The Scottish Government

Scottish Learning Festival, 19 September 2007

Speech by the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning

It gives me great pleasure to speak at the Scottish Learning Festival this year.

Can I start by congratulating Learning and Teaching Scotland for organising this event. I have already been given a flavour of some of the activities this morning and I've been struck by the real buzz around the venue. There is a sense of energy and excitement which clearly reflects the huge interest in the event.

This is a truly important occasion - one of the key events of the year - bringing together education professionals at all levels to share their expertise, skills and knowledge.

Your participation is pivotal to making the event a success. Whatever your personal involvement in teaching and learning, I am sure you will find the activities over the two days to be lively, thought-provoking and enriching. And with such an array of seminars, there will be something of interest for everyone.

I am aware of the global reputation that the Scottish Learning Festival has established over recent years. And this year, with even more opportunities to showcase best practice, that reputation can be enhanced further.

I welcome this because I believe Scotland should be in the vanguard of educational thinking and debate. Our ambitions are high - we should be engaged with and leading cutting edge thinking in education across the world.

Today, I would like to do three things:

• first, to set out the Government's vision and objectives, and show the central role of learning in supporting all of these
• second, to outline my priorities for a Smarter Scotland - what we have done and will do in education and lifelong learning
• finally, I would like to hear from you about the challenges and opportunities that we face and I will be happy to take your questions at the end.

Strategic Objectives

The new Government has set five strategic objectives:

• a wealthier and fairer Scotland to be achieved by enabling businesses and people to increase their wealth and more people to share fairly in that wealth
• a healthier Scotland to be pursued by helping people to sustain and improve their health, especially in disadvantaged communities, and by ensuring better, local and faster access to health care
• a safer and stronger Scotland delivered by helping communities to flourish, becoming stronger, safer places to live, through offering improved opportunity for a better quality of life
• a Smarter Scotland achieved by expanding opportunities for Scots to succeed, from nurture through to lifelong learning, ensuring higher and more widely shared achievements
• and, a greener Scotland, seeing improvements in Scotland's natural and built environment and the sustainable use and enjoyment of it by all.

These objectives all support our overarching purpose, which is to create a more successful country, with opportunities for all of Scotland to flourish, through increasing sustainable economic growth.

People are Scotland's powerhouse. If we want Scotland to be all it can be, then all our people need to develop skills - in the widest sense - so that they can be all they can be.

Learning has an intrinsic value, but it also underpins all the strategic objectives.

So what are we doing, and what have we already done, to create a Smarter Scotland?

Smarter Scotland

In taking forward our wider agenda, we are guided by the following six principles:

• investing in effective services for all children to 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 individuals' needs and potential.

Our ambitions for early years policy are the building blocks of our education agenda and we have launched a process to develop a long term early years strategy.

Breaking down barriers

We must break down barriers and tackle early the things that hold people back. We need to work together in the interests of the individual learner. Building self-confidence, social skills and an awareness of the impact on others will create the foundations for good health and positive economic and civic engagement later in life.

Supporting vulnerable children and families is also at the heart of a Smarter Scotland. This means high-quality, effective, joined up and sustained support for children and families.

Children come to school from a whole variety of backgrounds and they all deserve the best possible education to meet their individual needs; achieve their potential and develop their capacities as more successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens and effective contributors.

We will work towards removing any barriers which prevent individuals from benefiting from and contributing to a modern, successful Scotland - as signalled by our abolition of the graduate endowment fee.

The reality is that looked after children do less well educationally than other children. This concerns me greatly. While it is not inevitable that they will have poorer outcomes, we have to do more to meet their educational needs.

That means giving children access to an environment that is conducive to learning and which provides the stability and experiences that may not exist in the child's home life.

We need to improve the learning experience in our schools and other areas of learning - our children have the right to experience relevant, exciting, inspirational learning. We will build on the values, purposes and principles of Curriculum for Excellence to do this. I will come back to this later on.

We are committed to developing skills and lifelong learning. It is never too late for people to gain the skills to achieve their potential and we will support opportunities for our young people and adults to re-engage with learning.

We want to promote excellence and innovation to make Scotland a magnet for learners, academics and business. We know that Scotland performs well on key education and learning indicators from primary school right through to post graduate research level. We must redouble our efforts to turn a strong research base into sustainable wealth creation.

These are the priorities of this government.

