Squaring the Circle: Mathematics series round-up
In this article Ollie Bray, Strategic Director at Education Scotland, wraps up our recent series of Curriculum Improvement Cycle articles on mathematics.?
Ollie reflects on the series so far, talks a little bit about how the technical framework for Scotland's Curriculum might evolve, and sets out some of the early priorities for 2025.?
Squaring the Circle: Mathematics series round-up?
I can’t believe it has been three weeks since we started this focused set of articles on mathematics in the context of the early work of the Curriculum Improvement Cycle (CIC). It has been great to hear from Andy, Donna, Chris and Leigh as part of this LinkedIn series but we have also heard from Ashley, Deedra, Jonny, Rachel and Tara on some of our other Education Scotland (ES) social media channels.??
When we started our work on the CIC we said that we were aiming to put practitioners at the heart of everything that we are doing, and I hope that the voices that you have heard over the last three weeks have helped reassure you of our intent. During the course of the series we have also introduced you to the idea of a CIC collaboration group and a CIC core group.??
The collaboration group consists of around 100 participants, with a deliberate bias towards practitioners, who make up approximately three-quarters of the group. This purposeful design places practitioners at the heart of the co-design process while ensuring representation across local authorities, sectors, roles, and levels of experience. While the mathematics collaboration group evolved naturally from the existing pilot curriculum area review group, open recruitment calls for participation for Health and Wellbeing, Literacy and English, Literacy and Gàidhlig and Science were made in October 2024. Further open calls for the other curriculum areas will be made in January 2025 (watch this space!)
The role of the collaboration group is:?
A core group is made up of 15 to 30 participants and is drawn from the collaboration group. The core group will work closely with the relevant ES team including seconded CIC National Advisers. The role of the core group is to develop the options and possible solutions identified by the collaboration group, working through the stages identified in the CIC: analysing; engaging and co-creating; sharing, learning and adopting; and mobilising, monitoring and evaluating.?
Since the summer, both the core and the collaboration groups for numeracy and mathematics have not only been helping us think through ‘all things mathematical,’ but they have also been helping us think through what an evolved technical framework for Scotland’s Curriculum might look like. This has included being involved at various times, such as the collaboration group workshop in?November 2024, in some early testing and feedback of a possible evolved technical framework.?
I am not going to pretend for a moment that this has been an easy task, because in essence, the groups have been juggling two functions, and we have got a few things wrong along the way. That said, we have learnt a lot from the journey so far, and this has helped make each subsequent stage of the process stronger. I personally feel like we are now in a very strong position to build on the work to date and start the really heavy lifting on the co-design of the next stage of an evolved mathematics curriculum in early 2025, while being cognisant of the other curriculum areas and contexts for learning.
Talking of an Evolved Technical Framework?
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As I have said before, ‘Language Matters’, and it is important to understand that the technical framework within a curriculum is used by educators to plan what children and young people will learn. In Scotland, this currently includes guidance such as Experiences and Outcomes (Es&Os), benchmarks, progression frameworks, and approaches to moderation.?
Yesterday (Thursday 19 December 2024) Education Scotland published our second CIC Discussion Paper called, ‘Towards an Evolved Technical Framework’. The paper reflects on the use of a Big Ideas approach within an evolved technical framework, while also making the case for a framework built around a Know-Do-Understand model.?
The Know-Do-Understand model offers a solution to making the position of knowledge and skills more explicit. It provides greater clarity on the knowledge learners should have, while also recognising the importance of what they can do with that knowledge.?
Within this model, Big Ideas represent the ‘understanding’ element. A Big Idea captures the core understanding that children and young people will develop in a particular area of the curriculum, starting from the early years. Big Ideas establish overarching concepts that are relevant, meaningful, and connected to learners’ experiences. They support progression and guide the selection of content.?
The paper also explores how an evolved technical framework might address other challenges, such as: the positioning of cross-curricular expectations; and the alignment between the Broad General Education and the Senior Phase.?
It is important to emphasise that this is a discussion paper. I feel very comfortable with the general sense of direction, and I have felt very reassured during the initial testing of the ideas to date. However, one of the purposes of the paper is to support?discussion and to gauge how others in the system feel about the proposed direction. The paper does not tackle the ‘how’ of change or ‘how’ the intended curriculum translates into the lived experience of children and young people.??
It is important to note that the examples in the paper (set out in the annexes) are for illustration only and should be seen as work currently in progress. The content populating the examples are drawn from the current Experiences and Outcomes (and Benchmarks) and SQA course specifications have been used for the purposes of these illustrations. As the CIC progresses, the actual content of the evolved technical framework will be co-designed by the relevant CIC groups including the mathematics core and collaboration group that we have spoken about above. This work is, and will be, an iterative process and will include sense checking with practitioners, children and young people, industry, academics and curriculum specialists. That said, I have a sense of optimism that we are moving in the right direction.??
What next??
Between now and summer 2025, we will continue to work on the key priorities identified in partnership with our mathematics core and collaboration groups. This will include continuing to evolve the technical framework, the co-design of content for the evolved framework as well as testing out work and emerging thinking in a variety of settings. We will take into full consideration the recent HMIe National Thematic: enhancing-the-quality-of-mathematics that was published in November 2024.?
As well as Mathematics, we will also be scaling our work in the other curriculum areas and entering an ‘awareness raising’ phase for the totality of work across the Curriculum Improvement Cycle.??
Finally, I would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to everyone who has contributed to this series, and to all those who have been involved in the CIC work to date. It has been quite a journey since April 2024. I firmly believe we are on the right track. While we may not always get everything right, I am confident that by putting teachers and practitioners at the heart of everything we do, we will ultimately end up in a much stronger position. Thank you!?
Ollie Bray
If you are keen to hear and learn more about the Curriculum Improvement Cycle (CIC) you might be interested to listen to the latest Education Scotland Learning Conversations Podcast with Education Scotland Chief Executive, Gillian Hamilton, and Education Scotland Strategic Director, Ollie Bray, on the CIC or read this recent article from TESS Scotland – CfE review: ‘Evolving Curriculum for Excellence, not ripping it up.’ You can also visit the CIC Web Portal/ Glow Blog and from here sign up for the termly CIC News Bulletin and read the first issue here.?