The Scottish Government

Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning Fiona Hislop

Speech to the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland about the future for the education system in Scotland

April 30, 2008

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Hello again and thank you for inviting me back to Dunkeld. I am really pleased to come back and discuss with you the present position in Scottish Education - partly to reflect where we are compared to this time last year - and more importantly, to talk to you about where we go from here. I see a few new faces amongst you since we last met. I look forward to working with you.

I know you had a session yesterday afternoon on Outcome Agreements and I will be interested to hear your feedback about that process later.

It was June last year when I last spoke to you and I had only been in this role for a few weeks. I would like to recall one or two things I touched on then and to consider where we are now.

I said then that six principles would guide all that we do:

• Investing in effective services for all children to get ensure every child gets off to the best start in life.
• Having an international perspective to promote an understanding of Scotland and our place in the world and challenging our ambitions against the achievements of other countries
• Having high aspirations and challenging all to aim high
• Being egalitarian and embracing the Scottish tradition of the democratic intellect as part of our approach to learning
• Ensuring education and learning are at the heart of the community, supporting communities and promoting community self-reliance, as well as promoting the safeguarding of our environment and natural resources
• Focussing on the child and the learner, providing support and learning journeys that respond to individual need and potential

I also said that we proposed to focus activity under five themes:

• Early intervention to tackle the things we can that hold children, young people and families back now and in later life. Building on the consensus around the important contribution early years support and multi-agency services can make to improving outcomes later in life, particularly for the most vulnerable.
• Supporting vulnerable children and families through providing high quality, effective and joined up support when children and families need it and working with children and families to create a platform of opportunity and resilience in communities.
• Developing the learning experience in schools so that it is relevant, exciting and inspirational and ensuring continued teacher quality.
• Maximising investment in learning for life and revitalising the lifelong learning agenda in partnership with key delivery partners.
• Promoting excellence and innovation to make Scotland a magnet for learners, academics and business and bringing about a step change in translating output of research into sustainable wealth creation.

I think we have been faithful to those principles and retained that focus and indeed you will see these themes and priorities reflected in the National Outcomes in the Concordat signed with local government.

I underlined our commitment to nurturing children in their early years through announcing the trialling of free school meals for all primary one to primary three children in a number of pilot areas. We have delivered that.

I said we would develop a cradle to grave skills strategy for Scotland, which would outline our aims, ambitions and plans for making our skills base truly world class. We published our Skills Strategy last September.

I said that we would take forward our ambitions for early years policy and develop a comprehensive early years strategy. We published our Early Years Strategy last month.

I said we would increase entitlement to free pre-school education from 33 to 38 weeks for 3 and 4 year olds from the autumn term. We did that.

I also talked about our ambition to see the resources freed up by declining school rolls redeployed in schools, to begin to reduce class sizes to no more than 18 for children in primary 1 to primary 3. I will come back to that shortly.

Other progress worth mentioning is our intention to produce a new science strategy for Scotland, to outline how science will underpin our success as a nation and the new Universities task force - future thinking on higher education in Scotland, to ensure we have a sector that is competitive and contributing to Scotland's success in the decades ahead.

Concordat and Outcome Agreements

Last year I spoke too about the contribution you all need to make in setting us on the right path to delivering the outcomes we want to achieve over the next few years. Since then, we have signed the Concordat with Cosla establishing a new relationship between Scottish and local Government setting out our shared objectives and the National Outcomes we want to achieve. The Concordat between central and local government marks a crucial new stage in the governance of Scotland. It describes a new relationship with local government based on mutual respect and partnership. It recognises the role of councils as leaders in their communities and gives them the freedom to deliver, with a focus on agreed national outcomes. The Concordat agrees an overall package which both Ministers and COSLA believe will lead to better local services and better outcomes for Scottish people.

You all will have been involved in the process of developing your Outcome Agreements with Scottish Government - a process which we hope to complete by the end of June. All 32 authorities completed their draft Outcome Agreements by the end of March and I have to say that the efforts of all 32 local authorities in pulling those together in a very short space of time has been remarkable.

You will be familiar with the structures that have been put in place to support that work with 8 Directors (including Liz and Colin) leading on 4 local authority agreements. I would be very interested in what your experience has been of that process so far. It would also be helpful to me to hear of any hopes or concerns that may have come out of your discussions yesterday.

Commitments

There are also a number of commitments in the Concordat that we should not lose sight of. One of the commitments in the Concordat has already been delivered - the council tax freeze in 2008-09.

COSLA has undertaken to deliver the rest of the commitments on behalf of local government. We are working together on a Joint Progress Plan (or "journey plan") which will set out how this is to be done and reported. The Joint Progress Plan will be separate from the annual report each council will in future submit to the government setting out progress in each area. One of those commitments relates to reducing class sizes in P 1-3.

Cosla has committed to achieve year on year progress for local government and that each local authority will make progress over the spending review period.

I know that most of you plan to make progress with class size reduction in P 1-3 from this August. I know too that the pupil population projections for some of you will make that more challenging. Local Government have signed up to year on year progress in the Concordat and we are discussing with Cosla how we monitor that. I expect every local authority to be considering very carefully where and how you can contribute to that over arching commitment.

Every local authority needs to create some headroom to allow class sizes to be reduced. For some that will mean employing more teachers. Others with rapidly falling pupil rolls will be able to create headroom and slightly reduce numbers of teachers. Overall we expect to see roughly the same number of teachers employed across the country and the settlement provides for that.

