Why Scotland is participating in ARC:
Scotland is committed to ensuring that our education system delivers excellence for all. We want all our children and young people to be able to realise their potential, regardless of their social background or learning needs, and develop the knowledge, skills, and attributes they will need to flourish in life, learning and work. Our drive to deliver improvement in education is guided by two clear aims: achieving excellence through raising attainment, and achieving equity, with a focus on closing the poverty-related attainment gap.
Building on a strong track record of improvements which have been driven forward across education and children’s services in Scotland over the last decade or more, we will be developing a range of further reforms to help us achieve our aims for Scottish education. We are particularly focused on empowering teachers, parents and education leaders to drive more of the decisions that shape the lives of their schools, on investing in the quality of teaching leadership, and on implementing a new integrated assessment and evaluation framework. This framework will provide us with reliable data about where we are doing well and where we need to do more in order to close the attainment gap, and will inform a cycle of continuous improvement in our education system.
We look forward to the opportunity, as part of ARC to work together with, and learn from, other systems that share our focus on excellence, equity, and improvement.