence

Welcome to the 20th meeting in 2012 of the Education and Culture Committee. I remind members and those in the public gallery to switch off all electronic devices, particularly mobile phones, which should be switched off at all times.

Agenda item 1 is an evidence session on curriculum for excellence. The committee is particularly interested in hearing witnesses’ views on Education Scotland’s recent curriculum for excellence audit report. Following this session, we will take evidence from the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning on the main issues that have arisen from the one-off evidence-taking sessions that the committee has been holding over the past few months. Curriculum for excellence will also be discussed during that session.

I welcome Larry Flanagan, the general secretary of the Educational Institute of Scotland; Ken Muir, the chief inspector of Education Scotland; Alan Taylor, from the Scottish Secondary Teachers Association; and Margo Williamson, from the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland.

I will start by asking a general question of all our witnesses. There have been a lot of stories in the press about the Education Scotland audit report. Can you give us a one-minute summary of your views on the report?

We were quite disappointed with the audit, as it asked the wrong people for information. We would have preferred it if practising teachers had been asked the questions but, in many areas, directors of education responded, presumably in consultation with headteachers. I am a practising teacher and I was never asked how things were going with curriculum for excellence. I asked my headteacher when he was going to ask me and he said that he had not been asked to consult principal teachers. We were disappointed that the wrong people were asked questions, and we think that the whole process was rather flawed.

The audit that was carried out by Education Scotland took place alongside various things that local authorities were doing to see how schools, staff and pupils were doing in that regard. The audit was another thing that gave us an indication of the level of performance in our schools and how ready we were for curriculum for excellence.

It is important to see the audit in the context of all the things that we are doing. As a local authority, we continually ask staff how they are doing. We look at the evidence for that and identify what we have to do next. Local authorities continually self-evaluate and have inspections. We use “How good is our school?” and have school improvement plans and standard quality reports. They also engage in a number of ways with principal teacher networks, headteachers and teacher focus groups.

If anything, Education Scotland’s audit was just another way of taking our temperature with regard to our readiness for curriculum for excellence. Directors of education and teachers are responsible for the lives of young people and want to ensure that those young people get the best deal possible. As we go through this period of change, it is important that we keep reviewing what we are doing to see whether we are on track and doing well. The audit was just another thing that gave us that confirmation.

The audit was announced the last time that I was in this committee giving evidence on curriculum for excellence, and Education Scotland was charged with carrying out the audit. Subsequent to that, the EIS reached an agreement with the cabinet secretary around the senior phase support package. One of the things that we pressed for was for the audit to listen to the teacher’s voice. We were clear that we wanted the audit process to engage with teachers in schools. As Alan Taylor said, that did not materialise. The audit was carried out largely in the way that had been planned before the agreement, which was as a survey of education directorates and headteachers.

From our point of view, the audit was superficial. It did not allow the teacher’s voice to be heard. There was no guidance to suggest that staff meetings and departmental meetings should be factored into discussions. There is a lesson there for us about the collegiate practice that operates in schools. We would press for the teacher’s voice to be heard in all those discussions. However, we are where we are.

One of the plus points to come out of the audit in discussions that we have had with Education Scotland is that it has made a commitment to the effect that, even though the audit has been completed, teachers can bring concerns to Education Scotland for investigation and remedial action. That is the kind of open agenda that we have been pressing for in terms of the on-going dialogue. We have all learned lessons about how we consult, and I think that we are moving forward from where we were.

Ken Muir, how do you respond to those comments?

You need to see the audit in the context of significant, on-going engagement with class teachers, headteachers and local authorities over a number of years. Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education and Education Scotland have provided update reports to the curriculum for excellence management board for well over two years. We have been engaging on an on-going basis. The report makes it quite clear that the findings are the result of more than the one-off exercise, which has been described as being quite shallow. The reality is that there has been a continuation of our engagement with schools and practising teachers over at least that period of time. Over the past two or three years, we have undertaken 900 or so inspections of schools. As members know, we talk to teachers on those inspections. The audit must be seen in the context of an accumulation of evidence over the past few years.

The audit was designed and timed in order to work out the priorities for curriculum for excellence over the next year and use them to inform the implementation plan, and to ensure that we could determine what Education Scotland might be asked to do in conjunction with local authorities by way of support.

Although the majority of the discussions took place with directors of education and senior officers in local authorities, the audit was also based on the feedback that we have received from classroom teachers and senior managers in secondary schools over a period of time.

Why, if that is the case, do the trade unions seem to have an almost diametrically opposed view of what the audit was about?

