HMIE Briefing: The newsletter of HM Inspectorate of Education (HMIE)

HMIE Briefing: The newsletter of HM Inspectorate of Education (HMIE) - Summer 2010

Special edition on the continuing implementation of Curriculum for Excellence

A message from Bill Maxwell, Senior Chief Inspector, HMIE

Bill Maxwell photograph

Welcome to our summer edition of Briefing. This issue focuses on the continuing implementation of Curriculum for Excellence. It includes a variety of articles that set out features of emerging practice across a range of different areas of educational practice.

Since the last edition of Briefing, I have announced that we have temporarily re-directed some of our inspectorate resources towards boosting our support for the implementation of Curriculum for Excellence between now and the end of the year. You will see more details in the article on this page.

We are committed to carrying out this work through partnership with local authorities and I am encouraged by the very constructive discussions which district inspectors have had with local authority directors. We intend to build on the support work which has been underway in authorities for some years, and I am sure we can offer some real added value, bringing to bear the particular skills and perspective of our inspectors and our cohort of AAs. We are also working in partnership with colleagues in other national bodies such as Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS) and the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA), wherever that seems sensible, to ensure that the right sort of support is made available to meet the needs identified.

This temporary reduction in school inspection activity in no way represents a weakening of our commitment to providing effective public assurance and accountability. That remains a key priority for HMIE and the programme of cyclical secondary school inspections is scheduled to resume in January 2011.

We are looking forward to working with staff through what is a new and potentially highly productive form of collaborative working. I am sure there will be lessons that we can learn from this, which will help inform thinking about how we can maximise synergies between the activities of the inspectorate and local authorities in the future.

Additional support for the implementation of Curriculum for Excellence

Practitioners in all sectors have been gearing up towards this milestone year for the implementation of Curriculum for Excellence. As a further contribution to this major national endeavour, inspectors have already begun to work, with partners, on the programme of additional support for the implementation of Curriculum for Excellence which Bill Maxwell announced in May. This sits alongside other support, and the emphasis is on building and sustaining capacity in Curriculum for Excellence for the months and years ahead.

To enable this temporary redirection of inspectors’ time we have postponed all inspections in local authority secondary, secondary special and all-through schools and learning communities and are carrying out a reduced programme of primary school and early years centre inspections. The programme will last until December.

Plans are being agreed for each local authority through discussion with district inspectors. They take account of progress and priorities for development. The plans incorporate different types of support including;

visits to individual schools and departments within schools
curriculum area conferences within authorities
inter-authority working where there are common interests
meetings and workshops with headteachers, depute headteachers and principal teachers; learning community colleagues; and quality improvement staff.

Most of the activities will be with secondary schools, as indicated in the Cabinet Secretary’s ten-point plan.

Topics include planning the curriculum as a whole, working with the experiences and outcomes, and assessment. HMIE follow-through visits to schools this term will be augmented to include additional support for Curriculum for Excellence implementation. In addition, we will be visiting some other secondary schools to gather more information. This will enable us to continue to report to the Curriculum for Excellence Management Board on the general state of play on implementation (these visits will not lead to individual published reports).

Alongside this we will continue to maintain a strong emphasis on support for Curriculum for Excellence in inspections.

Throughout, HMIE and partners will be seeking out and promoting good practice. They will not be prescribing answers or templates, but will use a coaching approach, supporting schools’ self-evaluation, and sharing what they have learned about best practice across the country.

For further information please visit our website.¹

Features of success in implementing Curriculum for Excellence

classroom

Our inspections show that successful progress with Curriculum for Excellence is associated with well-established features of effective change management in Scottish education. These include:

good leadership at all levels driven by an ambitious vision to improve outcomes for learners through Curriculum for Excellence;
clear planning based on self-evaluation; and
the professional development of staff to spread good practice and harness mutual support.

These are strengthened by effective partnership working with everyone involved in learning including strong partnerships with parents and carers.

