A leading architect of changes to the Scottish school curriculum said yesterday the package "lacked vision".

Keir Bloomer said some of the recently published guidance to help teachers is "nonsense", five years after he helped lay its foundations.

The Curriculum for Excellence (CFE) is aimed at steering the system away from exam preparation to preparing pupils for adult life.

It includes teaching children how to find information for themselves, check whether it is reliable, then use the information practically.

Mr Bloomer said he supports the CFE's aims, but added: "I think nobody would have imagined at the time Curriculum for Excellence was published in 2004 that we would be scarcely off the starting blocks by summer of 2009.

"It is supposed to be about long-term transformational change. The trouble is the programme is not about that at all - it is about small steps that will get us to tomorrow.

"The long-term visionary aspect has been lost."

Mr Bloomer, a former council chief executive, criticised Government agencies for creating confusing guidance.

"There are good and positive things in there, but there is no consistency in it. A lot of bits of pure nonsense have been let in," he said.

He highlighted one part of the Curriculum for Excellence that describes literacy as "the set of skills which allows an individual to engage fully in society and in learning, through the different forms of language, and the range of texts, which society values and finds useful".

Mr Bloomer said his criticism is not party political or aimed at Scottish Education Secretary Fiona Hyslop.

"She finds herself as being the public face of a document, parts of which make no sense," he added.

But Mr Bloomer's comments prompted claims from the Labour Party that confidence in the curriculum had been dented.

MSP Rhona Brankin, the party's education spokeswoman, said: "Keir Bloomer is right. The learning outcomes for literacy are gobbledegook.

"These reforms need to set out clearly how teachers can identify whether a child can read or write."

Liz Smith, the Conservatives' schools spokeswoman, said: "We have been warning for some time that teachers are not being given clear direction as to how to carry out the core aims of the curriculum."

A Scottish Government spokesman said: "Keir Bloomer is an important educational thinker and we will always listen with interest to his views.

"However, the new curriculum has been developed in partnership with teachers who are working in the classroom and who will be responsible for delivering these reforms for the benefit of Scotland's children."