Labour’s curriculum review: what can we learn from Scotland?

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2024 on Saturday 19 October at Church House, Westminster.

ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION

The Labour government has launched a new Curriculum and Assessment Review. Some observers are pointing to Scotland as a potential blueprint for the kind of ‘progressive’ curriculum that Labour’s review may want to embrace. But should Scotland be a cautionary tale, rather than a model?

In Scotland, the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE), is a system developed in the early 2000s under a Labour administration in Holyrood, but implemented by the SNP in 2010-11. The philosophy behind it is a challenge to the liberal education system, but it has also arguably embedded the politicisation of the curriculum into the schools system.

The CfE adopted a ‘child centred’ and ‘therapeutic philosophy’, and its ambition was to move away from a focus on imparting knowledge towards creating ‘Successful learners, Confident individuals, Responsible citizens and Effective contributors’. Despite the fact that the CfE has led to a decline in Scotland’s performance in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and in the annual Scottish Survey of Literacy and Numeracy, all the major political parties in Scotland continue to support it.

The fact that Scotland’s curriculum is not based on a solid and agreed body of knowledge and understanding has made it particularly vulnerable to politicisation. So, for example, following the recent riots, government advisers have demanded that anti-racism should be embedded into all subject areas.

This follows on from initiatives to ‘queer’ many aspects of the curriculum. Across Scotland, parents, grandparents and teachers have become increasingly concerned about a growing trend to use inappropriate and sexually explicit material in the classroom. On investigation, it has become clear that this ’sex education’ is not the outcome of maverick activists, but conforms to government policy and guidance. Similarly, the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) has set out new professional criteria for teachers, which demands that teachers and schools adopt ‘social justice’ as their central ethos.

The Scottish Union for Education (SUE) was formed last year to mobilise opposition to this increasing politicisation of Scotland’s schools. In this session, campaigners will offer insights into the dangers of any contemporary curriculum reform.

Have standards really fallen in Scotland and, if so, to what extent is the CfE responsible? Should parents get more say in what is taught, or is that best left to education experts? Are fears about the UK government’s review reasonable or is a review a useful exercise for a new administration to undertake?

SPEAKERS
Kate Deeming
parent and supporters coordinator, Scottish Union for Education

Julie Sandilands
teacher; education commentator, Scottish Union for Education

Dr Stuart Waiton
senior lecturer, sociology and criminology, Abertay University; author, Scared of the Kids: curfews, crime and the regulation of young people; chair, Scottish Union for Education,

CHAIR
Penny Lewis
editor, Scottish Union for Education