Curriculum for Excellence review: implementation framework

Context

The OECD's report into CfE was originally commissioned before the Covid-19 pandemic, and, as well as the learning from the last 18 months, the OECD report, and our own report on the contribution of education to Scotland's COVID Recovery, we have benefitted from a number of other recent reports which make a series of recommendations for improvement. These include:

• The Additional Support for Learning Review (June 2020)
• International Council of Education Advisers: 2^nd Formal Report (December 2020)
• Scottish Government: Equity Audit (January 2021).
• Scottish Government: Closing the poverty-related attainment gap: a report on progress 2016-2021 (March 2021)
• Audit Scotland: Improving Outcomes for Young People through School Education (March 2021)

A number of other ongoing programmes and reviews will interact with the work on curriculum, qualifications and assessment reform. These include, but are not limited to:

• Skills Development Scotland's Careers Review
• The Promise
• Review of the Regional Improvement Collaboratives (RICs)
• Commission for the Land-Based Learning Review
• Scottish Funding Council's Review of Tertiary Education and Research
• Ongoing curricular reviews in relation to LGBT education, rights education and race equality and anti-racist education.

This work sits alongside the work being led by Professor Ken Muir and announced by the Cabinet Secretary on 22 June in response to the OECD's recommendations about structural reform. Professor Muir is currently undertaking a consultation to inform his recommendations. While the consultation is focused around decisions already taken by the Scottish Government on the reform of Education Scotland and replacement of SQA, including in respect of the roles and responsibilities for curriculum and assessment and future functions and structures, it also invites views on wider aspects around the future of Scottish education, in order to help set the context for his work. The responses to Professor Muir's consultation will clearly represent a useful body of evidence which will be used where relevant to support the reform agenda as a whole. He is due to report in early 2022.