How to…understand Curriculum for Excellence

Go into your local school, and you’ll find it has changed considerably since you were a pupil. You’ll have heard about Curriculum for Excellence (CfE), and may know a fair bit about it already. But it really is hard to overestimate the differences in the way learning is now approached.

One key difference (which is crucial for your role as a Chaplain or Church volunteer) is the way children and young people are now expected to be much more in the lead.

The most important thing to grasp about Curriculum for Excellence is that the name is deeply misleading: the CfE reforms are completely reshaping every part of school education, certainly not just the classroom curriculum. In fact, it’s these wider aspects you need to get your mind around if you’re going to offer relevant support to a school.

Trouble is, if you go on the Education Scotland website https://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/ you can all too easily get lost in all the detail.

So where do you start?

• Remember the big ideas behind Curriculum for Excellence:

• • schools are committed to holistic development of their children and young people (emotional, relational, physical, intellectual and, yes, spiritual…..though of course different people will claim different meanings for “spiritual”)
  • the community of the school and links between the school and the wider community are crucial – the watchword is “Doing school together”.

• Have a look at the Serve your Local School website for a good introduction to CfE: https://www.syls.org.uk/get-started/curriculum-for-excellence-cfe.html
• Want to find out what a Christian Head Teacher thinks about CfE? Then read “What’s so good about Curriculum for Excellence?”