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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nMs McAllan emphasised, however, that the CIC project \u2013 led by Education Scotland \u2013 was being built with the teaching profession and that a staggered approach would involve teachers receiving \u201cstructured support\u201d and dedicated in-service time to engage with and to implement reform. Crucially, she suggested, in response to questions, that the CIC could help reduce teacher workload.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Cabinet Secretary\u2019s announcement raises significant questions: What is the CIC and how could it benefit teaching and learning? Moreover, will teachers \u2013 who already work on average 11.5 hours per week beyond their contracted hours \u2013 receive sufficient dedicated time \u2013 including additional in-service days \u2013 to shape and implement reform within achievable timeframes?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The CIC originates in the OECD\u2019s 2021 review of Curriculum for Excellence, which endorsed CfE\u2019s core vision and philosophy but was critical of the way the curriculum was managed and implemented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The OECD review highlighted, in particular, a cluttered and confusing landscape of curriculum guidance, frameworks and top-down priorities which had accreted over CfE\u2019s lifetime, and a lack of coherence between the Broad General Education (BGE) and the exam-driven Senior Phase. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A key gap identified was that Scotland had no mechanism for systematically reviewing the curriculum, and that changes to curriculum happened reactively – often due to external pressures – rather than rationally, with a sound-evidence base and informed by teacher professional judgement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The OECD report was confirmation of what the EIS had been telling government for over a decade. Instead of having the freedom and flexibility to teach as originally envisaged by CfE, teachers have had to navigate thousands of experiences and outcomes and benchmarks, and have been swamped by bureaucratic planning processes and local adaptations of national guidance, criteria and frameworks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The EIS has long highlighted too the tendency for new initiatives to be bolted-on to the curriculum, without proper integration or rationalisation.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n Not only does this drive teacher workload, it encourages a \u201cmile-wide, inch-deep,\u201d fragmented learning experience for children and young people. Whilst primary teachers have to rush through topics to ensure coverage of Es and Os across all curriculum areas, secondary teachers are under intense pressure to focus on increasing exam attainment, at the expense of breadth and depth of learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The EIS has long highlighted too the tendency for new initiatives to be bolted-on to the curriculum, without proper integration or rationalisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The OECD\u2019s recommendation that Scotland establish a systematic cycle of curriculum review will, it is hoped, be realised in the CIC, a rolling ten-year programme of curriculum renewal, expected to run until 2034 whereupon a further cycle will begin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In designing the CIC, Education Scotland has stated that it is committed to a model of co-creation with the teaching profession. Against this backdrop, the EIS has encouraged its members to participate in a number of collaborative groups reviewing curriculum and cross-curricular areas since session 2023-4, and has called on Education Scotland, employers and government to ensure all teacher participants are supported with release from school to participate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It has not all been plain sailing, however. The EIS has had to raise concerns continually that, despite Education Scotland\u2019s commitment to co-creation, many teachers \u2013 especially in primary and early years, and overwhelmingly women \u2013 are denied release to participate in scheduled CIC activity due to cover issues in schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The CIC\u2019s immediate priority is to evolve the CfE technical framework, which teachers use to plan learning and progression. The current experiences and outcomes, benchmarks and national guidance document suite will be replaced by a new \u201cKnow, Do, Understand\u201d model and a single national guidance document. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It is intended that this framework will give teachers more clarity on what children and learners should learn at each stage and will support streamlined planning and deeper conceptual understanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Draft samples of the new framework, developed with input from the collaborative groups, were published in June 2026, with Education Scotland stating that the new framework will be operational from August 2028 (Early Levels-Third Level) with the Fourth Level framework operational from 2029.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In parallel and in coordination with Education Scotland, Qualifications Scotland is beginning work on aligning qualifications with the new curriculum framework.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whilst the EIS is supportive of the CIC in principle, our support must not be taken for granted by the Scottish Government or the national agencies. The Union has been crystal clear that the success of the CIC is predicated on investment in the people who will deliver it: classroom teachers and school leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In correspondence in early 2026 to the previous Cabinet Secretary for Education, Jenny Gilruth, and subsequently in evidence to Parliament in March, the Institute made clear that schools would require a sequence of additional INSET days, strategically placed along the timeline of reform, to ensure that teachers had sufficient time and space to engage with the new frameworks prior to and during implementation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Union has been crystal clear that the success of the CIC is predicated on investment in the people who will deliver it<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n It was imperative, we noted, that additional INSET time was agreed prior to schools concluding their improvement plans and working time agreements for session 2026-27.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite being aware of Education Scotland\u2019s plans to publish the draft frameworks and to seek teacher feedback in the first half of the new session, no announcement on additional INSET was made until the new Cabinet Secretary signaled her commitment to the principle of additional INSET time for teachers at the EIS AGM in June and no proposals were brought forward to the SNCT until 24 June 2026 \u2013 the day when many schools were closing for the summer recess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Considering the scale of reform, acknowledged by Ms McAllan, the planned implementation date of August 2028 already appears ambitious, but more so given the Government\u2019s lack of urgency over dedicated time for teachers to engage with the CIC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Scotland\u2019s teachers are scarred by previous experiences of reform, such as the implementation of the National Qualifications, where government and national agencies rushed headlong into implementation, ignoring teachers\u2019 calls for more time. Inevitably, the outcome was increased teacher workload, a poorer experience for learners and years wasted cleaning up the mess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Scottish education can ill-afford to repeat these mistakes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The CIC is a significant opportunity for Scottish schools to make CfE work better for all learners and to positively impact the workload of teachers, if done properly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To this end, the EIS is determined to work within and outwith the SNCT to secure for teachers the additional protected time that they need to engage meaningfully with the project, to stand down extant priorities as required, and to ensure that the project is driven by a desire to get it right rather than to work to unachievable timelines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But we are clear that the CIC is not a panacea to the workload issues that bedevil the teaching profession. The evolving of the curriculum framework must be accompanied by an evolution away from the current culture in schools where attainment data and accountability practices predominate and where teachers are expected to deliver more but with less \u2013 at the expense of their health and wellbeing and of the delivery of real, quality education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the EIS is also clear that the CIC if not resourced with sufficient additional INSET time will exacerbate workload issues, and the EIS is crystal clear that we won\u2019t stand for that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Has the Scottish Government Really learned the lessons of past reform? In her first formal ministerial statement to Parliament as Cabinet Secretary for Education, Culture and Gaelic on 2nd September, Mairi McAllan described Scotland\u2019s Curriculum Improvement Cycle (CIC) as \u201cthe largest-ever reform to Curriculum for Excellence.\u201d Scotland\u2019s teachers might view the prospect of further large-scale […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2724,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mainfeatures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/oct2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/oct2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/oct2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/oct2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/oct2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2627"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/oct2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2761,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/oct2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2627\/revisions\/2761"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/oct2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/oct2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/oct2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/oct2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}