Testing time for Russell on school curriculum

THE decision by education secretary Mike Russell to press ahead with the introduction of the Curriculum for Excellence reforms, despite warnings that teachers are ill-prepared for this massive change in schools, is a brave one.

Mr Russell is to be commended for at least making a decision and ending the prevailing uncertainty over what he has described as a revolution in the way our children our taught. The task must now be to ensure the curriculum is properly introduced. In doing so, Mr Russell must not only pay attention to teachers but also take into account criticism from academics, including Lindsay Paterson, professor of educational policy at Edinburgh University, who says the aims of the reforms are "so vague as to be unexceptionable".

Writing in this newspaper in September, Prof Paterson made the prescient point that this huge change has had remarkably little airing outside political circles or the places where teachers and education officials talk to each other.

So, if Mr Russell is to go ahead, it is to the task of explanation and execution that he must now turn his attention. Teachers in the classroom clearly need further tutoring in the requirements of the new curriculum and the new demands it places upon them.

Beyond that, Mr Russell must make a substantial effort to explain to parents – using plain English, not the impenetrable jargon of education officialese – what these reforms will do to enhance their children's schooling.