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.

A Scottish student won't get into a top English uni on the basis of Highers. They'll be required to get high grades in 3 Advanced Highers. But they are apparently still behind English students.

I agree that it can appear ideological but life isn't like that. You're going to get told that your work isn't up to a certain standard which can be costly in the workplace. Some kids don't seem to be able to function to even a basic standard of expectation. One of the buzz words around is resilience but I found a lot of pupils to be the opposite.

They have a broader education. S6 catches them up in subject specific knowledge. It's a four year degree in Scotland.

According to DH if they turn up in year one Scotland after S6 they are ahead of English students in his experience.

And it's a top Scottish Uni.

I'd be hugely surprised if that was true.

For a bit more context, his degree was law (graduated this year) at Oxford from a Scottish state school. He did three advanced highers in humanity subjects but still felt behind English students on arrival and definitely internationals. Most students hadn't studied law A level and most were state educated.

If you scroll up the thread you will find a poster who did just this.

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.

@iCouldSleepForAYear you can't pass N5 English if you've only studied one text. The SQA require two different genre to be studied so the minimum would be a substantial play or novel + a poem. And that would be the minimum.

@Shelefttheweb I've scrolled through again and not seen any poster saying their school entered every pupil for application of maths and none for standard maths at n5. Unless it was a SEN school I'd still be surprised.

I'd say that an English Law degree will assume a certain degree of "cultural assumptions" that you have been brought up around that are subtly different in Scotland and England. Particularly the bits of history that are not shared. And random experiences are different.

I have an English Law degree, decent general knowledge and still get caught out by the different licensing laws (last minute hosting gifts on the way) and am sure there are lots of little separated by a common language things. Plus if the majority are English educated, subtle differences in style expectations will be a different learning curve. I certainly found writing French law essays in France utterly alien because they are brought up with the two part plan and an entirely different essay structure.

where did I say they entered none for standard maths?

There are definitely schools that do this. Close experience with this here…!!

Well goodness knows how her school managed to teach her, then. The year she took N5 English, her only assigned book, according to the school, was "The Cone Gatherers." Higher English got that one and Macbeth. She did not have any material on Macbeth last year.

DSD hasn't actually read any Shakespeare since Romeo and Juliet in S3. I don't think she's ever read any Dickens, Huxley, Orwell, Wordsworth, Brontë, Hawthorne, Thoreau, Swift, Grassic Gibbon, Burns, Angelou, Conrad, or Joyce either.

Her school literally teaches the test in the exam years.

@iCouldSleepForAYear I know lots of children in other countries and they seem to be so much better educated. In some cases including reading more English language literature (in English) than is read in Scottish schools.
Our schools should be educating our children - encouraging each child to reach their particular potential. I'm fed up with hearing people say "Primary school doesn't really matter, they can read library books at home". Followed by - "the first few years of secondary don't really matter. It's best they don't get stressed." Followed by "exams aren't very important. You can get into a decent Scottish uni with XXX." The fact is that we end up with under-educated people. That's not good for those people, and it's not good for Scotland's future.
I agree about teaching to the exams. In the first 3 years, schoolwork isn't seen as important, because there are no exams. After that, it seems to me that there's no time actually to learn and discuss things - there's only time to cram a list of facts into children and to explain the marking scheme.

@iCouldSleepForAYear The N5 Critical Reading paper requires you to study more than one genre. It doesn't have to be a book and it certainly doesn't have to be Shakespeare. But they have to do two of: drama, prose, poetry, film and TV and language study. (But virtually no-one does the language study). If you only do one text, Cone Gatherers or otherwise, you're not prepared for that paper. It's 20 marks per genre.

My son did N5 last year- he studied a set of Scottish texts and a film. This year for Higher he is doing a novel and some poetry.
He did very well in N5 (Band 1) but is finding both the novel and poetry tough because he has very little experience studying written text. He has read hundreds of books at
home but he hasn’t studied them. He only read one book at school in S1-3 and that was in lockdown! Critical reading seemed to completely disappear in S1-3.
For RUAE, the skills needed aren’t taught until 4th year, making it really hard for
most kids. The experience would be so much better if they could work on this in S1-3. His progress in literacy slowed significantly when he left primary school as they seemed to do very little of any value in S1-3.
My younger son’s experience does seem to be a bit better and I think that’s because his teachers have been better but they is very much a lack of reading and studying.
I can’t compare to England and my own education outside of Scotland was many moons ago, but it does seem to have lost any sense of academic rigour.
There also seems to be a culture where academic achievement is not celebrated and this serves to diminish the importance of education for our young people.

