Curriculum for Excellence

[onestarrynight]

I have a DC due to start school soon and I feel like I keep hearing negative things about CfE (things like too much emphasis on group work, muddying of boundaries between different subjects, not enough factual knowledge, too nationalistic, etc) but I don't know anyone with primary age DC who can tell me about the reality. If you have primary age DC, how have you found it? If you have particular complaints about your DC's experience, what sort of things have been poor? I'm not really sure how worried to be.

Many university science/maths courses specifically exclude Applications in Maths as an accepted subject.

I've come across from the English system and my daughter is now in P3, reception was in England. She's the part of the cohort that are a year behind where they would be in England (summer birthday)

She's a bit ahead of where she would be if we were still in England for maths - if the Maths Factor syllabus can be believed anyway. The order of learning stuff is slightly different but the times tables and concepts being covered line up near enough. That said most of her group are the year above (composite class) but it's nice that she has the flexibility to work at the level she is actually at - apparently she did well in her numeracy assessment last term.

Literacy is more complicated - her school used more sight words than the English school did and she's a stubborn little thing so doesn't do stuff she doesn't see the point in - but reading is improving, just not as fast as maths which she instinctively gets.

My own experience of the English system is VERY out of date - I was at primary school when times tables and basic grammar were out of fashion so had holes to fill when I went to my (private) secondary.

I feel like CfE is very school dependent. I'm very happy with the (small, unfashionable) primary school so far, the composites and small classes help with flexibility and knowing each child well.

Might not work as well in a leafy resting on its laurels school where all the pushy parents have tutors...

Back in the 80s Schools entered children for separate maths and Arithmetic O- Grades, it's not a terrible idea to have two complementary Maths qualifications. Arithmetic was a nice easy A for most of us!
The main problem with Maths isn't the curriculum IMO it's a shortage of good teachers. Two of mine struggled with Maths and inconsistent teaching made things worse.
However the one who left school with only National 4 Maths, Did Applications of Maths as an evening class with me is now on a Software Development Degree course after doing an access course at college so it can be done.
My family all found the emphasis on group work and presentations tortuous ( due to various neurodiversity issues) and my main gripe is the poor quality of the teacher produced learning materials, very substandard compared to a good quality modern textbook and so easy to get looseleaf sheets lost and muddled ( that could just be my lot!)
I recommend Dorling Kindersley "Help your Kids with Maths" for a book with really helpful graphics and explanations.

Not trying to derail thread but I think the Application in Maths paper is useful - and probably more useful - for those pupils who have no interest / ability in going on to study maths / science at university. It would surely be more useful for a pupil leaving school at the end of S4 to have a Nat 5 in Application in Maths rather than no Nat 5 Maths at all. And for those like my dd that have no maths aptitude but still meet the requirements for non science / maths university courses it would be a useful qualification to get. I think it is being used here to show how poor the Scottish education system is without recognising it does not replace the ‘normal’ maths qualification and that England offers a similar qualification for pupils who cannot cope with the traditional maths paper.

@Wbeezer cross posted with you! I would love to work with my dd to help her achieve a Nat 5 in Application of Maths but we both have recurring nightmares of studying for N5 maths so not sure if we’ll ever do it!

I agree with you @haggisaggis it's not comparing like with like.
DS2 had a 2 or 3 break before trying Maths again to forget the trauma ( for him!) of school Maths. He got an A!

This is really interesting as we’ve moved from the English to the Scottish system with young children. If anything I find my P4 child’s school more academic than his old English school. They seem much more on it with reading for example, setting him tough books and they read in their groups in class twice a week and always have school library books on the go too. Compared to their old school where his teacher didn’t give them a reading book for the whole year (they were a free reader by the end of 1st year) and everything was just a bit easy. Now they’re having to work harder!

We're also experienced in both Scottish and English systems - and I concur; academically primary schools in Scotland bear no relation whatsoever to those in England. Its the worst of both worlds in Scotland. We have neither a rigorous academic education, nor a genuine play based one - both are proven to be successful - but the half-baked hybrid of the so called Curriculum for Excellence is failing children.

My dc was saying one science course she looked at counted a grade c or above at Higher applications of maths as fulfilling the requirement for a Nat 5 Maths at B.

I think it is being used here to show how poor the Scottish education system is without recognising it does not replace the ‘normal’ maths qualification

Well yes and no. I chose it because it is perhaps the purest example of a curriculum for excellence exam I could find; problem solving using information provided rather than knowledge of the topic. I do recognise it doesn’t replace maths but it is not at the same standard either. I think it is important to have a functional maths skills exam like this but lovely as it is to offer everyone Nat 5 certificates, if one topic is academically at a lower level then it undermines the integrity of all Nat 5s.

I have one DC at university now and one DC at secondary. They both did topics at primary - Vikings, Romans, science and environmental topics, Parliament and so on. It definitely was not that they got to choose as I noticed some similar topics coming up again with younger DC.

Older DC got more spelling words home, more homework and I think she was working at a more advanced stage earlier, though. The pandemic has not helped, of course. But both of them could read and write in P1, it wasn’t just play based.

Kids doing play based learning will learn literacy and maths - but in their own time, with no coercion and will hopefully learn through their own curiosity and have no aversion to learning.

An academic education will allow some/ most to acquire skills at an early age and flourish, though some may be put off learning.

Curriculum for Excellence is neither of the above. There's not the freedom to learn through play, nor is it academic. It takes the worst of both pedagogies, offering very little in the way of intellectual stimulation.

There are always some subjects that are easier than others though. I keep banging on about the old Arithmetic O-grade, same level as Maths but definitely easier. One of my son's did Music Tech, much easier than Physics. In the real world people know which are the easier subjects, and take that into account.