Where schools are taking forward implementation well, they apply these features of change management to the context of Curriculum for Excellence by increasingly:

using the Experiences and Outcomes² to improve learners’ achievements and develop high quality learning and teaching;
improving standards of literacy and numeracy by involving all staff and tracking each learner’s progress; and
developing ways of showing evidence of areas where learners’ experiences and outcomes have improved as a result.

These familiar aspects will provide a menu for professional dialogue during both inspections and support visits. Further advice on our approach to evaluating the curriculum from January 2011 will be published in the autumn version of Briefing.

Emerging practice in the pre-school sector

pre-school sector

Over the last year, throughout the inspection programme, HMIE colleagues and the team of seconded AAs have been engaging with staff about Curriculum for Excellence. The feedback to date has been very positive and staff have found this to be a very helpful part of the inspection process.

From our recent reports in 2010 we have found that staff are generally at an early stage of developing Curriculum for Excellence. Developments such as using the outdoors for learning and developing literacy and numeracy in active learning contexts are becoming more frequent. Staff are also beginning to use the Experiences and Outcomes when they are planning for children’s learning.

In Moving Forward with Curriculum for Excellence the next steps for the pre-school sector are to:

sustain and build on good practice;
focus more on the depth of engagement of children in their learning and introduce more challenge;
benchmark children’s progress and assess this effectively; and
understand what active learning approaches mean, in particular across transition points.

If transitions are supported well, children can learn to cope with change in a positive way, which is a very important skill for life.

Emerging practice in the primary sector

primary sector

Staff are using self-evaluation well to produce improvement plans that include key priorities linked to Curriculum for Excellence. This is most effective where headteachers have worked with members of the school community to develop a clear and shared vision. In best practice, we have found that senior staff create:

continuous professional development (CPD) programmes which are designed to allow staff to engage with the values, principles and practice papers and the implication for their practice in meeting the needs of all learners;
feedback on teachers’ forward plans using the seven design principles as organisers;
time to work in a detailed way with the Experiences and Outcomes as the basis for reviewing learning and teaching approaches and designing programmes for learners;
a clear understanding of the four aspects of the curriculum including the place of interdisciplinary learning;
time to meet with key partners and plan programmes for groups of learners, including the most vulnerable;
time for reading, discussion and debate about what’s working well and not-so-well in the curriculum within the collegiate hours agreement; and
a culture of looking at the impact of self-evaluation on outcomes for children.

In schools where such practice has been established, staff are well placed to work collaboratively to ensure that they plan relevant contexts for learning and provide challenging opportunities for children to achieve appropriate standards.

Audrey Ford; Headteacher, Balbardie Primary School, Bathgate, West Lothian

‘The process of self-evaluation, linked to Curriculum for Excellence has made us very aware of where we are as a school and where we need to get to. It’s encouraging children to reflect on their learning, and teachers to reflect on their teaching. We allocate quite a bit of time to professional reading. For example, we regularly set ourselves a document to read as soon as it’s published and then discuss it as a staff. We would then make plans around what it says and set ourselves challenges to be included in our school improvement plan. Inspectors alerted us to the need to involve parents more in planning the curriculum, and this really was a logical extension of what we were already doing. We’re now involving the children in planning too, for example, by asking them what they already know, what they would like to learn and how they’d like to go about this. The next stage will be to share the Experiences and Outcomes with children so that they become familiar with the way these inform their learning. Although this has been a considerable mind-shift for some of our staff, it’s been part of a gradual process that’s been developing since 2004. We’ve always been pro-active and for us, self-evaluation is the key to the way that we’ve taken forward Curriculum for Excellence. It’s helped us to prioritise and to set a good pace of development. We also record everything in a change log and we then re-visit this at regular intervals, and that’s been a real bonus.’

pupils

Emerging practice in the secondary sector

secondary sector

Strong features which are helping secondary schools to take forward Curriculum for Excellence successfully include the following.