We were clear that we were trying to do a stocktake at a particular point in time to inform our on-going planning in Education Scotland. From the feedback that we have had on inspections, we recognise that there have been variations in readiness between individual schools and sometimes even between individual departments within schools, and many teachers still see a number of challenges ahead in the implementation of curriculum for excellence. We wanted to get a handle on what the support needs were—that was partly the purpose of the audit—but we also wanted to inform the kind of things that we will focus on in the implementation plan for curriculum for excellence, which we released at the end of May.

I understand that. You have a clear view about the purpose of the audit, but the view of the unions and, I presume, many of their members seems to be quite different from the impression that you have given this morning.

Maybe there was a different set of expectations. We have more than 2,000 primary schools and nearly 400 secondary schools in Scotland, and it would be unrealistic to expect the resource of Education Scotland to speak to every practitioner in every one of those establishments within a period of about two or three weeks. As I said, the report is predicated not just on that exercise but on the on-going discussions that we have had with teachers over a considerable number of years.

On a similar theme, I am struck by the sense that, as part of an on-going process, the deep audit confirmed an impression that you already had. As Larry Flanagan will testify from the evidence session that he was involved in when the deep audit was announced, the atmosphere at that stage was of a significant divergence of view on where we were at. That is why the cabinet secretary committed to a deep audit. If nothing else, the description of it as a “deep audit” was a mistake, because the idea of depth suggests at least reaching into schools and speaking directly—as part of the audit, not as part of an on-going process—to departmental heads, headteachers and practitioners at the coalface. However, that was clearly never the intention. Do you accept that there was a presentational error in describing it as a “deep audit” if what was envisaged by Education Scotland was, as you say, part of an on-going process and a stocktake of where you were at a particular point in time?

I accept that. There probably has been a difference in interpretation of what the audit was designed to do. However, since the exercise—and as a continuation of the audit—we have continued to engage directly with local authorities and schools to supplement the findings of the audit at a subject-specific level. We have undertaken the best part of 50 or 60 individual subject visits in the course of May and June to corroborate the findings of the audit, which touched on individual departments and subject areas. To suggest that the audit was not deep is partly inaccurate, but there probably were a variety of interpretations regarding the depth to which we could realistically go in the exercise at that point.

I do not think that it would have been necessary for you to speak to every teacher in the 400 secondary schools or every teacher in however many hundreds of primary schools for the exercise to have constituted a deep audit. However, judging from the Scottish Secondary Teachers Association’s evidence to the committee this morning, not a great deal appears to have been done specifically for the audit rather than as part of the on-going process that Education Scotland is undertaking. There does not seem to have been a great appetite to speak to a representative sample of individual teachers as part of the audit even where it was known that concerns had been expressed. That strikes me as not honouring the commitment that the cabinet secretary gave to a deep audit.

We have tried to honour that commitment in the activities that have followed the initial exercise. As Margo Williamson said, in the main, authorities know their schools well. Given the window of time that we had for the exercise, it was not unreasonable for us to talk to senior officers in schools and follow that up with specific visits to individual schools and departments, which is what we have done.

10:15

Do Mr Flanagan and Mr Taylor have any comments on that?

Contrary to what Ken Muir has said, we have found that anyone who has been brave enough to say, “I’m not really managing with this,” or, “I’m not sure what I’m doing,” has been quizzed quite intensively by senior education officials at local authority level and has been made to feel uncomfortable. Such people have quickly got the message to us, “Make sure other people don’t start owning up to this.” It was a really challenging exercise to ask teachers the question that way round and say, “Put your hand up if you’re not really managing.” We were disappointed with the way in which that was handled.

Teachers have said to us, “Here’s the information and here’s the problem, but don’t use our names.” Our general secretary has a huge tome of information from people who have said that they do not want us to use their names because that would not go down well locally. The audit was quite flawed.

There is an important lesson here. When we negotiated the agreement with the cabinet secretary, the phrase that we used in the agreement was that the teacher’s voice had to be heard in the audit, yet some local authorities stepped back from the audit and said that it was nothing to do with them. We were looking for some direction in terms of saying to schools, “This is an opportunity for teachers to express where we are and how we move forward on curriculum for excellence.”

At the very least, our expectation was that principal teachers would be involved in school meetings. The audit mechanism did not allow for that, but that should not have prevented schools from adopting that approach. One of the big issues with curriculum for excellence is that, if it is to succeed, we need collegiate practice in schools and we need the professional voice to be prominent in the debate. The audit showed me that we do not have that in our schools at present, or in our practice at the local authority level. We need to address that.

