Thank you. I thank the committee for the invitation to give evidence on an issue that is central to Education Scotland and on which we are currently working.
Someone once said that in order to set sail on a journey of discovery, you first have to leave the safety of the shore, and that seems appropriate for this inquiry. For the teenagers leaving our schools and colleges in the next couple of months, their whole educational career has been involved with curriculum for excellence. As I am sure many of you will agree, the future that they face in the 21st century is different from what I experienced at school. As a nation, we designed curriculum for excellence to be flexible in order to enable the education system, and the children and young people within it, to adapt to a rapidly changing world and the skills needed to thrive in it. CFE still has real untapped potential, and we need to set it free and let it happen.
We should not be surprised that our young people have adapted to and are revelling in their CFE experiences. They expect to make more choices about their learning and careers than we ever had to or are used to, and they expect to have more options to choose from in an ever-changing system and world, where, even in their lifetimes, the pace of change has been unprecedented.
There has been much debate on the topic of subject choice. I am clear that we should not lose sight of what young people are telling us about what they want from their education. It is little surprise that many of our young people are not expressing concern about not doing enough qualifications. Instead, we more frequently hear complaints from them about too much of a focus on traditional qualifications at the expense of innovative pathways through their final years at school—the years in which they prepare for the world of work.
There is still work to do to achieve that for our young people. We are still seeing too many settings with a focus on a one-year qualifications ladder and a drive to the next batch of national qualifications, highers and advanced highers—and too often in the traditional subjects that you and I might have studied. There is a wealth of courses and programmes that are available at the same level as highers and which have been certificated by not just the Scottish Qualifications Authority but many others, too. There is no doubt that we need more help and support for parents, employers and many others to understand the options and changes that are available. It is not easy to change the mindset in a system such as education, but collectively we need to do it.
That said, we have highlighted encouraging evidence in our latest thematic inspection, on curriculum empowerment, which was published at the end of last week. The good news is that almost all headteachers and schools feel empowered to make decisions about their curriculum, and almost all are now revisiting the broad general education to plan better-aligned learning pathways, particularly between the BGE and the senior phase.
We found that, in secondary schools, teachers are concerned about the number and timing of changes to SQA courses over the past few years and their impact on planning for progression. Moreover, schools, particularly but not solely in rural areas, continue to find it difficult to recruit teachers. Although schools are finding creative solutions to deal with that, that situation can—and in some cases does—limit opportunities to lead extensive curriculum improvements, and in some instances, to provide a local curriculum that fully meets the needs of the children and young people whom they serve.
The education governance review strengthened the remit of Education Scotland, and we recognise our role in taking the sector forward through the next phase of curriculum for excellence. Indeed, we have been developing with partners a refreshed narrative for CFE to support teachers moving into the next phase in a changed and changing system.
We have also been reorganising over the past six months. I am excited about our new regional structure, which was introduced two days ago and which will support schools, local authority and regional improvement collaboratives. We are also excited about our plans to engage with thousands of teachers in the next academic session on improvement topics, in respect of which innovative curriculum design is one of our highest priorities.
The debate that I want us to have is about how we ensure our young people make the choices that they want, often from a much wider range of options than the traditional academic subjects, delivered in the traditional way, that formed the mindset of many of us. My question is: how do we deliver the greater choice and personalisation that our young people need? The answer is much broader than just having five, six or eight options to choose from. We must deliver a modern curriculum for excellence—our children and young people deserve and expect no less.