Curriculum reforms are a ‘disaster’ for poor pupils

● Leading expert warns lack of rigour could leave the disadvantaged behind

One of Scotland’s leading education experts has claimed reforms are “dumbing down” the national curriculum and warned the impact on children’s futures could be “disastrous”.

Professor Lindsay Paterson, who has advised Scottish politicians on education policy since the 1990s, said the Curriculum for Excellence (CFE) risked backfiring and widening the gap between the richest and poorest pupils.

Development of the CFE began more than a decade ago with the aim of making learning more holistic and helpingyoungpeoplefrom all backgrounds achieve at school.

But Prof Paterson said a lack of “academic rigour” meant the new system – which has culminated in the introduction of a new haps is even deeper than that, which is that it will widen inequality.

“The old academic knowledge – the best that has been thought and said by human beings – will still be given to the children of the well-educated middle class by their parents. But the other children, who can’t get it from their parents, are completely dependent on schools for it.

“And if they’re not getting the best that has been thought and said from schools, they will get it from nowhere, and that will make inequality of learning and of culture wider than it has ever been.”

Education Secretary John Swinney defended the CFE, saying it had been developed through a “long process of debate”.

He said: “When I go round the schools of Scotland, I see teachers highly motivated by Scotland’s curriculum because what our curriculum has done is allowed the teachers of Scotland to deploy their professional skills.

“The people who are benefiting from their professional skills are the young people of Scotland who just last month secured over 150,000 passes at higher level, demonstrating the academic rigour of our qualifications and our curriculum.”

Scottish Conservative shadow education secretary Liz Smith said: “Too often, the teaching of core knowledge has had to give way to the teaching of skills, but these skills cannot be developed properly if pupils not have the basic knowledge of literacy and numeracy and of the traditional subjects on a school curriculum.”