As a union, we have engaged with Education Scotland subsequent to the audit and raised the concerns that were fed back to us, and we have an on-going agenda. However, it must be realised that the audit was largely superficial and that that reflects a worrying aspect of collegiate practice in our schools. We need to look at that if we are going to move forward on curriculum for excellence.

Mr Muir, do you believe that the audit would have happened at this stage in any case?

As I said, we had always planned to do something before the summer to inform two key pieces of work. One aim was to inform the implementation plan that went out on 23 May as to what the priorities were so that the system knew what we would be focusing our efforts on. There was always a plan to try to do a kind of stocktake at that time but also, more important, to consider what kind of resource we might deploy to provide support in conjunction with local authorities in the run-up to the summer and after the summer. There would have been something. Whether we would have chosen to call it a “deep audit” is another matter, but there was a plan to do a stocktaking exercise to inform how Education Scotland would move forward and provide some of the support, advice and guidance that we knew schools were interested in having. That was certainly on our agenda.

If it was not going to be called a “deep audit”, that raises the question why the cabinet secretary felt obliged to call it that. Why do you think there was a change from the natural process that you were envisaging to an announcement by the cabinet secretary of something that was obviously intended to be a bit more significant in looking at the process in schools?

It comes back to the interpretation of the term “deep audit”. I have been careful not to use that term in the report. I refer to it as a progress audit. I think that that is a better reflection of what it was designed to do at that time.

Just to be clear, was it your understanding that the deep audit, as defined by the cabinet secretary, was required because there were more problems than you envisaged in the more normal process that you thought would happen?

My understanding was that a stocktake of the readiness of the system was required at that point, particularly in relation to secondary schools, given that quite a number of them had begun to think about what to do for their current S2 youngsters who were moving into S3. That stocktake was in line with what we intended to do anyway to inform our future activities.

Was there any engagement with the private sector, which is not responsible to any directors of education, just to find out what its feelings were on the matter?

No.

There was no engagement at all?

Not that I am aware of—certainly not as part of the exercise that we completed at that time.

Teachers always advise pupils to answer the question that they are asked. It appears that Education Scotland was asked to undertake a deep audit, but that has morphed into a progress report. Did Education Scotland answer the question?

I think that we did. Although the report is only three pages long, a substantial amount of information lies behind the judgments that it makes. There was sufficient depth of information to evidence what we say in that report.

We have addressed what was asked of us—to provide that point-in-time report as to the state of readiness of the system to implement curriculum for excellence. The report makes it quite clear that, although there is some good progress in a number of areas, there is still a degree of variation within schools and across authorities. In order for youngsters to benefit from curriculum for excellence, we needed to know what was required by way of additional support, whether it was training or resources or whatever. We have gone as far as we can in addressing the agenda that was given to us.

Who came up with the term “deep audit”?

If I remember correctly, it was first used at the Education and Culture Committee meeting on 28 February this year by Bill Maxwell from Education Scotland.

We can debate the terminology that is now being used but, originally, it was to be a deep audit. From a teaching perspective, if a teacher tasked a pupil studying for their highers to undertake a piece of research on a Scotland-wide issue and the pupil produced a two-and-a-half-page report—with no quantitative information attached to it—I think that the pupil would be sent back to start again. Do you not feel the same?

No. As I said, what we try to do in the report is to present the key messages so that it is relatively easy and unambiguous for folk to see what the outcomes of the audit were. We have to balance a fair degree of detail against setting out clearly what the key messages are. We chose the latter, because we felt that it was appropriate to do so.

I want to try to understand why this problem has arisen. Mr Muir, you mentioned Mr Maxwell’s evidence to the committee on 28 February. He also gave evidence to the committee on 6 March, when he clearly stated that he would be engaging at local authority level; that he would be pooling the information already held by local authorities and headteachers; and that he would be trying to investigate and identify problems where they existed. There is no commitment in his evidence to go down to either class teacher level or principal level in that process—it is about the district inspectors going out, engaging with each local authority and investigating appropriately from there. The term “deep audit” may be a bit of a problem, but I do not think that Mr Maxwell set up expectations of anything other than what he stated then.

At the same meeting, Mike Russell said:

“I would encourage headteachers or teachers in schools that they think could benefit from more support to come forward”.—[Official Report, Education and Culture Committee, 6 March 2012; c 826.]

I think that there was a commitment given to self-referral by teachers at that point. However, we have written evidence from the SSTA that suggests that people felt unable to come forward. It is a worrying situation if people felt that they were not able to self-refer to the headteacher, the department heads or whoever. Is that the general situation in our schools or does that relate to curriculum for excellence in particular? That written evidence also states:

“The Government should have listened to the experts and acted accordingly.”