Effective learning and teaching which encourages young people to work well with others and share the findings of group investigations and discussions confidently.
Motivating and challenging activities which reflect young people’s needs and interests, and help them to make sense of the Experiences and Outcomes. Familiarisation with the Experiences and Outcomes is helping young people to track their progress and make links across areas of their learning, especially in literacy and numeracy. Confident teachers also encourage young people to reflect with equal care on the impact of their learning beyond the classroom, for example through volunteering, out-of-school activities as well as residential and international experiences.
Breadth of experience: Exciting ‘new’ courses and programmes are being developed to help meet a variety of needs. Young people are achieving success in options such as fashion brand retailing, international business with languages, sound engineering and digital photography. In addition, they welcome alternative routes to accreditation through, for example, Youth Achievement and Millennium Awards, the Award Scheme Development and Accreditation Network (ASDAN) and the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award. Stronger links between schools and learning community colleagues, including using the Amazing Things³ publication, is helping staff to track and monitor the achievements of all young people (see our article on learning communities in this publication).
A respectful ethos within which young people have a genuine say in making learning experiences better, and are respected for the considered choices they make.
A strong culture of continuous improvement, based on a shared understanding of how best to use self-evaluation to promote improvement, share good practice and stimulate innovation.

Where there is significant work still in progress, it is largely in the area of ensuring appropriate continuity in learning between upper primary and S1/S2, across the curriculum.

Geoff Urie; Headteacher of Hermitage Academy, Argyll and Bute

Hermitage Academy is a good example of a secondary school that is well prepared for Curriculum for Excellence. However, as Geoff Urie says, ‘there won’t be a "big bang" in August, because the work to introduce Curriculum for Excellence started a while ago’. He adds, ‘we see the success of Curriculum for Excellence in what goes on in the classrooms – that’s why I am very keen to make sure that Curriculum for Excellence is about learning and teaching. The cooperative learning approach we’ve adopted has had an immediate impact in helping young people to take a greater responsibility for their own learning’. Looking back at how the process of change was introduced, Depute Headteacher Bob Cassells says, ‘we did the conventional thing when we started – which was form a committee – but we fairly quickly realised that would exclude a lot of the staff, so we used existing structures to put together some development work and to push forward with Curriculum for Excellence. That has proved to be extremely successful. We’ve involved all the staff from day one who’ve been very much involved in cooperative learning as an approach. We see Curriculum for Excellence as partly an expression of what we know about how young people learn and our focus has been about what happens in the classroom’.

Curriculum for Excellence in the college sector

college sector

Scotland’s colleges are committed to delivering the key principles of high quality learning, learner engagement and quality culture. Improving Scottish Education 2005-08⁴ identified a range of strengths in the college sector. Many of these strengths align readily with outcomes encouraged through Curriculum for Excellence, including high quality learning and teaching. The college sector has, therefore, a sound basis upon which to develop its clear success in addressing the learning needs of young people and adults across Scotland.

The many important features of this include:

Colleges working closely and effectively with a wide range of partners. Many are making good use of already strong partnerships in support of the principles, values and aims of Curriculum for Excellence.
Colleges working with schools in innovative ways to address the learning needs of groups of young people.
Colleges which are committed to the important principle of personalisation and choice. Important aspects of this include the commitment of colleges to monitoring and tracking learner progress, and involving staff and learners in setting and reviewing learning goals.

Colleges are committed to other important and relevant national policies/initiatives, including the implementation of 16+ Learning Choices⁵ and the Skills Strategy.⁶ Through all of this, they are well placed to build on their strong track record of addressing the attainment and achievement of the young people of Scotland and, in the process, the implementation of Curriculum for Excellence.

Reid Kerr College’s ‘Earth Calling’ project

In a good example of collaborative working, staff at Reid Kerr College have been involved in a special environmental project involving six local primary schools. This has allowed children to experience new ways of learning such as through "Moodle", the College’s on-line learning resource. As Reid Kerr College’s Cherry Briggs explains, ‘the project is called Earth Calling, and the green lesson plan aims to help children identify areas both at home and in school where potential energy savings can be made’. Janet Collins is Depute Headteacher at East Fulton Primary, one of the schools involved, and she says, ‘the children have been working independently through the Earth Calling programme and during this journey they have discovered many interesting facts regarding sustainable and non-sustainable energy. As a result of this we will be able to move forward as a school in becoming more eco-friendly, and aware of how important this planet and its resources are to everyone living here. It also links well with some of the Experiences and Outcomes within Social Studies which are being developed with their class teacher which is helping the children to make the link between the experiences in the college and in their classroom’.

