Curriculum for Excellence ‘will betray children’

Damning verdict from top expert...

A GENERATION of children will be ‘betrayed’ unless SNP ministers reform the failing school curriculum, a leading education expert warns.

Concerns about Scotland sliding down league tables sparked a stark warning from Lindsay Paterson, professor of education policy at Edinburgh University.

He said the Curriculum for Excellence is a ‘plausible culprit for the decline’ in education standards.

And in a plea to ministers not to reject calls for reform, he said children get one chance to learn, so failure to act will mean ‘a whole generation will have been betrayed’.

His comments come after the Scottish Conservatives published a report this week calling for the CfE – which focuses on ‘ life skills’ rather than traditional learning by rote – to be ‘reset’.

In an article published by the London School of Economics and Political Science, Professor Paterson said there is a growing sense that Scotland’s ‘once admired education system is now mediocre’.

He noted that the country is now ‘average’ in world rankings – down to both i mproved performance in other countries and the decline in our schools.

He also highlighted deterioration in the annual Scottish Survey of Literacy and Numeracy.

Professor Paterson criticised the ‘scandal’ of the ‘inadequacy’ of data on school standards, which makes it hard to ‘conclusively’ prove CfE is to blame.

But he said: ‘The reason why the new curriculum is a plausible culprit for the decline lies in what it gets children to learn.

‘It belongs to that strand of curricular thinking sometimes known as constructivism [when pupils are urged to become actively involved in learning rather than simply being taught facts and dates].

‘The essence of this view is that studying bodies of knowledge is pedagogically ineffec- tive. Knowledge goes quickly out of date and learning it is dull. Children emerge allegedly unable to think for themselves, unskilled for work in the new economy and unprepared to act as democratic citizens.’

He added: ‘The defenders of the curriculum deny that knowledge is being neglected but the survey results and the details of the voluminous curricular documents belie that.’

He went on: ‘If schools stop teaching structured knowledge, then inequality of access to knowledge will widen.’

He noted that CfE could not be axed without ‘enormous upheaval’, adding: ‘Since children get only one chance to learn, a whole generation will have been betrayed.’ Scottish Tory education spokesman Liz Smith called the comments ‘a stark warning... about the dangers of doing nothing on CfE’.

A spokesman for the Scottish Government said: ‘ [ CfE] is broadly endorsed in Scotland and has attracted international commendation from the OECD in its assessment of Scottish education and from the eminent educationalists who comprise our International Council of Education Ministers.

‘The latest exam results demonstrated real strength in our education system, with more than 150,000 Higher passes and nearly 60,000 skills - based awards and achievements.’

‘Knowledge is being neglected’

WHEN Scotland’s education system started to slip in international league tables, the SNP’s answer was not to drive up pupil attainment in basics such as reading and arithmetic. Instead, it withdrew from the tables.

This blinkered approach has been typical and the rigid defence of the Curriculum for Excellence and is more about sparing Nationalist blush es than improving schools. Now, this doctrinaire approach risks betraying a generation of Scots, says Lindsay Paterson, professor of education policy at Edinburgh University.

He warns that a scandalous lack of information makes it hard to trace the exact cause of the decline in our schools.

But it does seem a focus on woolly ‘life skills’ is linked with the slide from a onceadmired system to one that is merely mediocre.

It turns out that Nicola Sturgeon’s pledge to make education her main focus, the benchmark against which her administration would be judged, was just another glib soundbite.

Independence transcends everything for the SNP leader and her party of zealots, counting for more than even the life chances of thousands of young Scots.

What an invidious position for a First Minister who once promised to lead for all of Scotland.