Engaging with employers
About Curriculum for Excellence
As times change, education and schools have to adapt to keep up with changes taking place in the world around us, such as:
- different work opportunities and patterns
- completely new ways of using technology, the internet and other means of communication
- new attitudes to the way we care for the environment
- more emphasis on the importance of health and wellbeing
- more contact with different cultures and travel.
Scottish education is changing now to ensure our children and young people have the knowledge and skills they need for learning, and for their future life and work. The new curriculum, Curriculum for Excellence, is a new way of looking at learning and teaching. It is intended to raise achievement and attainment and to provide more choices and more chances for all young people.
Curriculum for Excellence is firmly focused on the needs of children and young people. It is a new way of looking at the curriculum that builds on the best teaching already taking place in Scottish education. It wants every young person to become a:
- Successful learner
- Confident individual
- Responsible citizen and
- Effective contributor to society and work.
Further detail on what this means is provided with the diagram, ‘Purposes of the curriculum 3-18’.
What is meant by curriculum?
The curriculum describes what children and young people do and learn in nursery, schools, colleges and other settings, as part of their education from age 3 to 18. The new curriculum will offer children and young people access to a broad education which will prepare them for further learning. It will include a particular focus on literacy and numeracy, and on their health and wellbeing. Young people will continue to have choices of subjects, especially as they progress through secondary school. The curriculum should also include space for learning beyond subject boundaries so that children and young people can make connections between different areas of learning.
The curriculum areas are:
- mathematics and numeracy
- literacy and languages
- science
- health and wellbeing
- social studies
- expressive arts
- technologies
- religious and moral education.
Curriculum for Excellence will make it easier for children and young people to link their learning experiences from a wide range of settings, such as early years centres, out-of-school clubs, youth work activities, colleges and at home as well as school. It will include the wide range of adults who are involved in the development of children and young people. This will see learning in schools and other settings taking place through a wide range of planned experiences which may be linked to vocational or other specialised placements. Children will also learn through the day-to-day experiences of the life of the school community, with its values and social contact, and from out-of-school activities, events and celebrations.
Children and young people should feel challenged but at the same time enjoy their learning. They can expect to have their achievements recognised and to achieve qualifications that provide pathways into further and higher education and the world of work.
The changes and improvements brought about by Curriculum for Excellence mean that children and young people will:
- Have more varied, motivating and enjoyable learning experiences
- Understand the purpose of their learning experiences and make connections across their learning in the different curriculum areas
- See the value of their learning experiences and what they are learning
See the relevance and usefulness of their learning to their everyday life and experiences now and in the future.
Questionnaires
The deadline for submitting the questionnaire relating to employers and the draft experiences and outcomes has now passed.