@gawditswindy Fair enough. But the one book I mentioned really was was the only one that her school communicated to us. We had to buy it at the start of the year.

DSD did get a good mark on her N5 English last spring, so it sounds like they must have covered something else in class. Maybe a printout passed out in class? No idea what of, though.

The depth and breadth of DSD's particular high school English literature education still isn't one I'm that impressed with. Except for Grassic Gibbon and Burns, every other writer I listed is one I studied in high school. That could be an issue limited to just her school, or it could be that something really is misaligned when it comes to CfE in the senior school years.

I'm also unimpressed that DSD has reached S6 and still can't write a job application email without run-on sentences. She still uses "and" as a substitute for a comma or full stop. Not sure how or why her schools let her down on that one.

I actually like the CfE when it comes to encouraging exploration, research techniques and independent thought. But the woolly communication is unhelpful, and the exams are acting more like a barrier to than enabler of progress.

Thank you, this is similar to what I've observed with DSD and English literature at her school. She loves to read, but struggles with critical analysis.

Could be just our kids, I guess. 🤷🏻‍♀️ But I also don't understand why her school wasn't building up analytical reading skills at an earlier age and stage. I used to get structured projects like book reports in early secondary.

It doesn't look anyone attempted structured lessons on essay-writing techniques with my DSD until S4 either, and that was through her social science classes.

That's a shame. I try to teach a novel and / or a play every year of the BGE. They also study poetry and short stories and cover functional and creative writing each year. We also have a programme of RUAE in each year of the BGE introducing and developing the skills they will need when it comes to N5 and Higher exams. It's a shame your child's school doesn't do this, as it seems pretty standard based on talking to colleagues from other schools.

I don't think the narrowness of the Scottish curriculum is completely new with CfE. I remember in Higher English we did one novel, one play, and a handful of short poems. History was similarly narrow and there were huge swathes of history we never touched on or even got an overview of even over several years. We seemed to do endless WW1 and WW2 topics, a smattering of American history, and that was about it. And that was at least a couple of decades ago. I went to a English university and felt very ill-informed in comparison with many, though I did seem to meet a lot of students who'd been to grammar schools or other very good English schools so maybe not entirely representative. But in my case I'd say it wasn't the school or the teachers but the curriculum that was primarily at fault.

The main education target, ’Closing the gap’, isn’t aspirational though is it? The gap could be closed by lower the top performing rather than raising the bottom. But it also sends the message that achievement is unfair and mustn’t be celebrated. Just look at some of the responses to the thread on Edinburgh University only selecting students for certain courses from specific postcodes. There seems to be hatred for those who have achieved.

In England the history is just as gappy. We did Tudors (clearly not an overlap with Scotland), Victorians, WW2 a couple of times, WW1 (mostly war poetry) and a bit of industrial revolution. Picked up other bits though Jane Austen novels (English) plus some Roman history through Latin.

I also learned basic English grammar in Latin lessons in S2 equivalent and finally learned long division in S5 equivalent when learning how to divide by polynomials...

I'd also say the plenty of professionals are unable to avoid run on sentences!

We did Tudors (clearly not an overlap with Scotland)

Margaret Tudor (Henry VIII sister) married James IV of Scotland and through him became grandmother to Mary Queen of Scots who was executed by Elizabeth I (Tudor). Margaret Tudor was also grandmother to Lord Darnley by her second husband. Mary Queen of Scots and Lord Darnley were mother and father to James VI of Scotland who also became James I of England when his cousin twice remove, Elizabeth I died.

I haven't RTFT but I do think it's probably more dependent on the specific school.
I recently had to change my daughters school from religious to non-denominational, I loved her religious school she was getting on very well and the school had a huge focus on literacy and numeracy.
I changed her school for P7 year for the purpose of making transition to (non-denominational high school) for S1.

The work she is getting in P7 at her new school is very similar to the level of work she was doing in P4 & 5 at her old school. Both schools are in the same (fairly affluent village) so similar in terms of socio-economic backgrounds etc. new schools is quite a bit larger than the previous school but class sizes are similar.

Yep this. One in third year. And one in 4th so CfE started when they started school roughly. It’s more relaxed learning than parents would be used to if they remember more rote learning. It’s definitely better for kids not v academic my DS but no issues if you are - my DD.