Elgin Town Hall 15 th January 2013 Laurence Findlay Head of Schools and Curriculum Development

 To provide an update on the senior phase of Curriculum for Excellence in Moray schools  To provide information on new qualifications  To discuss future MPF meetings

 The National Debate on education in 2003 informed us that we wanted…. 1. A more flexible curriculum 2. Less time spent on exams and reduced assessment 3. A system more responsive to learner needs 4. Increased skills for learning, life and work

“So people want to see change… they want a school system in Scotland that is well resourced and flexible enough to meet the needs of the individual child…a system that adapts to the child, not the child to the system. This will require radical new thinking about the way we design, build and manage our schools, about the way teachers teach, about the curriculum and about the interaction between pupils, parents, community and school.”

 To reduce the achievement gap that opens up about P5 and continues to widen throughout the junior secondary years  The gap associated with poverty and deprivation  The numbers of young people leaving school with minimal (and in some cases no) qualifications

 Today’s learners are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach  The illiterate of the 21 st century will not be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn  The world our kids are going to live in is changing four times faster than our schools  Future jobs; Mechatronical engineer, Avatar design-security consultant, Traceability manager, Bioinformationist, Geomicrobiologist, Ethical Hacker….

 Innovative and Creative  Able to cross boundaries  Adaptable and flexible  Analytical and critical  Problem solving  Self-management  Technologically literate

 A curriculum which is coherent from 3 to 18  A senior phase of education after S3 which provides the opportunity to obtain qualifications as well as to continue to develop the four capacities  Opportunities to continue to develop skills for learning, skills for life and skills for work (Including career planning skills) and a continuous focus on literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing  Personal support to enable them to gain as much as possible from the opportunities that the curriculum can provide  Support in moving into positive and sustained destinations beyond school

 The senior phase in schools should now be seen as a three year experience from S4 to S6  New “National” qualifications will replace Standard Grade and Intermediate qualifications. National 4 will be internally assessed, with external moderation and National 5 will involve a mixture of continuous internal assessment and a final externally marked examination  Highers and Advanced Highers will be revised in light of new qualifications

 Each course requires a notional 160 hours of study, so only five or six courses can be taken per year as S3 is part of the Broad General Education and is not an examination preparation year

 Young people will have a broad, general experience until the end of S3  Young people may well be in groupings across S4 to S6 depending on their subject choice  There is a greater focus on skills development as opposed to the retention of knowledge and facts  There will be increased flexibility in our education system to meet the needs of the 21 st century and a rapidly changing world

CURRENT QUALIFICATIONSNEW QUALFICATIONS Access 1/2/3/Standard Grade Foundation National 1/2/3 Standard Grade General/Intermediate 1 National 4 Standard Grade Credit/Intermediate 2 National 5 Higher Advanced Higher

 Committee meetings take place every eight weeks on Wednesday mornings from 9.30am and are set for the next four years. There is currently a parental vacancy and it is important that Moray Parent Forum chooses a parent to represent them at Committee.

 Future meetings of Moray Parent Forum will take place on;  Wednesday 6 th March  Wednesday 8 th May  Tuesday 11 th June  Topics…..