First steps

We are pursuing this agenda vigorously and have already announced some important first steps:

• plans to abolish the graduate endowment fee
• increasing the entitlement to pre-school education for all 3 and 4 year olds to 475 hours a year - underlining our commitment to nurturing children in their early years. We have provided local authorities with the extra resources to deliver this increased entitlement from this summer term
• trialling free school meals for all primary one to primary three children in selected local authority areas (Borders, East Ayrshire, Fife, Glasgow, West Dunbartonshire), from next month
• funding jobs for an extra 300 teachers on top of the 1000 already planned and targeting them where we will see most benefit - firstly in pre-school settings and then on cutting class sizes in P1-P3. And we want local authorities to focus these resources on deprived areas - where international research evidence indicates the greatest benefits will come

we want to see the resources freed up by declining school rolls redeployed in schools, to reduce class sizes to 18 for children in primary 1 to primary 3

to deliver smaller class sizes we need more space, as well as more teachers. That is why we released an extra £40m of capital funding, from the summer, to help address the most acute pressures immediately. This will enable Councils to bring forward spending, creating space in later years for necessary changes to accommodation to meet class size reductions

• we have funded an immediate increase of at least 250 places in Post-Graduate primary teacher training from this Autumn
• we have funded an increase in this year's intakes to the Bachelor of Education, increasing BEd intakes to their highest level in at least a decade. Indeed, our ambitions extend beyond the first intake. We want to see a radical shift and hope to double the BEd intake in the course of the next 2 - 3 years
• and last week, I announced our agenda for a lifelong skills strategy for Scotland, Skills for Scotland. This strategy outlines our aims, ambitions and plans for making Scotland's skills base truly world class - based on three guiding principles of individual development, economic pull and cohesive structures. It sets out our commitment to ensuring that vocational skills and qualifications have parity of esteem with academic skills and qualifications. All young people should have experience of both vocational and academic learning. These are skills for life not just skills for work. And all those involved in the delivery of skills development are part of one lifelong learning system - cradle to grave.

Teachers

We build on a strong base to take forward our agenda. The quality of our teachers is the foundation for success and Scotland's teachers are the envy of other countries. It is crucial therefore that we continue attracting the best quality into the profession.

The teacher induction scheme has enhanced the professional lives of our new teachers. We have raised the bar and other countries are taking notice of our induction model. Scotland is leading in this field.

I want Scotland to continue to lead and to do this it is essential that we develop and support our teachers. It is crucial that teachers and their line managers identify the most appropriate and relevant CPD opportunities - and that's not just about going on courses. Indeed much of the best professional development takes place within schools, whether through coaching and mentoring or simply the sharing of best practice.

And it's also crucial that we have the highest quality of leadership in our schools. However, headteachers can't expect, or be expected, to do it all on their own. They need to develop leadership at all levels within the school, fostering a culture in which everyone recognises that they have leadership responsibilities.

I have heard concerns expressed about the falling number of applicants for headteacher posts. We need succession planning that recognises that the successors may not exactly replicate the current crop of head teachers in background, experience, style and behaviour. We want to create the climate and opportunity for alternative leadership to flourish if we are to tackle this recruitment problem.

First and foremost, we must ensure that applicants are well prepared and ready for the challenges of leadership. That means ensuring that all teachers, from the very start of their careers, are developing leadership qualities - and can be sure that these qualities are nurtured and developed.

Moving on, I know that this year's festival will be highlighting the many ways in which innovation in ICT is transforming the nature of learning and teaching. In an ever-changing and increasingly competitive world, it is essential that we harness the power of technology.

Glow

The Government will support Glow - one of the most ambitious educational ICT projects taking place in the world today - ensuring it delivers 21st century technology for 21st century learning.

Glow will enhance learning and teaching in many ways. It will provide a managed and regulated ICT environment, allowing every pupil and teacher to communicate and collaborate electronically with one another, sharing ideas and resources. Glow will create innovative opportunities for wider access to teaching of more specialist areas. It will encourage links between schools across Scotland and out to the rest of the world.

The roll-out of Glow is beginning, with the first group of local authorities and schools able to access services this term, to be followed by more in the coming months. Glow will be an important resource for teachers as they develop Curriculum for Excellence, and I look forward to hearing about the new experiences and opportunities that this innovation will bring.

Curriculum for Excellence

Many of you will have already seen the latest newsletter on Curriculum for Excellence. I was delighted to be able to contribute a foreword to that newsletter, the first time I think that a Minister has done so. I wanted to stress my commitment to Curriculum for Excellence and to working with you, in collaboration with LTS, SQA, HMIE and local authorities, to make it a reality for every child and young person in every school, pre-school centre and college.

I am proud of the success of Scottish education and what everyone in this room has achieved. But it is still not a success for all children - that's the challenge if Scotland is to be the best it can be in the 21st century. We need children and young people who are effective contributors, responsible citizens and confident individuals as well as successful learners. We need that if we are to achieve a Smarter Scotland. But more importantly, people deserve this for themselves.

