Explained: how does Curriculum for Excellence really work?

The model has its origins in the early days of devolution and a so-called ‘national debate on education’ which took place in 2002.

Over the next decade or so, a new curriculum was developed which would (at least in theory) provide a coherent learning experience from the age of three right up to the point at which a young person leaves school.

The goal of CfE was to ensure that schools were free to develop approaches that worked for their pupils and wider communities, all while moving away from the previous system’s reliance on centralised and standardised tests to measure progress. Ultimately, it would mean that teachers were expected not just to delivery a curriculum, but to actually build it as well.

How does CfE work?

The curricular is built around statements known as the ‘four capacities’, which outline the type of young people that we are aiming to produce via the school system. These state that young people will become Successful Learners, Confident Individuals, Responsible Citizens, and Effective Contributors.

In order to achieve this, a set of seven ‘principles of curricular design’ (challenge and enjoyment, breadth, progression, depth, coherence, relevance, and personalisation and choice) were provided to help schools plan their new approaches.

The next layer of the curriculum, known as the Experiences and Outcomes (or Es&Os for short) outlines the material that should actually be taught to students on a day-to-day basis. There are more than 1,000 Es&Os in total, organised across eight curricular areas and covering five different stages of learning.

Rather than specifying what pupils should know, the Es&Os are framed as a statement of ability from the perspective of a pupil.

For example:

“I can make notes, organise them under suitable headings and use them to understand information, develop my thinking, explore problems and create new texts, using my own words as appropriate.”

“I can apply my knowledge and understanding of measure to everyday problems and tasks and appreciate the practical importance of accuracy when making calculations.”

“By investigating floating and sinking of objects in water, I can apply my understanding of buoyancy to solve a practical challenge.”

Pupils are expected to be given the opportunity to meet all Es&Os for their stage of learning. In secondary schools teachers can largely concentrate on the statements that relate to their section of the curriculum – albeit with literacy, numeracy, and health and wellbeing regarded as the ‘responsibility of all’ – but primary school and early years teachers must plan learning across all areas.

Why has CfE been criticised?

A lack of specificity has been a central complaint from the early days of CfE: many teachers criticised the four capacities and seven principles as being ultimately meaningless, while the sheer scale of the Es&Os – which, despite taking up hundreds of page, also manage to be often vague and unhelpful – sparked early and well-founded concerns that they would lead to the development of an audit-driven approach to education.

In recent years, the absence of a specific, knowledge-based framework in the curriculum has also led to increasing criticism, with some arguing that the expectations for what pupils actually know at each stage of schooling should be explicitly outlined.

In addition to concerns about curricular design, the implementation process for CfE has also been heavily criticised, with a lack of support materials and absence of sufficient exemplification of standards making life even more difficult for teachers across Scotland.

Some argue that these problems have led to a decline in the standard of Scottish education that can be seen in the country’s falling performance in international comparisons such as PISA.

Has any action been taken to address these issues?

Despite a continued insistence that CfE is working well for Scotland’s young people, the Scottish Government and official agencies have been forced to accept that at least some aspects of the curriculum either have not worked as intended or need to be updated.

In response to criticism of the vagueness of Es&Os, a series of ‘benchmarks’ were published to “provide clarity on the national standards expected.” These were widely criticised for simply adding more complexity to the system rather than simplifying it, and many do little to clarify the Es&Os to which they are supposed to apply.

More recently, the Scottish Government responded to criticism from the OECD by introducing a ‘Curriculum Improvement Cycle’, which was intended to address the fact that the country had no official processes in place allowing for the curriculum to be reviewed and updated as needed.

Although this work has now commenced, it is yet to have a significant impact, and some are sceptical that the approach now in place will offer any genuine solutions to the well-documented problems of CfE.

The Scottish Government insists that the renewal programme will "provide greater clarity, strengthen the connections between knowledge, skills and understanding, and improve coherence from the ages of 3 to 18." It also says that it is "working closely with Education Scotland, local authorities and importantly Scotland’s teachers, in considering changes to the curriculum.”

Is it time to scrap and replace CfE entirely?

Perhaps, but a great deal of work would be needed.

By the end of the current parliament, CfE will have existed in some form for around a quarter of a century, and developing a replacement that meets the needs of 21st Century Scotland while avoided the mistakes of its predecessor could take up to a decade.

While many may feel that it makes sense to plan for a new curriculum to be introduced as the current generation of pupils leave school, the impact on a teaching profession still coping with the failures of CfE – as well as a workload crisis, an explosion in additional support needs, increasing levels of violence and aggression, declining job security, large class sizes, and levels of class contact time that are higher than any other comparable nation – would have to be taken into account.