MORE than 20,000 pages of online guidance for teachers on Scottish school reforms have built up over the past 12 years, it has emerged.

Schools quango Education Scotland said the materials had been produced to support the roll-out of the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE), but would now be stripped back to the bare minimum.

The extent of online guidance for schools emerged at a meeting of the Scottish Parliament's education committee which was discussing widespread concerns that CfE has become bogged down with unnecessary guidance.

Bill Maxwell, the organisation's chief executive, said: "I take the point about navigating all the stuff that has been built up over the years.

"We have certainly reached a point in the programme where, for good reasons, throughout the development and early implementation of our programme there has been a demand for a great deal of guidance.

"That now needs to be stripped right back and we are rebuilding our websites. It is dramatic and we will be launching these new guidance websites for teachers with a much more streamlined and accessible set of resources."

Graham Logan, strategic director of Education Scotland, added: "We have been working with teachers and others to reduce the amount of online content and we are about to launch our new website which will represent a 90 per cent reduction in the amount of case studies and other materials.

"There are around 20,000 pages of examples and case studies that have built up, requested over the years to show different examples of CfE, and we are stripping that right back to the absolute core materials."

However, the committee went on to question the organisation over the quality of its communications with parents.

The National Parent Forum of Scotland (NPFS) did not provide a submission to MSPs on the work of Education Scotland, the Scottish Government and the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) because it said their documentation could not be understood by its volunteer members.

The forum said: "Whilst our volunteers have an in-depth knowledge of Scottish education and the terminology that goes with it we feel that all of the provided documents... were totally inaccessible to average parents.

"We do not have the capacity to be able to translate these documents for regular parents and feel we are unable to represent an authentic parental perspective on performance."

James Dornan, the committee convener, said: "Clarity does not mean that you just pare back it means that you use language that everyone else can understand because no-one is more important in this than the parents."

Mr Maxwell said he was disappointed with the response from NPFS and said discussions had already taken place to understand what the concerns were.

Meanwhile a warning has been issued over plans to fast-track new teachers into the profession to cope with shortages.

Teachers' leaders said the Scottish Government proposal risked "short-cuts" which could undermine the standards of the teaching profession.

The concern came after John Swinney, the Education Secretary, unveiled plans for a £1 million drive to recruit more than 200 new teachers.

The proposals include fast-track teacher training for graduates in science, technology, engineering and maths subjects, courses for former teachers who want to return to the classroom and measures to attract unemployed teachers from Ireland.

Mr Swinney said the proposals would help tackle teacher shortages, but would not undermine the standard of teaching in schools.

However, Larry Flanagan, general secretary of the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) said current arrangements where post-graduate training was followed by an induction period of a year in the classroom was the right one.