Education reform consultation on behalf of Professor Ken Muir, University of the West of Scotland and Independent Advisor to the Scottish Government

Clearer guidance on progression. Refine the E & O’s and clarify benchmarking for each stage. Less is more. It’s never good to have too much freedom. The current CfE offers too much scope and causes increased stress to teachers. For P1 some offer play and others do not. Children need to be ensured a range of experiences that allow them to learn to be independent thinkers and learners. Additionally, not all schools and classrooms have enough working ICT to allow children to practise and improve the skills they will need in today’s technological world.

I don’t believe their is a coherent progression as CfE is not prescriptive enough.

More set guidance for each age group but with less outcomes. Any teacher will tell you how difficult it is to ensure depth and breadth in each area with so many outcomes to ‘cover’. Coverage can be maintained but their is not always time to ensure depth of coverage in each outcome as there are so many to cover over the year.

Less autonomy and more prescription. So much of teachers time is spent pulling together planning. If the planning was given as a set that could be tweaked at class level then teachers would have more time to teach and plan how they can deliver each lesson to their current cohort.

I’m currently unsure of any advantages. I agree that there are
so many ideas and teachers are given too many new ideas to implement in class. Some do not know how to fit all of the new ideas management task them with into their day and timetable. What teachers need is an agency to create planning that they can tweak to their specific class. They need a smaller bank of ideas to choose from.

More ideas and still not enough time.

All curricular areas Bering given similar standing.
By this I mean all children being able to access the subjects they want to. Some children cannot take specific subjects because they are in the same ‘column’ on the choice list as others they must choose. This is not fair and allows subject hierarchy to be maintained. My son was not ‘allowed’ to continue to higher RMPS, his favourite class, because there were not enough pupils in the class. This needs to be fixed and offered.
If possible, at different locations to allow children to have real choice in their future.

Not all schools have working technology. Many of the items are outdated or broken. Many cannot be used because chargers are broken and they simply cannot afford replacements. Additionally, classes may not have enough deceives etc. to allow the children enough time on a device to fulfil the depth of understanding and learning.

Large class sizes make assessments extremely time consuming. Teacher have less time to spend with the children who need support. Support in classes is also almost non existent. Any support available is needed for distressed children in schools who are not in the correct environment due to the presumption of mainstreaming.

The Scottish government.
The government need to engage and consult with teachers to see what is actually needed in current classrooms.

There are too many people trying to look busy to justify their job title. They throw ideas at teachers and expect all of the ideas to be Implimented in classrooms. There are too many ideas and not enough time. We need less agencies, more support in classrooms, smaller class sizes and more prescriptive planning, not more agencies trying to justify how busy they are. We need to start getting back to basics and spend our money wisely.

I spend so much time completing referrals to be told unless parents engaged nothing can be done. This means children go without support in the areas they need because parents do t/won’t engage. Their needs to be a system that works for children and that ensures parents are made to justify their non engagement. A system that allows children, for example, to have speech and language support even if parents do not engage. The child suffers because of the parents engagement and this is not right or fair to these children.

Teacher have access to CPD. Some CPD is better quality than others but that seems to be down to training and the passion of the leaders on their subjects .

Young people often rely on parents especially in primary stages.
If parents don’t engage it can then impact on the child’s learning g and future.

There needs to a review of the balance of class sizes, support given, ASN in class and class results. This would give a clearer picture of our classrooms and schools. Sending inspectors in and having management putting on a ‘show’ for a week does not work and merely stresses staff and children in school.

I think the current system works well for most children.