Emerging practice in Learning Communities (CLD)

Learning Communities (CLD)

Strong features which are helping CLD to take forward Curriculum for Excellence successfully include the following.

In North Ayrshire, the CLD Performance Information and Evaluation System (PIES) database is shared with schools to record wider achievement and attainment. This system brings together the achievements of young people in the community, together with their attainment within schools. It incorporates out-of-school activities around the areas of sport, citizenship, expressive arts and leadership. This information is brought together in the form of a printed certificate, which is then presented to the young people in recognition of their wider achievement.
In the Williamwood area of East Renfrewshire Council the Monday Night Group offers targeted provision for young people. Participants are involved in activities such as drumming, computing, video and craft. Many have gone on to achieve Dynamic Youth and Youth Achievement Awards. A communication passport records individual progress which is linked to ASDAN awards in school.
Inverness Sea Scouts provide rich learning experiences for some 120 young people. Explorer scouts aged 14 and over, achieve skill awards in water sports including kayaking, sailing and powerboat. In addition, many achieve basic first aid and health and safety awards. They are achieving a range of personal qualities including tolerance, confidence, team work, leadership and ingenuity.
The Three Town’s Motor Project provision to Auchenharvie Academy in North Ayrshire provides a curriculum option for young people in S3 and thus enhances the options available to them. The project provides young people with basic motor vehicle skills and qualifications. Staff use a youth work approach which places the young person at the centre of their learning experience and gives them control and ownership of their own development.
Working in partnership with the Caley Youth Centre, Auchenharvey Academy has developed a Radio Project at the school. Equipment was provided by the North Ayrshire Community Planning Partnership in conjunction with 3TFM local Community Radio Station. The high quality material produced is played over the internal sound system within the school. This is helping young people to apply the skills they are developing through the Radio Project and to make effective connections across their learning.

Where this kind of practice has been established, CLD and their partners are well placed to develop interdisciplinary learning using the experiences and outcomes from Curriculum for Excellence. Young people achieve and gain relevant skills for life and gain recognition through a range of award programmes.

Working in partnership with Associate Assessors (AAs)

We have around 500 AAs who are practitioners from all sectors of education and services for children. Typically, each AA joins an inspection or review team twice or three times a year. AAs enhance the work of HMIE with their current direct experience, and contribute to capacity-building in their own establishments and services.

In November 2009 we began a series of regional corporate training events for AAs from different sectors. The training has focussed on three main elements:

practical training in the use of HMIE’s Best Practice Framework (PRAISE) for inspections and reviews;
our approaches to promoting equalities as part of inspections and reviews; and
an opportunity to discuss key national initiatives national policy initiatives, such as, Early Years Framework,⁷ Curriculum for Excellence,⁸ Skills for Scotland,⁹ Amazing Things and Getting it right for every child.¹⁰

We have now held six highly successful events with a total of 191 AAs attending. The evaluations have been very positive with comments, such as, ‘it was very beneficial to have the time and opportunity to think and discuss the issues raised’ and ‘an excellent opportunity to engage with colleagues from different sectors to share ideas and experiences’. Further events will take place in the autumn.

We have also identified many of our AAs as key contributors to our support for the implementation of Curriculum for Excellence between now and December. This continued relationship will help to build capacity within education authorities to benefit them beyond the support period.

Journey to Excellence supports Curriculum for Excellence

The Journey to Excellence online resource, supports schools and their partners to take forward Curriculum for Excellence. Moving on from the focus on 10 dimensions it is now organised into five broad areas of excellence.

These five areas enable learners to develop the capacities, capabilities and skills which are the outcomes for Curriculum for Excellence.

Learning and teaching¹¹
Vision and Leadership¹²
Partnership¹³
People¹⁴
Culture and ethos¹⁵

Worth a look?

