Curriculum, Qualifications and Assessment Reform: progress to date and next steps

Outcomes and Benefits

We know that the changes set out in this document will have significant and long-term benefits for children and young people, educators, schools and settings, colleges as well as employers and the tertiary education sector. While increasing the effectiveness of our curriculum, qualifications and assessment system we will also build a culture that supports children and young people in the achievement of their own goals and learning pathways. All activity will be underpinned by a service design approach to development which includes communications and engagement that enables all interested parties understand the rationale for change, what is happening and when and how they will have the chance to become involved.

Key benefits of the programme of reform include:

• The establishment of a consistent national approach to the reform of curriculum, qualifications and assessment. This will ensure that all education settings and educators will all be working within an agreed and supportive framework designed to support local decision making while setting clear expectations as to a common, Scotland-wide, approach.
• A recognisable and sustainable model for the ongoing review of the curriculum. The model will have four main stages: analysing; engaging and co-creating; sharing, learning and adopting, mobilising, and monitoring and evaluating.
• An evolved technical framework, giving greater clarity on the knowledge and skills children and young people should develop at each stage of their learning journey across the broad general education and into the senior phase. This will support better transition and progression across the curriculum.
• An updated approach to curriculum, qualifications and assessment will help us address a range of complex issues such as attendance, attainment and behaviour by making learning more accessible, more appealing and more enjoyable for a greater number of children and young people as well as more relevant to post-school study and employment.
• An approach to assessment in the senior phase which will include a reduced focus on exams, where appropriate, and will include digital assessment. This could in part be achieved through modularisation of qualifications allowing learners to have their achievements recognised as they progress through a course of study. This strand of work will begin with a focus on senior phase qualifications at SCQF Level 4 and 5, where feedback from stakeholders indicates that a review is required to support better outcomes for more children and young people.
• The review and resulting rationalisation of the existing qualifications offer resulting in the creation of clear and high-quality learner pathways for all children and young people. This will include addressing long-standing issues in respect of parity of esteem between different pathways (such as work based learning) and qualification types.
• Continued co-design and development of Scotland’s Learner Profile, as part of Skills Development Scotland’s My World of Work digital career service, which will record a young person’s achievements and help them evidence their success. This work is being led in partnership between Education Scotland and SDS.
• The development of a new and significant programme of professional learning that will support educators to confidently adopt changes to the curriculum and to effectively manage new forms of assessment.
• The development of a coherent and robust approach to evaluation, including through inspection evidence, of the implementation of the updates to curriculum, qualifications and assessment across Scotland, and its impact on learner outcomes.

We recognise that a key step in realising the benefits outlined above - and in responding to long-standing concerns about the impact of qualifications on teaching and learning - is to resolve the relationship between the technical framework of the curriculum (the guidance that teachers and practitioners use to plan learning) and National Course specifications in the senior phase. To achieve this, we will bring these two strands of work together to ensure that the curriculum framework and qualifications are fully aligned.