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EDUCATING FOR EXCELLENCE: Choice and Opportunity
The Executive's Response to the National Debate
SUMMARY OF KEY PRIORITIES
This document is our action plan for school education. Our key priorities to meet each child's individual needs are:
- Increase pupil choice by reviewing the school curriculum to suit 21st century needs and to reduce substantially the current overload in the 5-14 curriculum. We will establish which subjects might form a well-balanced core around which pupils will have expanded access to choices such as vocational training.
- Simplify and reduce the amount of assessment to cut down the number of tests and exams and the amount of time spent on them. We have started this work, but we will look at more radical options such as only sitting exams when pupils leave school instead of every year from S4.
- Bring forward proposals to reduce class sizes and improve pupil/teacher ratios at critical stages such as P7, S1 and S2, particularly in Maths and English, and have more learning in small groups. We must make sure that pupils will benefit from falling school rolls over the next decade.
- Tackle discipline problems and bullying by fully implementing the recommendations of the Discipline Task Group, reviewing their impact and taking further action where necessary.
- Improve school buildings to create a school estate in which all schools have the right facilities, are well designed, well built and provide a flexible environment which continues to meet future needs.
- Give more control over budgets to headteachers so that the people closest to the children can decide how best to use resources. Introduce greater flexibility for schools and education authorities through local agreements for excellence.
- Have teachers work across primary and secondary schools. We will act to make sure this flexibility is being used to deliver the best education for pupils and help them make the transition from primary to secondary.
- Involve parents more in their children's education by providing new national guidelines giving parents access and by reviewing and reforming the role of School Boards and Parent Teacher Associations.
- Strengthen the role of inspection by delivering clearer and more frequent reports to parents and focusing more directly on schools which need to improve. Consider what additional powers may be required to ensure underperformance is tackled.
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