{"id":7642,"date":"2020-03-18T08:07:53","date_gmt":"2020-03-18T08:07:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7642"},"modified":"2020-03-18T08:07:53","modified_gmt":"2020-03-18T08:07:53","slug":"send-in-the-oecd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2020\/03\/18\/send-in-the-oecd\/","title":{"rendered":"Send in the OECD"},"content":{"rendered":"

I see that the Scottish government has finally responded to widespread criticism and called in experts (the OECD) to sort out Curriculum for Excellence. \u00a0This is the equivalent of calling in the IMF to sort out your economy. \u00a0It's humiliating, and not a great look.<\/span><\/p>\n

Education once brought Scotland bragging rights across these islands. \u00a0No longer. \u00a0In the OECD's PISA tests, Scotland\u2019 performance in maths and science have declined to 24<\/span>th<\/sup><\/span>\u00a0& 25<\/span>th<\/sup><\/span>\u00a0(out of 36), well below the UK average. \u00a0Reading skills are lower than they were 20 years ago. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCurriculum for Excellence\u201d is widely blamed following its<\/span>\u00a0introduction to schools in 20<\/span>11.<\/span>\u00a0 This was a Labour policy continued by the Nationalists. \u00a0Some of t<\/span>he strongest criticism comes from Lindsay Paterson (professor of education policy at the University of Edinburgh). \u00a0Its critical flaw, he says, is:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201ca replacement of knowledge by process, children being encouraged to lead discovery by saying what they want to know, not being told what they should know \u2013 there is no recognition in the curriculum of a canon of necessary ideas or practices, no acknowledgement of any kind of theoretical framework that might give coherence to each curricular subjec<\/em>t.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Ouch!<\/span><\/p>\n

As such, it is obvious that Curriculum for Excellence must discriminate against those from culturally-narrow home backgrounds. \u00a0Paterson makes the hitherto commonplace point that knowledge\u00a0<\/span>acquired through schools provides opportunities to people who cannot get it at home.<\/p>\n

\"If schools stop teaching structured knowledge, then inequality of access to knowledge will widen, because the children of the well-educated and the wealthy will get it in other ways.\"<\/em><\/p>\n

England narrowly avoided this trap about 10 years ago as I have noted<\/a> before. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And so who better to fix the problem than the OECD whose tests the Scottish government is so anxious to do better in. \u00a0<\/span>Meanwhile, and way beyond irony, the Welsh have hired the educational guru who designed Curriculum for Excellence<\/span> to help them boost their PISA scores. \u00a0I hear that they have also asked the Scottish government for a copy of the recent request sent to the OECD so they can file it safely for future use. \u00a0Iechyd da!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I see that the Scottish government has finally responded to widespread criticism and called in experts (the OECD) to sort out Curriculum for Excellence. \u00a0This is the equivalent of calling in the IMF to sort out your economy. \u00a0It's humiliating,...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7642\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}