Improving Scottish Education: the challenges

At a recent HMIE Early Education Conference, Kenneth Muir, HMCI, considered the challenges for the Inspectorate following recent early years services publications.

We hope to publish an extended version of this article here shortly.

The profile of the pre-school sector, certainly amongst those working in the sector and amongst Ministers, has never been higher. There has been a growing realisation amongst policy makers and decision makers that attendance at high quality pre-school provision enhances and improves children’s later life chances in many ways.

National Review of the Early Years and Childcare Workforce

We know from the EPPE project that the single most important factor in determining the quality of a pre-school centre is the level of qualification of the centre manager and, to a lesser extent, the level of qualification of the centre workforce. I just wonder how we might best encourage staff to build on their existing skills and experience and help to raise the level of qualifications, as required in the National Review of the Early Years and Childcare Workforce.

There are also very real challenges to teacher education institutions in ensuring that the amount of time in early years settings that teachers in training are exposed to is sufficient to ensure that the early years sector is enhanced as a destination for teachers in training and that there continues to be an adequate availability of early years training placements.

A Curriculum for Excellence

We should look forward in pre-school settings with much confidence to A Curriculum for Excellence - because many of its principles and key features already figure prominently in the work we see in pre-school centres. But again, A Curriculum for Excellence presents us with challenges - particularly as we move to design our new inspection model, starting next April, which will reintegrate nursery class inspections into primary school inspections.

We need to look more seriously and report on that important transition from nursery class to early primary. Also we have the challenge of how best to consider the four main areas for improvement identified in 'Improving Scottish Education':

• weaknesses in leadership
• the need to address better the learning needs of individuals
• the need for staff to engage more directly and more effectively with children to extend their understanding and learning
• the need for information gathered on children’s learning to be used better to promote their future progress.

We know the need to consider how best to inspect the ever more sophisticated nursery class provision in primaries – and that is a challenge to us in HMIE in making sure that our staff are sufficiently well trained to take on this role, and that sufficient personnel exist to allow it.

Quality assurance

We are looking again at 'How Good is Our School? The Child at the Centre' to make sure it reflects closely the changes we have seen in the sector since its publication, and to make sure that it supports the introduction of new developments. In addition, Journey to Excellence provides practical support for all those establishments which are ready to take a step change from being good to being great, something many pre-school centres are clearly ready to do.

While the Report on the Integrated Inspection of Early Education and Childcare Services in Scotland gives us pointers for change, inspections were seen, by providers and authorities, as having helped to improve the quality of provision and to increase the status of the early years sector.

Looking ahead

The Scottish Parliament Education Committee’s Early Years Inquiry report brings further challenges to us in that the Scottish Executive is being asked to reflect on its early years strategy, update it to set out its strategic objectives for the sector for the next 10 years, and explain how they are to be achieved.

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