How could the Government have listened to the experts, if, by the definition of the other evidence, they did not feel able to come forward with concerns at that time?

I think that there was a difference between the audit that was announced to the committee and the expectation that arose from the agreement with the cabinet secretary about the senior phase package. You have Education Scotland in the dock here, a little bit. We expected that local authorities would engage in the audit process, because it is really for local authorities to encourage their schools to have those consultations at school level. Some local authorities turned away from the audit process. That is the big concern. How do we move forward from what was clearly a flawed exercise? It was flawed from our point of view because teachers did not get the opportunity to express their viewpoint.

In Aberdeenshire, for example, subsequent to the publication of the audit, the teacher unions and the local authority—through the local negotiating committee for teachers—have agreed a framework for moving curriculum for excellence forward, which involves an on-going audit process. People in schools are being encouraged to come forward with requests for additional support, to identify what need there is. That is one of the things on which we have tried to engage with Education Scotland. From our and the SSTA’s point of view, the audit was flawed, but we will learn a lesson from that and make sure that the door is open for people to come forward on an on-going basis, so that they can say what they need to make things work in the senior phase.

We have had discussions with Education Scotland about the audit process and we will probably not agree. From our point of view, the audit was superficial. The lesson from that is that we need to have better engagement with teachers and schools, and we need to facilitate things so that their voice is heard. Local authorities have a role to play in ensuring that we have a more open dialogue in schools about the issues and that people do not feel intimidated and are willing to admit that they are off the pace, to set out where they are and where they want to get to, and to say what support they need. As Alan Taylor alluded to, some people are unwilling to indicate that they are behind the timeline, for fear of being branded as somehow failing. We must remove that stigma; otherwise people will not identify the support that is required to take the programme forward.

I will add that one of the beneficial outcomes of the audit has been enhanced working by Education Scotland, local authorities and the professional associations. We all recognise that we all want the same thing from curriculum for excellence. It is not about branding departments as being well behind the curve. Through Education Scotland’s new role, we are trying to use our resources to provide a degree of support and guidance to schools and to departments, so that they can provide youngsters with the entitlements that curriculum for excellence expects.

Although we may have different views about the efficacy of the audit and the depth to which it was conducted, the reality is that it has significantly helped to encourage folk to seek support and guidance as they require it. It is not a case of inspectors inspecting departments and asking them why they are well behind the curve. It is a genuine attempt to work with the authorities, professional associations and others to provide the support that will allow such departments—whose ability we refer to in the report—to get that advice and support either directly from us or through local authorities.

Given the comments that have been made about the audit, and the fact that it was responded to by directors of education, perhaps down to headteachers, was there an issue with local authorities? Why did local authorities—and directors of education, specifically—not ensure that the voice of the teacher was heard in their response to Education Scotland?

10:30

It is clear that the authorities conducted the audit in different ways. There were good reasons for that. There are calendars and programmes in place throughout the year that will involve touching base with different groups of teachers and senior managers in schools. Where an authority was in that calendar when the deep audit came in would determine how it went about conducting that deep audit. The other factor that is relevant to an authority’s ability to conduct the audit is its size. I come back to the mechanisms that we have in place for knowing our schools. We know our schools well.

We have joint negotiating committees and joint consultative committees with the trade unions, which provide another avenue for people to speak up. I do not think that any director of education would want to hear that people were frightened to comment on what the feeling was in their department. I accept what my colleagues are saying. We must continue to increase engagement to ensure that we do not miss any voices. My authority carries out frequent staff surveys. We will continue to use any mechanisms that we can, because we want to hear the voice of the teacher.

To answer Clare Adamson’s question, all that we expected was that headteachers would have a meeting with principal teachers to find out in which subjects they were uncomfortable with the way in which things were heading and in which ones there was a need for extra support in terms of resources or work planning. That information could have been reported back to directors of education quite easily and an overall picture established. In fact, that could still be done—it could be done this week, just about. That might be an exaggeration, but it is not that difficult a task. If headteachers had asked how departments were feeling, we could have had a traffic-light system to indicate where they were with the process, but none of that was done, so we remain disappointed.

Is it fair to say that none of that was done? I get the impression that it was done in different ways in different authorities. I see that Ms Williamson is nodding.

We have evidence that it was done in the way in which we might have expected in five of the local authorities, which is not very many.

ADES is a member organisation. We have several networks, and the feedback that we have received is that the process was carried out in various ways. A lot of teachers were consulted. Principal teachers, as well as directors, were consulted through networks.

