CfE Management Board – 23 April 2013 – paper 3.1
Paper for Curriculum for Excellence Management Board Meeting
–
23 April 2013
Update from the Curriculum for Excellence Implementation Group
The Curriculum for Excellence Implementation Group has met twice since the last meeting of the Curriculum for Excellence Management Board, on
17 January and 26 March 2013. The next meeting is scheduled for
29 May 2013. Key points discussed at the group are as follows.
Programme Plan – progress
1.
The overall programme remains on track for delivery according to plan.
The Senior Phase Benchmarking Tool project continues to be carefully managed and monitored as timescales for the development of the technical IT work package are very tight. A recent Gateway Review assessed the project as
Amber, with six recommendations covering governance, resources and planning, which are now being addressed.
2.
The commissioning and development of course materials for Nationals 4 and 5 continues to be tightly managed, with courses across every subject now under development. The status of this particular workstream remains amber, as the commissioned materials go through a quality assurance process prior to publication. Work is ongoing with the website to make it more accessible to practitioners, pupils and parents.
3.
SQA successfully delivered a key milestone in the programme as a suite of documents, including marking instructions to support Nationals 2, 3, 4 and 5, which were published in February.
Risks and Issues
1.
The Group has kept the programme risk register under review. SQA raised a potential new risk at the Senior Accountable Officers meeting in March.
This risk is ‘that centres cannot secure supply teacher cover to support the release of centre staff for Nominee and Appointee activity ’. SQA also flagged a further potential risk; there may be a lack of agreement between the Scottish
Government and professional associations in implementing the new qualifications. .
2.
The risk register was reviewed with significant conclusions as follows. In light of earlier discussion of the Group at the March meeting it was agreed that the status of Risk 1 outlined below was raised to high. Risks 3 and 8 remain high at present.

Risk 1 ( ES/SQA/Scottish Government/Local Authority/Scotland’s
Colleges do not have sufficient people in place who have the appropriate skills or knowledge .) Discussions are underway with key partners.
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CfE Management Board – 23 April 2013 – paper 3.1

Risk 3 ( Inappropriate implementation of CFE at local level ) is still high but is being managed.

Risk 6 ( failure to deliver appropriate IT solutions) is being affected by the delays in delivery of the Senior Phase Benchmarking Tool project. The project is currently at an amber status. Scottish Government agreed to the group to meet more frequently to address and monitor the issues.
The Senior Phase Benchmarking Tool project is to assess the impact of the delays on the project and programme.

Risk 8 ( Failure to secure and maintain confidence of parents) . A significant range of activity is underway to address the risks, including the first eight in the serie s of ‘Nationals in A Nutshell’ produced by the
National Parents Forum Scotland which are summaries of the National 4 and National 5 qualifications.
Communications and Engagement
1.
The group noted that all milestones within the Communication Strategy were delivered in full and on schedule. There has been a good response in the local media to the activity being undertaken around inspection reports.
Ministerial and Senior Officer visits to schools and nurseries have helped promote the achievements of the establishments. The CfE Communications and Engagement Group are currently planning an evaluation of communications activities to date.

The group also noted that SQA have recently published a range of materials including; Unit Assessment Support for new Awards, feedback on the draft Unit Specifications for the new Advanced Higher, the first release of Added Value assessments for National 4 and Coursework
Information for National 5, Specimen Question Papers for National 5 for all subjects.

Education Scotlan d, in partnership with SQA, published ‘Making Good
Assessment De cisions’ Professional Learning Resource. This resource supports the posters, also entitled
‘Making Good Assessment Decisions’, which have been distributed to schools. The Professional Learning
Resource outlines the continuity between the quality assurance procedures developed to support the Broad General Education (BGE) and those for the senior phase, including the new National Qualifications.

Education Scotland has been working very closely with ADES to co-ordinate the development and publication of exemplar course materials across the full range of National 4 and National 5 qualifications.
Materials have been developed from a variety of sources and many locally in schools and local authorities. These are now being shared nationally as part of the creation o f a nationwide ‘Virtual Campus’ which encourages the sharing of resources across all schools and local authorities. Materials for all courses will be published by the end of April
2013.
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CfE Management Board – 23 April 2013 – paper 3.1
Professional Focus Papers
1.
The group was pleased to see that Education Scotland has now published a complete suite of Professional Focus Papers. These materials now cover all subjects and have been designed to assist those supporting learners as they work towards the new qualifications. The papers highlight important features of learning in the new National 4 and 5 courses, which are enhanced or different from the courses they replace. The Professional Focus Papers are now available for download on the web-based course materials site on Glow and the Education Scotland website.
Education Scotland launched a dedicated website on Glow which provides quick, secure and easy access to the range of web-based course materials being published to support the new National Qualifications. In addition, the site also provides access to the Professional Focus Papers.
Curriculum for Excellence Annual Performance report
The group agreed arrangements for drafting an action plan for the year ahead.
Progress in relation to the action plan will be provided to the Management
Board. A draft action plan will be available for the May Implementation Group meeting. It is suggested that it is published before the summer break.
Senior Phase Curriculum Models and Qualifications
The group discussed the current arrangements, which had run for the last two years, for producing an annual progress report on implementation of the programme. The group felt that there was potential to move to new more efficient ways of reporting on progress on implementation now that the
Implementation Group was fully up and funning, drawing on the group’s mechanisms for collating evidence of implementation at local level. The chair of the Implementation Group will raise this issue specifically at the Management
Board in order to obtain their views.
The group noted that
Education Scotland’s Area Lead Officers have been meeting with local authorities to discuss a range of challenge questions and provided an overview of the findings on the implementation of the senior phase.
This included issues of schools offering whole cohort choices, the majority of schools are now offering 6 subject choices. Early presentations are also much reduced and the picture is generally positive.
Benefits Realisation
Arrangements for taking forward the development of proposals for a benefits realisation strategy were agreed. It was agreed that a small group would be created to formulate the strategy led by Education Scotland and Scottish
Government.
Dr Bill Maxwell
Chair, Curriculum for Excellence Implementation Group
12 April 2013
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