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#Let’sTalkScottishEducation: Responding to Scotland’s National Discussion on education

Wed 7th December 2022 - Communities, Further and Higher Education, News, Policy Advice and Responses, Schools and early learning & childcare settings

It is a time of change in Scottish education, with warmly-welcomed opportunities to examine, discuss and reflect on system-wide reform.

Learning for Sustainability is a key element in these opportunities to co-design and co-create a thriving future for Scotland and her learners; supporting and enabling them and the communities around them to acquire and enhance the skills, knowledge, confidence, resilience and values to fulfil their own potential and contribute to ecologically, economically, culturally and socially-sustainable futures in an uncertain, changing world.

Please read on to find out more about the ways in which we are working with our members, Steering Group and other colleagues to contribute responses to these opportunities:

1. The National Discussion

The first of these opportunities is the National Discussion on education in Scotland, co-launched on 20 September 2022 by the Scottish Government and CoSLA. This invited ‘everyone who has an interest in the future of our education system: children and young people, parents and carers, practitioners, and those in the wider Scottish community to pause, to reflect and to contribute to a future vision for Scottish education’.

Learning for Sustainability Scotland held two online workshops for our members; inviting them to hear from the Discussion’s national facilitators, Professors Alma Harris and Carol Campbell. We then invited members to consider the questions outlined in the Discussion and contribute their knowledge and expertise to help us inform our response.

Our response contains a synthesis of these member inputs and you can read it here.

Follow the Scottish Government’s National Discussion Consultation page to find out more about what happens next.


2. Review of Qualifications and Assessments.

We have also co-compiled our response to another key policy consultation: the current Review of Qualifications and Assessments, led by Professor Louise Hayward. You can view this here.


3. The refresh of the national Learning for Sustainability Action Plan

Learning for Sustainability is is an approach to life and learning which enables learners, educators, schools and their wider communities to build a socially-just, sustainable and equitable society. Since 2013, Scotland’s national strategy on LfS has meant that:

  1. All learners have an entitlement to learning for sustainability.
  2. In line with the GTCS Professional Standards, every practitioner, school and education leader should demonstrate learning for sustainability in their practice.
  3. Every school should have a whole-school approach to learning for sustainability that is robust, demonstrable, evaluated and supported by leadership at all levels.
  4. All school buildings, grounds and policies should support learning for sustainability.
  5. A strategic national approach to supporting learning for sustainability has been established.

This Action Plan is now being refreshed by Scottish Government in consultation with a wide range of stakeholders and partners across Scotland and we will share this with you as soon as it is available.