I am not an educationist and I have never worked in a school, so I do not understand how things work, but it seems to be perfectly reasonable to assume that, eight years down the line, with curriculum for excellence being one of the major topics in education, headteachers in high schools would already have an extremely good idea of where every department in their school is.

There is a basic flaw in that reasoning, in that it posits a situation in which the headteacher is the fount of all knowledge. In a collegiate school, that is not how practice should be. In the secondary sector, the key specialists on qualifications will be the principal teachers. At the very least, the principal teachers in schools should have been called together for a meeting and should have been given enough time to consult their departments. Schools all have consultative mechanisms. The key issue is that the political will, or the political direction, was not there to engage that voice, which is a concern.

We wrote to all our branches to encourage people to express their views and to ask them for an indication of what had been said in their schools. The most common response that we got from schools was, “What audit?” The branch members had not been involved in anything that spoke of some kind of audit taking place. That is a concern.

The audit report is reasonably balanced in providing an overall picture, but it should not be accepted as a final report. There are still issues to be addressed, and we need to ensure that the programmes are in place to take forward the senior phase. We have crossed the Rubicon as far as implementation is concerned. Some students have started their courses, so we need to ensure that people feel free to come forward and say that additional support is required to make things work for that group of students. That is the basis on which we can make progress.

I will back up Larry Flanagan’s comments. Now that we are in the two-year period leading up to examinations, the crunch time has come for secondary teachers because we are—I am afraid to say—still judged on examinations more than on anything else. As Clare Adamson pointed out, curriculum for excellence has been around for eight years, and we have been reasonably comfortable with it for six. The really telling time, however, will be over the next two years up to when the examinations kick in. Teachers are concerned that, even though they are teaching towards those examinations, they still do not have enough information about them, or exemplars of them. I know that concerns have been expressed about teachers teaching for two sets of exams, but until “How good are your results?” stops being the measure by which teachers are judged, we will always teach towards exams in some shape or form. In any case, we ought to be getting the best results out of our pupils.

You said that, with two years to go until the new national qualifications, it is

“crunch time ... for secondary teachers”.

In its written evidence, Education Scotland says that in some schools children are having to decide now the courses that they will take for those qualifications. How many schools have been identified in the deep audit as taking that approach?

It is difficult to give an exact answer to that; after all, the audit report itself refers to curriculum for excellence’s fast-changing and dynamic context. I would have thought that at the time of the audit somewhere between 30 and 40 per cent of schools would have decided to continue with subject choice at the end of secondary 2. That means that over the next two years those schools will have to say how such an approach gives youngsters going into S3 the full array of entitlements that curriculum for excellence expects as part of a broad general education. Some schools have made their choices and have decided to embark on a two-year course towards nationals 4 and 5.

That said, individual schools use a wide range of curriculum models—indeed, some local authorities are requiring schools to do so—and Education Scotland sees its job as being to move schools to a position in which they are genuinely able to offer that full range of entitlements to a broad general education. Those entitlements have been clearly set out for a good number of years now and schools understand what they are; however, the question is how they can move towards them in a sensible way that will ensure that youngsters are not disadvantaged.

When we in Education Scotland inspect schools, we expect variation in the curriculum that is being offered; indeed, that is why the report refers to a two-year period of evolutionary progress. We are simply trying to be pragmatic and realistic and to accept that—for whatever reason—some schools have decided a maintain a fairly traditional curriculum model as part of delivering curriculum for excellence, whereas others have made a much more radical move to a different set of models. The schools in which S2 youngsters have made their choices face a number of challenges, principal among which is how to ensure that youngsters are not disadvantaged and have the opportunity to receive their full entitlements to a broad general education.

Should we know the number of schools in that position? Was the question asked in the audit and, if not, why not?

To some extent, it was asked in the context of finding out where schools had reached with their senior phase curriculum. However, we have to remember that the exercise was carried out when the Scottish Qualifications Authority was putting out its final course arrangements and specifications, and we in Education Scotland were issuing between 40 and 50 sets of support materials. We know, from the follow-up that we have done, that some departments’ and schools’ questions and uncertainties were answered by both those sets of activities.

However, a number of new issues were raised by some of the final course arrangements and by resources being put into the system. For example, in science there was probably a degree of disappointment about the course arrangements that were proposed, and some departments raised additional issues that they had not raised at the time of the audit. Equally, some departments were awaiting resources to cover new content, but the 44 packages of material that we sent out on 30 April covered that. So, the departments that might have cited issues were reasonably comfortable that the appropriate support had been provided through the Scottish Qualifications Authority or through ourselves and that those issues were no longer as high-profile as they had perhaps been made out to be prior to the audit. It has been a hugely changing environment, which is one reason why it is difficult to give an exact figure for the number of schools at which youngsters have chosen their subjects in S2.