Resources and CPD – In the ‘Promoting Excellence’ area, available to download or read online is a ‘Curriculum for Excellence leaflet’ and an HMIE presentation. Both resources show how Journey to Excellence directly supports the implementation of Curriculum for Excellence.
Improvement guides – Building on the success of the original transformational grids, these guides provide clear information on how schools and CLD practitioners can move from good to excellent.
Professional development packs (PDPs) – These professional development packs are regularly updated and use carefully selected videos and information from the website. They aim to put learning into practice. Staff can watch and undertake activities based on examples of excellent practice from practitioners and learners. The recently added PDP on ‘improvement through self-evaluation’ has been very well received. Coming soon, PDPs on literacy and numeracy and Health and wellbeing.
Video search – Allows you to browse videos categorised into five main areas. The learning and teaching section highlights videos with a curriculum or subject-based focus.

The School Inspection Framework Review

We are currently undertaking a review of how the existing school inspection model, introduced in 2008, is operating. Our review will cover the work of pre-school centres, primary, secondary and special schools, all through schools and follow-through inspections. Our aim is to make recommendations about where there is scope for further improvements, including aligning our inspections more closely to Curriculum for Excellence. Building on the strengths of our current model, we intend to participate in a wide public consultation on a new school inspection framework due to be published next year.

We are taking this opportunity to make sure that our approach to school inspection is well adapted to the changing environment and commands wide public and stakeholder support. We also want to ensure the approach is efficient and sustainable. During late spring we consulted internally with inspectors and corporate services staff as well as with lay members and AAs. We have also established an external reference group of key stakeholders to provide advice on the development. A draft School Inspection Framework, incorporating a set of proposed changes, will be ready for external consultation by the end of September.

It is important to stress that the review of the school inspection framework will not bring major change to how we inspect school and pre-schools on the ground. The new framework will be grounded in existing models and continue to be proportionate, build on an establishment’s self-evaluation and provide opportunities for professional engagement. Comments from members of the external reference group on the process so far include:

‘It’s good to see HMIE working with partners to take forward this development. Increased partnership working is vital in times of financial constraint and it helps to build understanding about the purpose of inspections.’

There will be clear mechanisms for being involved in the public consultation but if you have a suggestion which would help us to improve any aspect of school or pre-school inspections we have created a mailbox for your ideas. Please send your suggestions or comments to schoolinspectionframeworkreview@hmie.gsi.gov.uk

The Scottish Learning Festival

Scottish Learning Festival

This year’s Scottish Learning Festival will be held on 22-23 September 2010 at the SECC in Glasgow. The Scottish Education Village is home to ourselves, LTS, the Scottish Government and SQA. This year’s theme is Curriculum for Excellence: Enhancing Experiences, Raising Standards.

Our Senior Chief Inspector, Dr Bill Maxwell, will be hosting a spotlight session on Thursday 23 September at 13:00 in the Lomond Auditorium. His session is entitled ‘The Evolving Role of School Inspection and Quality Improvement.’ The code is L1H.

We are also running five seminars:

Implications of the Principles of Assessment in Building the Curriculum 5 for Learning and Teaching Practice and for Inspectors. Wednesday 22 September 2010 12:30, code C2B.
Designing Our Learning Future. Wednesday 22 September 2010 16:45, code D2E.
Learning Together to Provide Curriculum for Excellence for all Learners. Wednesday 22 September 2010 16:45, code M1E.
Success for all Learners. Thursday 23 September 2010 10:30, code B2G.
Curriculum for Excellence: It Really is for Everyone. Thursday 23 September 2010 13:00, code B2H.

To book your place visit the Scottish Learning Festival website to register and click the Book Now button.

The HMIE stand will provide visitors with the opportunity to attend informal workshop sessions focussing on our support work for Curriculum for Excellence and developments in school inspection:

Assessment
The Curriculum
Interdisciplinary learning
Leadership
Learning Together: International Education
Learning Communities
Self-evaluation
Support for all
Transitions
The School Inspection Framework Review

Each topic will take the form of live workshop sessions and will link to key resources, such as Journey to Excellence, and involve partners where possible. The stand has been designed with this in mind and will have a demonstration area, laptops and an informal discussion area.

