The aspirations of Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) are unlikely ever to be fully realised if Scottish teachers continue to spend so much time in the classroom, according to the authors of today’s report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

The 139-page report has high praise for Scotland’s teachers but notes that their work is undermined by class-contact time that is high by international comparison.

The OECD praises Scottish teachers, saying that they are “well educated and respected professionals”, and calls for them to be given “additional dedicated and ring-fenced time...for curriculum planning, for monitoring of student achievement and in support of moderation of assessment outcomes”.

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The OECD report also says: “A tension exists between Scotland’s comparatively high rate of teachers’ class-contact time and the expectations for teachers to lead and plan curricula locally.”

Teachers ‘need less class contact time to make the most of CfE’

The OECD finds that teachers “greatly valued” the opportunity afforded by CfE to adapt the curriculum to the needs of their school and their pupils.

The report adds: “However, there is an obvious mismatch in the Scottish system between the curriculum-making role of teachers and the comparatively high class-contact hours of teachers across the system.”

It notes that, although class-contact time is lower than before the landmark 2001 McCrone agreement, the maximum time that teachers spend with classes is typically longer than the OECD average.

The report states: “The sustainability of this
above-average allocation, together with the expectations that teachers engage in local curriculum development that, in turn, delivers the CfE ambitions for all learners, is an open question.”

In an online seminar coinciding with the OECD report’s publication this morning, one of the experts in the team behind the review said this tension between teachers’ desire to innovate and the lack of time to do so had to be addressed.

Professor Anne Looney, who is executive dean of Dublin City University’s Institute of Education, Ireland’s largest faculty of education, said that “what was particularly striking for the review team was the tension between the aspirations of a very sophisticated curriculum that requires teachers to collaborate - to think, to reflect, to look at the data around student achievement, and to do that together - and the fact that, relative to their other global partners, Scottish teachers spend a lot of time in classrooms and less time with each other”.

She added: “The question is...is that tension sustainable for either the Curriculum for Excellence and the aspirations Scotland has for it, or for the teaching profession?

“And one of the recommendations in the report is that actually that tension needs to be looked at, particularly if we’re endorsing Curriculum for Excellence, as the review is, and saying it is a pioneering curriculum, it offers great potential for 21st-century learning - then the supports that are provided to the teaching profession to engage with that need to be looked at as well.”

Larry Flanagan, general secretary of the EIS teaching union, said that the union’s “lobbying in this area has already had some impact, with the Scottish government pledging to deliver an early reduction of 1.5 hours per week in teachers’ class-contact time to bring Scotland closer to OECD norms”.