So what lies ahead?

Expect to see far greater joint development of policy in areas where local government has a key interest. This will underpin our shared commitment to partnership working on strategic issues and in areas of common interest. From now on we will work jointly with COSLA to develop policies that will impact on local government. This approach to policy development demands a major cultural shift away from previous working practices to a new collaborative way of working where both partners are on an equal footing. We have already made a good start here as some of you will recognise - with early engagement around matters included in the consultation paper I am launching soon on "Safeguarding Rural Schools"

School Estate

In less than a year we have made significant progress towards improving school buildings, as the recently published Infrastructure Investment Plan shows. We have matched the previous administration's plans for school buildings and have provided the funding to deliver these plans, including signing off funding for 7 local authority projects involving 45 schools since May 2007, with 14 of the schools in projects based on the non-profit distributing model. 4 further projects will take the total to over 50. We anticipate that during the 4 year Parliamentary period together we will have enabled you to or secure through a range of funding mechanisms around 250 schools. Increased capital resources are available to authorities under the terms of our new Concordat with COSLA and yourselves. Almost £3 billion is available to authorities over three years to secure investment in infrastructure including schools, including an extra £115 million in 2008-09 which "repeats" in following years. At Aviemore I asked that you be alert to making sure your Directors of Finance, Chief Executive and your political leaders saw schools as a priority for that capital. We are also in the process of developing the Scottish Futures Trust, our alternative funding mechanism which will deliver better, more efficient infrastructure for taxpayers.

You know we are also committed to introducing a legislative presumption against the closure of rural schools, and to tightening the Regulations around all school closures. We will be consulting publicly very soon on a package of proposals to give effect to our commitments. There will be plenty of opportunity for everyone - yourselves included - to register their views by mid - September. Access to services, including education services can be an absolutely key factor in sustaining populations the life and the future of rural communities.

Curriculum Reform

The delivery of a Curriculum for Excellence goes to the heart of what we want to achieve in improving outcomes for young people - that is why the 4 capacities are enshrined in the Concordat and is one of the National Outcomes. Successful delivery of that programme will require an empowered, engaged teaching profession with real commitment to the outcomes we all want to see become reality for our young people.

I announced last week a consultation on changes to our qualification framework that will be published in June. I want to see a real engagement with that exercise, not only from Teachers but also parents, employers, colleges and universities and of course, young people themselves. I would be grateful if you could do what you can to ensure that there is real discussion among those communities in your authorities so we get a full consultation response.

The other major piece of work that will be published and launched at the same time as the qualifications consultation is the Building the Curriculum 3 document. We know that the changes brought about in schools and other educational establishments by Curriculum for Excellence will present both a number of challenges and opportunities for those planning the curriculum. Building the Curriculum 3 should assist in that work by providing a framework for it - in other words, a definition and purpose for the curriculum, principles for curriculum design, the central place of the experiences and outcomes, and a range of entitlements for all children and young people.

In the past few months, I have brought before Parliament three debates relating to Curriculum for Excellence. Last month I stated my belief that key to success of Curriculum for Excellence is the role of leadership from the education profession. There is no doubt whatsoever that your role in leading your education authority and engaging with your headteachers is critical in stimulating and supporting that leadership. This approach is backed up by the recent OECD report which highlights the importance of curriculum reform coming from schools and teachers rather than waiting for central directions. I have accepted responsibility to provide leadership at a national level by engaging Scotland more widely and leading a Scotland wide campaign. I am investing time building up support for Curriculum for Excellence with scientists, academics, employers, sector skills councils, colleges and universities to build the required community of support, trust and engagement. For example, I am asking several University Deans of Faculty to help support the trialling activity.

Thank you very much for your help with implementing the trialling of the draft experiences and outcomes in your authorities. This is a large undertaking and your hard work in facilitating the trialling activity at relatively short notice has been enormously helpful. These structured arrangements for engagement through trialling are one way in assisting us to gather robust evidence on the effectiveness of the draft outcomes and experiences and their practical implications in terms of planning, teaching and learning, evaluating, capacity and resource management. At the last count over 350 educational establishments nationally are currently involved in the trialling and the early feedback from the participants has been extremely positive.

Lets us all keep the delivery of that Programme at the front of our minds and continue to build momentum amongst all the stakeholders that we come into contact with. Your help in driving that agenda is very much appreciated. Officials will provide you with whatever support and help they can.

So by the end of this academic year we will have secured some big achievements:

• All draft outcomes out for engagement
• Major effort on trialling
• New proposals on qualifications - you will have seen my statement last week
• Building the Curriculum 3

So we will have a clearer picture of a 3 - 18 curriculum: An understanding of a broad general education for 3-18 year olds including a period focussed on qualifications in a more flexible individualised clearer system.

The next phase will be about:

• Clarity of the roles of Scottish Government and local government
• implementation and making it work
• expectations of CPD
• looking at the outcomes as a whole producing final versions

Local authorities will play a key role on that.

I plan to chair regular round tables of all key players - ADES, parents, teaching unions, young people, employers and business - to focus on progress and unlock any barriers or blockages. And I would be very interested to hear from you today about how you see implementation being taken forward.

Conclusion

So for the rest of the morning you will have the opportunity to talk about Curriculum for Excellence, the strategic direction of the programme, what a new qualification and assessment framework will mean and the logistics of moving the programme forward. We have half an hour or so before you break into groups to discuss some of these issues that I have spoken about here this morning and I would be happy to take questions.