I was extremely critical of CfE when I first experienced it - I went to school in England decades ago.

Anyway, my children are happy and by P7 chomping at the bit to do “real” work in high school.

I have however seen the difference between a primary class of 32 where it was noisy, crowd-control with fresh-out-of-college teachers - and composite classes of 6 with experienced educators.

There is a huge difference.

I thought the Nat 5 paper posted was a joke at first - it appears to contain the answers. (I.e., the formulas required 😂).

My son is a keen mathematician and was the first year to take application of maths Nat 5 and higher alongside standard maths. He really enjoyed the course and it seemed very useful for me: learning about real life maths such as interest rates and statistics, and insurance products, etc. It was academically pretty easy for Nat 5; he learnt the course in six weeks at the end of the standard Nat 5 maths course. The top students were offered this option to study both. This was a godsend as his school only normally offers six Nat 5s to he ended up with seven.

Overall (as an English person), I haven't been very impressed with the standard of the Scottish curriculum. My bright Scottish-educated elder son who is august born (very youngest in school year for English schools), went to a top English uni and played catch up with his peers for the first term or two. His tutors seemed to be aware that this would be the case.

I think it’s very dependent on the school tbh. Ours are very in the ball about phonics etc but beyond P1 it gets extremely vague, and finding out what the expectations are is virtually impossible. Working towards stage whatever means absolutely nothing to me. If they’ve been given the standard tests we’ve never been informed of it let alone told the outcome - maybe I should ask them!

Like pps, I’d really just like a clear list of what they should be able to do in each year group (which doesn’t seem to exist anywhere - the ‘curriculum’ is really extremely vague) and some idea of whether they are average or above/below in these areas so that we can give extra help if necessary. As it stands I have literally no idea what they do in class beyond P1 unless a child deigns to tell me (which they usually don’t) and only find out if there are problems at parents evenings after months of them struggling with something without my knowledge. It’s really very frustrating.

Curriculum for Excellence + play based learning + a recipe for disaster.

In a few years they will be saying that kids are leaving school unable to anything - OH already says any they have tried to employ have no basic maths skills or any idea how to do anything independently.

It seems to be ideological, doesn't it? I suspect it's based on the view that nobody should be aware that they are a low achiever, because it might dent their self-confidence or self-respect. And parents should be discouraged from doing extra work with their higher achieving children, because that would unfairly increase the gap between them and the lower achievers. Another attempt to distance children from their parents. I hope I'm wrong, but that's the vibe I'm picking up.

Yes that’s the vibe I get to userwoozer. And the feedback from teachers to the pupils is always telling them they did a good job. Even if they actually haven’t and haven’t put any effort in. At primary anyway. Imm my often think they need pushing a little bit more

I am very unhappy that work experience has gone unless you do a foundation apprenticeship but they are limited in options and take up half your timetable, leaving little time to do more than maybe 2 other subjects.

Yes to this.

Benefits of CfE:

• Huge emphasis on play and encouraging kids to think about what they want to learn next in the early primary years. I have seen the positive effects of this in my own DDs.

• If your kid excels in one area and struggles in another, they can stretch themselves in the subject they're confident in and work at a slower pace with a subject they're less so (e.g., 17 y.o. DSD is taking both Higher and N5 level subjects this year).

Downsides to CfE:

• The reporting requirements (I.e., the common language used on the kids' report cards) are way too vague for most parents. You really need to read between the lines and come prepared to the parent-teacher chats to get an idea of what's really going well and what really needs further support at home. A good school will cut through all of the woolly language and find ways to bring you in to the discussion. A poor school will hide behind it. The reporting requirements almost give poor schools permission to stop communicating effectively with the parents. We didn't realise DSD still hadn't mastered primary school level maths until 3 days before P7 finished for the bloody school year!

• The OECD report on CfE is correct about there being a disconnect between CfE from P1-S3 and the exams. CfE at its best encourages curiosity. The exams in Scotland do the opposite. DSD is part of the first group in her catchment area to get CfE all the way from P1. She went from "working at her own pace" to "what the SQA wants you to know". The result is that the teaching for all of her N5-Higher subjects has focused specifically on the content of the exams. In practice, this looked like reading a single book (one!!) for the entirety of N5 English, because that's all the SQA tested on. Higher English only read two.

It’s interesting reading the comments. A lot chimes with my own experiences of my children’s primary education (now both approaching the end of primary school). I suppose as long as you’re reasonably happy with the school you have to trust them, and they’ll probably have quite a range of teachers and teaching styles over their time. But at the same time, for them to have a well rounded education you have to realise that there will be lots of basic things that schools don’t necessarily cover - whether looking at maps and talking about geography to learning about the wars and history (especially outside Scotland). I suppose gaps in basic subjects and general knowledge are more likely without a structured curriculum. It’s a bit inward looking too - mine have looked at ‘Scottish artists’ a handful of times, but never the Egyptians or Romans. I suppose I don’t feel confident that they are getting a good education at school, but I think it is ok (as long as you read lots of books and visit museums and libraries at home). Which makes me ask - will the government really be able to close the equality gap with this method…I would suggest at least in primary school it might be doing the opposite.

My husband and I teach University level in Scotland ( having taught abroad before that). Scottish students have a broader education than their English counterparts. A levels are more in depth so it's no surprise that a Scottish student at an English Uni might seem behind but he or she will have benefitted from studying a wider range of subjects.

Scottish schools following the government’s guidelines study just six Nat 5s, English students study eight GCSEs and some schools do ten (and private schools 12). They then study four or five Highers versus three or four A levels and an EPQ in England. I am not sure ‘broader education’ stacks up.

[shrugs] we're seeing it in the seminar rooms at Uni...