Photo Credit: OllieBray (shows the SAGT poster for Curriculum for Excellence)
ACfE seems to be taking some flak from major players in the educational world. Chris Woodhead, writing under the headline, Curriculum for Ignorance, in today’s Sunday Times lambasts what he sees as its lack of rigour and content, and attacks the emphasis on process as opposed to knowledge.
Lindsay Paterson, professor of educational policy at Edinburgh University has warned that, unless teachers’ subject knowledge improved, it would be difficult to deliver the new curriculum effectively or raise the attainment of Scottish pupils.
The “fashionable orthodoxy” of ACfE ignored the need for direct teaching, he argued, and focused instead on “the kind of applied inter-disciplinary project work which is supposed to displace the need for expertise”. While inter-disciplinary work had its place, it made no sense unless the disciplines had been grasped first. Pupils could not grasp these fundamentals if the “didacticism of the expert” was not available, and that depended on the teacher having the necessary disciplinary grasp, he said at a Directors Conference.
Is his, and Chris Woodhead’s, analysis wrong? Is there a ring of truth in what they are saying, or are they creating an Aunt Sally, a fictional travesty of ACfE which they can then knock down with impunity? Is there indeed a lack of subject knowledge, and a lack of passion?
Reading their articles, though, I find myself asking some questions on ACfE-and better experts than me are asking plenty, too.
I am less interestd in the global philosophy of ACfE than in how it works in individual schools. We need to look at certain types of pupils and ask how ACfE will work for them. For example what type of curriculum is best suited for a pupil who aims to study for a top course (say Law, Medicine, etc) and is likely to do five Highers and say 3 AHs over S5 and S6. What exams will he or she sit in the near future, and in what way will they be different from exams sat this year? What is the best way to design a curriculum and make up a timetable that supports ACfE?
And wider points arise: What is the SQA doing about ACfE? (We get an idea from their website- http://www.sqa.org.uk/sqa/34714.html and the report http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2009/02/23130007/0 What do universities think? How can there be “excellence” when schools can’t, because of funding cuts, offer a full range of AH courses? Which schools will become centres of excellence for the Scot Bac, and which will not be able to offer it?
Indeed, can there be excellence when so many pupils leave with poor qualifications, literacy rates and numeracy rates? What are those countries in Europe who are ahead of us in such league tables doing differently? do they have similar models?
