“Do you know the trouble with all these news reports I have to do on Curriculum for Excellence?” confided a well-known TV reporter.  “It’s so hard actually to describe to the viewers what it’s all about”.

I do think the reporter has a point.  What’s the bottom line with Curriculum for Excellence?  Beyond all the edu-speak, how will pupils really benefit?

We’ve coined two catch phrases to sum up Curriculum for Excellence:

  • Making Sense of Learning
  • Doing School Together

We use ‘Making Sense of Learning’ to headline inter-disciplinary learning, real-life contexts, skill development and, yes, the Four Capacities (although please let’s get beyond the jargon!).  ‘Doing School Together’ – that’s about the really different dynamic that we need in schools.  It’s about developing people, which includes stretching them academically but goes way beyond it.  It’s about relationships, community, and yes, co-production of learning.

It’s fine to talk in catchy phrases, and better communication is important.  But is there any evidence on the ground that it’s happening?  In Monifieth High School we decided to ‘go live’ with an S1 course totally based on the Level 3 outcomes in August 2009, a year ahead of the national timeline.  And like many other schools, of course, a fair bit of our practice right across the school already mirrored CfE: we’ve been Doing School Together in its CfE sense, for a decade or more.

By the summer term of 2010, therefore, there really was a lot of evidence to examine.  We’d been doing plenty of self-evaluation, but we wanted an objective external view as well.  Accordingly we commissioned Stirling University Department of Education to examine the implementation of our S1 Inter-disciplinary course.  The results are fascinating: no great surprises, but the sharpness of focus brought by trained researchers is most helpful.

What did pupils think of Inter-Disciplinary Learning?  Some positive ‘headlines’ include:

  • the links between subjects: pupils were specific and detailed about how this helped their learning
  • the sense of fun and engagement brought by high-profile topics
  • varied teaching styles and approaches around the same topic, which increased their depth of understanding

Of course, there’s much more detail than that, but was it a helpful perspective?  We certainly felt it was.  Much more was to come though.  A couple of weeks ago we were visited by Sir Peter Housden, Permanent Secretary to the Scottish Government.  How on earth do you try to capture all that’s been happening with CfE in the school over just 90 minutes, when you’re presenting to Scotland’s top civil servant on his first visit to a Scottish school?

No pressure, then!

I sat and watched 14 staff and pupils enthuse about their experiences.  Video clips of team teaching.  A penetrating reflection on our World-Cup-themed interdisciplinary topic, in their own words by S2 pupils.  Older and younger teachers describing their hard work but also their commitment to the new developments.  A pupil in a sari who’d been part of the team from the school doing development work in India: these pupils are now negotiating with teachers about a new interdisciplinary topic for the S2 CfE course.  Senior pupils talking in detail about their own leadership of some aspects of school development.

Is CfE having an impact?  Is it better for our pupils than what we’ve had before?  The evidence was right there in front of me.  Yes, introducing CfE is a lot of work.  But haven’t we always worked for our pupils?  Isn’t that what it’s all about?

Those pupils, those staff were not talking vague sound-bites.  There was detailed analysis and evidence to back up what they claimed.  Our pupils will do much better, and will grow much further, as a result of CfE.

Richard Coton, Rector, Monifieth High School