We have raised concerns about curriculum models for some time. We undertook a fairly unscientific survey of our members and found that about 40 per cent of schools had stuck with the older two plus two plus two model. We were not particularly concerned about that at the time because the mantra has always been that it is up to schools to decide the best way in which to deliver the new curriculum. However, in March we got a clear indication that we really should be following the three plus three model. As Ken Muir has just hinted, schools that have chosen the two plus two plus two model for whatever reason—perhaps they thought that it would be the best model—have perhaps got it wrong and it is a bit late in the day for us to try to sort that.

I make it clear that we are not dictating any particular curriculum model to deliver the curriculum for excellence. We know from the inspection evidence that we have gathered that there are a variety of models out there, all of which are perfectly capable of delivering the curriculum for excellence. It is not our position to suggest that the issue is the choice between a two plus two plus two model and a three plus three model. We are not dictating and we have not, for a number of years, expected schools to deliver a particular curriculum model. We are well beyond those times, so it is important to put on the record that we have no expectation of what a secondary school curriculum should look like. We are interested in the extent to which the outcomes for learners deliver the entitlements of broad general education, which can be done in a variety of ways.

Things have moved on; I hope that all schools are aware of that.

You said a wee while ago that you could not get information because of the timing—because you were sending out a lot of stuff at the same time. Is that correct?

indicated agreement.

Now that all the information is out there, do you intend to go back and find out what the situation is for each school?

In mid-May, after we had finished the audit, and again in the middle of this month, our district inspectors re-engaged with the local authorities to talk about how their plans have changed in the light of the on-going exercises that they have been undertaking—which Margo Williamson referred to—in order to get a feel for and to test the temperature of what is happening in individual schools and across an authority as a whole. As I said earlier, we have maintained such engagement with authorities over a number of years. We have continued to do that since the audit and we will continue to do it into the new session 2012-13.

Will you publish figures?

If the committee wants figures on a particular issue, we will be more than happy to provide them.

Mr Muir said that schools can opt for either a two plus two plus two model or a three plus three model. Your position—that the decision is entirely up to them—is clear. Earlier, you mentioned your concern about pupils not getting a broad education. Is that in respect of the schools that have followed a two plus two plus two model?

That is not necessarily the case. The expectation is that youngsters will, in the main, experience a broad general education up to the end of S3—or, at least, will have an opportunity to receive the experiences and outcomes up to the third curriculum level. It is not necessarily the case that a two plus two plus two model cannot deliver that. There are ways that schools can deliver that kind of curriculum, which we see out there just now.

Why, in that case, did you raise it as a concern?

10:45

We did so because we are finding that part of the entitlement to a broad general education involves experiences and outcomes across the range of curriculum areas. If youngsters are choosing, without any comeback, a restricted number of subjects at the end of S2, there is a question mark over the extent to which they are able to experience that full range of experiences and outcomes in the course of S3.

Is your advice that it would be preferable to go for a three plus three model?

No. I said that we are not advocating a particular model. We are interested—as I made clear in the inspection advice note that went out to all schools and authorities last week—in how schools are ensuring that they deliver the full range of entitlements to youngsters across their broad general education. We are not saying that one model is better than the other, and we are certainly not advocating any one particular model.

The key point is what happens in S3, irrespective of the model. If, in S3, pupils have chosen subjects but are still continuing their broad general education, that is fine and would work. The end of S3 is when pupils have their S3 profile, which is when the senior phase is mapped out for them. The key issue is what is happening in the classroom, rather than what the model is.

I want to go back to a point that Mr Flanagan made earlier about local authorities turning away from the audit process. Could you tell me which local authorities those were?

I could.

Can you share that with the committee?

One major authority in the west of Scotland has certainly taken a hands-off approach; there is evidence in that regard.

How major?

I am going there this afternoon. I am not sure that it would be helpful to name specific authorities, but there has certainly been a range of approaches from low engagement to full engagement.

Could anyone else help to illuminate the committee?

I could.

Let us leave that to the witnesses, Mr Findlay.

I have one issue—on which Mr Findlay picked up—to do with the scale of the report itself. I was careful from the outset not to name any individual schools or departments in that audit, for some of the very reasons that Alan Taylor has suggested. We have not been trying to witch-hunt individual schools or departments: far from it. We are genuinely trying to get to a position in which schools, teachers and departments that feel that they need support get that support by whatever means.

