MOST parents don’t understand major changes to the curriculum and exams introduced in the last few years, MSPs have been told.

Joanna Murphy, chairwoman of the National Parent Forum of Scotland, told Holyrood’s education committee a lack of information on Curriculum for Excellence “has been the most major failing”.

And she said information was still not being shared “adequately or successfully enough”.

“The experience for parents is they don’t know what’s happening, so they don’t understand how it works,” she said.

“They don’t know if it’s good and they don’t know if it’s bad. They just don’t know about it really at all.”

Eileen Prior, executive director of parent body Connect, added: “It is a fresh cohort of parents and children every year so there is a refresh needing doing.

“One of the challenges is that by the very nature of schools, they will manage the message and so what they present to parents as being he best ... will very rarely be challenged.”

There was also concern a narrowing of the curriculum in S4 was restricting subjects at Higher.

Ms Murphy said: “The theory is you should be able to pick up other subjects and you should be able to crash Highers ... but in practice it probably does.”

Magaidh Wentworth, of Gaelic-medium education parents’ organisation Comann nam Parant, told MSPs too many schools were using “restrictive” systems of choice.

The evidence followed a committee survey which found 56 per cent of pupils were not able to choose all the subjects they wanted.