The problems facing Curriculum for Excellence have finally been identified. Carole Ford demonstrated them clearly in her recent article in the TESS.

If you know me your jaw may well now be on the floor. What? Fearghal agrees with Carole Ford’s piece!?! No, rest assured, I haven’t done a U-turn. No, I don’t agree with her points at all, but I think she unintentionally demonstrated why CfE is struggling to gain traction in so many parts of the country. Obviously there are many issues such as support, time, funding etc.; but perhaps the greatest barrier is the support for school leaders in understanding the change, which then impacts on their ability to lead the changes in their schools.

There are many points in her piece which I disagree with, but I’ll pick out a small sample to illustrate my point. In reference to literacy and numeracy she says:

pupils who fail to develop appropriate levels of literacy and numeracy skill in primary school rarely make good this deficit later in the educational process. The CfE solution to this is not, as one might expect, to focus attention on the primary years of schooling but to place responsibility for both onto secondary teachers. Thus we have physics teachers teaching literacy and French teachers teaching numeracy

I find this statement to be shockingly inaccurate for two reasons. Firstly, CfE is continuing to place a strong focus on literacy, numeracy (& health and well being) in the primary stages as well as secondary. And secondly, secondary teachers should not be ‘teaching literacy’ in place of their subject specialisms – but rather using their subject areas as contexts to develop these skills where appropriate. Throughout the broad general education the intention is to improve young people’s literacy and numeracy levels – this is not the sole domain of primary teachers, as any secondary teacher will tell you (bemoan)! Whilst there may well be a number of secondary schools around the country which are requiring their staff to be ‘teaching numeracy’ in place of their subject area, I would argue that this is not the fault of CfE, but of the school leaders who have misinterpreted the documentation.

She goes onto use a similar argument regarding interdisciplinary learning:

interdisciplinary learning, advocated by CfE, is a whole bone of contention in its own right. Why is taking a teacher out of his comfort zone a good thing? Do you wish to be treated by a doctor who is operating out of his comfort zone? The logic of interdisciplinary learning is that I will make better progress in German if the teacher is not fluent in German but pretty good at French or Spanish. In the language of Homer Simpson, “D’oh!”

It’s surprising that an article which criticises the lack of evidence presented to support CfE only itself contains a quote by Homer Simpson, but anyway, interdisciplinary learning. I personally don’t believe that interdisciplinary learning is the holy grail one might think it is if you listen to certain people, but I still think the quotation above misses the point. Interdisciplinary learning is not supposed to be about French teachers teaching German. It’s supposed to be about providing young people with opportunities to see their learning in a more joined up way and be beginning to make connections between the artificial barriers we’ve created between the subjects. This is a skill which I always say marks out the top candidates in Biology, and it is one which is becoming increasingly relevant in today’s world.

Once again, there may well be many teachers out there having to teach a subject outside their comfort zone under the banner of interdisciplinary learning and CfE, but I think Carole Ford is inadvertently highlighting an issue with her colleagues – not Curriculum for Excellence. Don’t get me wrong, I think there are many barriers facing the implementation of CfE, but not all of them lie with the policy documents or the national agencies – as demonstrated by this article.