Please also visit our stand to speak with inspectors about your experiences, resources you would like to know more about or for an informal discussion. More specific details will be available on our website nearer the time relating to our involvement at this year’s festival.

Scottish Learning Festival

News updates from Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA), Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS) and Scotland’s Colleges

Developments at LTS

LTS has an extensive programme of activities planned over the coming year and will continue to develop a range of exemplars to promote CPD and the sharing of practice in using the Experiences and Outcomes, in curriculum planning and supporting approaches to assessment. Over 150 emerging examples of approaches to assessment, showing short episodes of learning and teaching and evidence of pupils’ work for experiences and outcomes in literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing, across curriculum areas, stages and within levels are available online now.

LTS introduces its new website for¹⁶ the education community

LTS introduces its new website

Following extensive user research and testing, LTS has launched a new, easy to use, integrated website that will offer the education community total support as teachers and other practitioners implement the new curriculum this year. LTS has consolidated content from a wide range of existing websites – including Curriculum for Excellence, Glow Scotland, Enterprise in Education, Global Citizenship, Inclusion and Equality and many more – to make it easier for users to find what they are looking for and make links across other areas of learning.

Curriculum for Excellence in Scotland’s Colleges

The Scotland’s Colleges website¹⁷ contains a Curriculum for Excellence section. This includes:

information and resources for college staff, including relevant publications and useful web-links;
information on staff development opportunities provided by Scottish Colleges on Curriculum for Excellence;
information on the membership and work of the Principals’ Convention Curriculum for Excellence Working Group, associated work streams and college sector nominated Leads; and
information on the role of the two Scottish Government Professional Advisors on Curriculum for Excellence, currently on secondment from the college sector.

New Qualification Progress Reports from SQA

Curriculum for Excellence

The first of the Curriculum for Excellence Progress Reports¹⁸ are now available to view on SQA’s website. These summarise the findings and conclusions of SQA’s research and engagement with stakeholders and give recommendations on the scope, skills and issues within each curriculum areas. Reports have been published for seven of the eight curriculum areas: expressive arts, health and wellbeing, languages, mathematics, sciences, social studies and technologies as well as literacy and numeracy. The report for religious and moral education is the latest in this series.

The reports will also be used to inform the development of an Overview document and suites of courses for each curriculum area. Qualifications Design Teams (QDTs) will then take the recommendations forward into the design of qualifications within individual subjects. The next stage is for the QDTs to take forward their work with the external Review of Courses Coordinating Group (eROCC) overseeing their work.

HMIE BRIeFING is published by HM Inspectorate of Education.
HMIE, Denholm House, Almondvale Business Park, Almondvale Way, Livingston EH54 6GA
Tel: 01506 600 200
E-mail: enquiries@hmie.gsi.gov.uk
Web:www.hmie.gov.uk

Footnotes

1 www.hmie.gov.uk

2 www.ltscotland.org.uk/curriculumforexcellence/experiencesandoutcomes

3 www.youthscotland.org.uk/projects/volunteer-action-plan/amazing-things.htm

4 www.hmie.gov.uk/publications.aspx

5 www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Education/skills-strategy/progress/sg/economicimprovement/16PlusLearningChoices

6 www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2007/09/06091114/0

7 www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2009/01/13095148/0

8 www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Education/Schools/curriculum/ACE

9 www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2007/09/06091114/0

10 www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/People/Young-People/childrensservices/girfec

11 www.ltscotland.org.uk/journeytoexcellence/learningandteaching/index.asp

12 www.ltscotland.org.uk/journeytoexcellence/visionandleadership/index.asp

13 www.ltscotland.org.uk/journeytoexcellence/partnership/index.asp

14 www.ltscotland.org.uk/journeytoexcellence/people/index.asp

15 www.ltscotland.org.uk/journeytoexcellence/cultureandethos/index.asp

16 www.LTScotland.org.uk

17 www.scotlandscolleges.ac.uk/curriculum/curriculum-for-excellence/curriculum-for-excellence.html

18 www.ltscotland.org.uk/journeytoexcellence/people/index.asp