The audit itself does not refer specifically to any departments or schools. I had always intended not to name any one individual authority, but one authority is mentioned that has chosen—as has been fairly well-rehearsed in this committee in past meetings—to delay across the board. I am not sure that it is helpful to name individual schools or authorities at this stage. My sense, through our district inspector network, is that everyone is fully signed up to delivering curriculum for excellence, so we need to move forward and try to provide the necessary support.

I think that Mr Flanagan was referring not to whether any one authority was doing it right or wrong, but to whether they had engaged in the audit process. I am more concerned about that, because the audit process is, I presume, intended to get to the bottom of how things are progressing, so it is quite concerning if local authorities have turned away from that process.

That same authority has very recently engaged in a large-scale exercise with its principal teachers—certainly in at least one curriculum area—to determine the extent to which departments still feel that they are able to deliver curriculum for excellence and the new national qualifications within the timescale.

To go back to what we said earlier, although the audit may have been maligned by some people, it has been a very helpful catalyst for engagement with individual practitioners where that might not otherwise have taken place.

Mr Taylor said that five local authorities did the audit correctly, in his view. Can you tell us which they are?

I do not have that information with me. I do not work in our office all the time, so the general secretary has fed me the information, but I presume that we could get that information to the committee if it is thought that it would be helpful.

A useful point in relation to that is my earlier point that we need collegiate practice at school level. To deliver curriculum for excellence, we need different organisations to work together. A particular authority took the view that the audit was the property of Education Scotland, but more collegiate involvement would have produced a better result.

A key aspect of the agreement is the production of the national 4 and 5 course materials. We have a clear commitment from Education Scotland that it will take the lead role in co-ordinating and disseminating those course materials. There was some expectation that Education Scotland would produce all the materials, but that is beyond its capacity. We are looking for a collegiate approach to producing the materials. The key issue for us is that they are produced for schools to allow the national 4 and 5 courses to happen in 2013-14.

I will quote a paragraph from the second page of the SSTA written submission. It states:

“Lateness of delivery of key information ... documents were produced by the Scottish Government offering advice about early presentations, curriculum models and profiling at a point when schools were already two thirds of the way through the ‘broad general education’ stage.”

Was that advice linked to curriculum for excellence? Since I was elected as a councillor in 2003, curriculum for excellence seems to me to have been on the agenda in schools for most of the time.

Most of us work to deadlines. Are a lot of people now panicking about curriculum for excellence from that point of view? What could teachers have done before now about curriculum for excellence and what representations could they have made about it? We heard previously in an evidence session about some teachers’ request to delay curriculum for excellence for a year, but I thought that we had got over that situation.

What further work needs to be done? Having listened to what has been said so far on the subject, my understanding is that curriculum for excellence is about doing different things rather than the same things, and that it is not prescriptive; if it was otherwise, there would be no change. If I were a teacher, I might have been considering curriculum for excellence for quite a while before now.

That may all be naive and there may be too many questions.

There are quite a number of questions, but I will try to answer them. I think that teachers’ expectation was that there would be some cohesive packages that would indicate what new direction we were to take. However, we were simply told “You’ve got the same resources as you’ve always had and there are no support packages.” I am talking about teaching support packages, not just packages that tell teachers about assessments.

For any previous major change that we have had, a big pack of materials would arrive, which we would sift through, sort out the best bits and adapt them for our own use—or ignore them if we wished. However, we have largely had nothing in the way of teaching materials up to this point. Larry Flanagan stressed again the point that the cabinet secretary has promised some sort of teaching packages, but we are already well through the process. The same is true of my points about the lack of delivery of key—

Excuse me, Mr Taylor, but what is that process that you are already going through? Does that mean that because teachers are frustrated at not having materials they have decided to act on their own initiative and make the system work themselves? Is that not what curriculum for excellence is?

Yes—but without new resources and materials, we are largely dependent on what we already have, unless we are given huge amounts of time to develop new material ourselves. However, that would be counterproductive because everyone would be doing the same thing across the country. If such development work was co-ordinated, though, there would not be such a need or workload.

My point is that the affected pupils are currently at the end of second year and two thirds of the way through the broad general education stage. As we have heard, many schools have started on courses for examinations, but we do not have all the key information. For example, we do not have exemplars of the examinations at this stage. We do not feel that we have all the stuff that we should have at this stage to justify fully what we are doing with our classes. Everything is just a bit behind what it ought to be.

Can we go along the line of witnesses for their responses? Jean Urquhart asked a lot of questions.

It is important to keep coming back to the point that curriculum for excellence is about more than just examinations; it is about learning. We have the outcomes and experiences up to fourth level so there is information there for teachers to use.