So what is the big picture on Curriculum for Excellence - what will success look like? As you know, it is not primarily about prescriptive curriculum content or structures. It is about focussing on the outcomes that we want learning and teaching to achieve for young people.

What we are aiming for is that every child and young person

• knows they are valued and will be supported to become successful learners, effective contributors, confident individuals and responsible citizens
• has opportunities to develop skills for learning, vocational skills and skills for life
• leaves school with a range of knowledge and skills that we agree adds up to a general education
• finds learning relevant and meaningful because teachers are aware of prior learning and reinforce what is happening in other classes
• is challenged and engaged by their learning
• has less external assessment and achieves qualifications which reflect and support their learning
• has their achievements beyond qualifications more effectively promoted and recognised.

This is not a programme to be imposed through central guidance - the draft outcomes are a starting point for agreeing the shape of guidance at a future date. They should also act as a guide for reflecting on practice right now. All those promoting learning across the 3-18 range must take forward Curriculum for Excellence in the way that makes sense to you, and at a pace that works for you, testing what you are doing against what I have said we want for children and young people.

As we work together towards adopting Curriculum for Excellence, I also want to emphasise the importance of your active engagement, so that your professional and considered reflection can help shape the future of learning and teaching practice. It is only through your engagement that we will achieve our aims for Scotland's young people.

What you need from us is the framework to let you do that. We will be discussing with local authorities outline guidance on how schools might deliver the curriculum, particularly in the early years of secondary where most change is needed. LTS will release all the curriculum outcomes as draft outcomes for engagement. The Scottish Government will also start to consult on options for changes to qualifications and examinations.

I am particularly pleased that I am speaking to you in the week that the first major sets of outcomes for Curriculum for Excellence - covering science and numeracy - are released by LTS in draft. It will be important to have your comments on the outcomes in due course, once you have had time to reflect on them. You will want to think about what they mean for your teaching, for your work with all the other teachers and staff in your school and for the way your school is organised. And you will want to continue to develop your teaching in response.

All primary and early years educators and a good many secondary teachers will be interested in the draft science outcomes. All teachers should be interested in the draft numeracy outcomes - and should share the responsibility of ensuring that the whole curriculum and every teacher contributes to making our children and young people numerate. The science outcomes reflect the need to develop enquiring minds - and skills that are transferable to life.

If we all respond to the challenge, we will be able to create an experience for children and young people in every school year which will engage and stimulate them, allow them to explore in depth and let each child progress at a stretching pace. In early secondary, time is needed to help young people to develop the four capacities and the broad skills and attributes that they will need in their lives.

As Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning, I am determined to drive forward the thinking on what Curriculum for Excellence means for the qualifications system. It is crucial that the qualifications system helps to deliver the aims, values and purpose of Curriculum for Excellence. Over time, the content of qualifications at all levels will need to be revised to reflect and build upon the outcomes and experiences. However, there are particular issues to be resolved over future arrangements for qualifications at SCQF levels 4 and 5 (Standard Grade Credit and General/Intermediate 1 and 2). We are beginning to develop options on this. Some of you may already have contributed to the early thinking and I hope that many more of you will become involved when we have finalised our proposals.

I know that some local authorities and schools are seeking to increase the pace and challenge in S1-S3 and create more time for studying at Higher level through early presentation for Standard Grade and other qualifications. Let me make my position clear on this.

I fully support the national guidance which has been issued on early presentation. Decisions about early presentation have to be made in the best interests of individual pupils - not classes, cohorts or year groups. Pupils should only be presented for qualifications when they have the maximum chance of success - not for any other reason.

Curriculum for Excellence offers a unique opportunity to ensure that Scottish education has the right balance between attaining qualifications and gaining broader skills and experiences. It can also provide greater challenge, motivation and depth of learning at all levels of education.
I believe that this is the best way forward for the future.

Conclusion

Our ambitions are challenging - and rightly so. In our first 100 days in Government, we have taken important first steps in shaping tomorrow's Scotland - and making Scotland smarter.

The challenge is to ensure that Scotland is renowned as a smart, learning nation. One that can build on firm foundations, harnessing the talents of our people, creating opportunities for all to flourish and excel. I want Scotland to be everything it can be. Good teaching and learning lies at the heart of this. A love of learning is a liberator for children and a love of learning is on display today.

Whatever part you play in Scotland's education system, it is your professionalism, enthusiasm, creativity and skills that will be instrumental to delivering the outcomes we want to achieve over the coming years.

I am absolutely committed to working with you in partnership to take forward our strategic objectives.

Thank you for listening.

I would now like to hand back to Heather, and would be happy to take comments and questions.

Ends