A timeline for Scotland’s education reform sets out key staging posts over the next seven years - culminating in new qualifications at Higher and Advanced Higher level in 2032.
It promises an early idea of “when and how teaching, learning and assessment will start to feel different”.
Key reform dates
The document, Curriculum, Qualifications and Assessment Reform - Progress to Date and Next Steps, lays out key dates including:
- Summer 2025: The “learner profile” - a digital record of a young person’s varied achievements - starts to be rolled out nationally.
- Autumn 2025: Start of a new “design phase” for qualifications at SCQF levels 4 and 5.
- Summer 2026: Publication of a “draft evolved curriculum technical framework”.
- From 2026: First subjects to undergo “rebalancing” of assessment in existing national qualifications.
- 2027: Final revised curriculum guidance published, alongside final technical guidance.
- 2028: New qualifications start taking shape at subject level.
- 2031: Reformed qualifications fully available at SCQF levels 4 and 5.
- 2032: Reformed qualifications fully available at SCQF levels 6 and 7.
Today’s publication stresses that Scotland’s “curriculum improvement cycle” (CIC), led by Education Scotland, is already “well underway”, having started in early 2024.
It states: “Common themes in discussions about the future of Scottish education include moving beyond a perceived focus on a high-stakes annual exam diet, making learning more engaging and recognising the achievements of all learners. This paper sets out how the education sector will take forward a range of ideas related to these priorities.”
The CIC is “systematically reviewing the curriculum in Scotland” to help it “evolve over time in response to what children and young people need and what society demands”.
One priority will be improving support for progression from the “broad general education” to the “senior phase”. Today’s document also notes “the importance of developing a curriculum specifically tailored for Gaelic-medium education”.
Giving all qualification types equal value
In the senior phase, the plan is to “review the balance of assessment approaches and broaden the range and types of assessment methods”. The reform process will “create the conditions where all qualification types are perceived as having equal value”.
The digital learner profile will be a “standardised framework for recognising young people’s wider skills and achievements, as well as qualifications, with strong underpinnings for comparability and recognition outside school”.
Today’s guidance lists key benefits of ongoing Scottish education reform, including “greater clarity on the knowledge and skills children and young people should develop at each stage of their learning journey”.
Another benefit will be “a reduced focus on exams, where appropriate”.
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