Over and above that, teachers have had opportunities to work together on interpreting the information that they have got on working time agreements in local authorities and schools. That is an important part of the process of understanding the change.

We have resources from Education Scotland and we now have various materials from the SQA for the teachers to use. I do not want to underestimate the challenges around the amount of time that teachers have, which is why we welcome the additional two days for secondary schools to work together, but I would not say that there is not enough for people to be going on with to provide the best possible opportunities for young people to learn. Remember that the examinations will not come on-stream until 2014.

Although I disagree with a lot of what Alan Taylor said there, he has one point. Some subject areas have seen quite significant content change; that is the reality. It has probably been the best part of 10 years since computing was updated, and there have been significant changes in science and technology courses.

The reality is that some teachers are having to deal with a lot of change in the content and development of skills. Education Scotland put out 44 packages at the end of April, and another 10 in the past week. Others are in the pipeline and will be put out after the summer. The packages are on those courses and units in which there has been the most significant change.

I agree with Margo Williamson. The “Building the Curriculum” documentation has been in the system for a number of years, and the draft “Experiences and Outcomes” are out. The SQA has issued some draft documentation, which gives at least some indications of what the expectations of exams are, and those were confirmed with publication at the end of April. There has been a lot for teachers to be working on.

The reality is that the teachers are doing the day job at the same time and, in some subject areas, there has been significant change for them to take account of. Our role, in conjunction with the local authorities, is to provide support that will allow the youngsters to get the full range of entitlements.

Ken Muir said that there is a lot for teachers to be working on; that is precisely the problem. The biggest challenge is workload and the time to manage it. Unfortunately, because the qualifications were scheduled for 2013 and 2014, a timeline was produced for curriculum for excellence for the secondary sector that worked back to what would be the first cohort of pupils who will hit those exams. Secondary schools have therefore focused on qualifications as their main purpose.

Curriculum for excellence is trying to create a different framework, but the anxieties all develop around the qualifications, and a lot of parents are concerned about that. That is one of the reasons why we pressed for a delay of a year to give more time to schools so that they can cope with the pressure of the implementation workload. If we could not get the year’s delay, we would have preferred a phased introduction so that those schools that were ahead of the game could push ahead and the others could get additional support.

We did not get either of those things, but we now have an agreement around additional resources, which is very welcome. Some of the funding that will go directly to schools will allow for materials or cover to be bought in to allow additional preparation to be done. The two days and the course materials are welcome, but there are still huge challenges in ensuring that the pupils who are in the system at the moment in S2 are not disadvantaged by being the first cohort. I have said at this committee before that, if we talk about experiences and outcomes, and we say that 90 per cent of schools are on board with experiences and outcomes, we feel that we are making good progress.

If only 90 per cent of schools are ready for the qualifications, we are in serious trouble because that would mean that 10 per cent of pupils would be underprepared for the exams, which cannot be allowed to happen. We really need to ensure that the support package works, and that when additional support is required, teachers are confident enough to say, “We need this support”, and the cabinet secretary ensures that it is delivered.

11:00

We have run out of time, but I want to finish with a quick answer from each of you. We have talked about the difficulties, and the efforts to ensure that no pupil suffers disadvantage as a result of the introduction of the new courses. I will draw a line under that and ask what is the next step in ensuring that that happens? If you could give me quick answers, I would be very grateful.

First, delivery of the course materials will be hugely helpful, as long as it is done on time and it is good. Secondly, there needs to be co-ordination between local authorities and Government in preparation for the work. Last week, I was at a national qualifications group that was doing the same thing as a group of principal teachers in North Lanarkshire. It is absurd that two groups were doing exactly the same thing. There needs to be somebody co-ordinating and telling schools, “Look, this is happening out there.” If they know what is happening, they can pause and wait for it to happen rather than double up their efforts.

For ADES, the next step is to continue to foster the trust among the teachers and build their confidence.

Co-ordination and partnership are key to ensuring that youngsters get the best out of curriculum for excellence. I am talking about co-ordination and partnership at all levels.

I apologise for my phone—I forgot to turn it off.

I was going to take you up on that afterwards. Seeing as it is on the record, you should not have had your phone switched on, Mr Flanagan. [Laughter.]

Sorry, sir.

The key point is that Education Scotland needs to deliver on the course materials. That is crucial. SQA needs to deliver on the training for the new qualifications. We need openness and more collegiate practice in schools so that we are working together to ensure that pupils get the benefits of CFE.

I thank the witnesses for coming along this morning. It has been an interesting and informative evidence session.

11:02 Meeting suspended.

11:06 On resuming—