Project Leader: I’m a lecturer here at the University of Glasgow and the faculty of education and I’m also the project leader for the Scottish network for able pupils. The Scottish network for able pupils drew up some criteria, which were then sent to schools.
The criteria included things like pupils who are motivated, pupils who are really interested in the subject matter, pupils who are just needing that little extra challenge. Schools then applied these criteria and selected pupils on that basis.
Today we’re running two workshops here in the University, one about creative writing and one about moving image education. Moving image education is a relatively new concept and one that’s highly relevant to today’s society. Creative writing is one that we’re often contacted about by schools and so it was a great opportunity to work along two experts in these areas.
There are several purposed to running an event like this. One of them is that like minded individuals like this can get together to engage in a topic that really interests them at a deeper level because they’re working along side an expert in the area and with other children and young people who are interested in the subject matter.
It also gives them a chance to see inside a University and perhaps raises expectations for them and aspirations for them for the future, and also importantly for us a session like this runs and feeds back into what they are going to do in the school. Often high level pupils have to do things outside of school but this feeds back directly into the curriculum so they take this experience back to school and can share it with their fellow pupils.
Teacher: The children are given the opportunity to come out of school for the day and then a further follow up day and they are able to work with children who have a similar aptitude and interest to themselves. They can go back and tell other children about what they have learned. They can take their learning to another level and develop their ideas a bit further.
Project Leader: Of course a day like today isn’t just for pupils, we have teachers, we have parents, we have learning assistants here too. And it offers teachers and staff from schools a chance to interact with each other to discuss the issues that they’re facing as they cater for highly able pupils in their school. It also allows parents to get together and to have a chat about how they are finding the school experience for their child too.
Curriculum for excellence offers schools great opportunities for challenging highly able pupils and indeed all pupils. Schools need to think specifically about this cohort of pupils though, they need to plan right from the start that there’s going to be high end challenge in there for able pupils. The very flexible nature of curriculum for excellence, the cross curricular aspects of curriculum for excellence offers superb opportunities for subject areas to come together in a secondary school to make sure that they’re really offering a high end challenge.
Able pupils need differentiation by content, they need differentiation by outcome and when you give highly able pupils that kind of learning experience then they will rise to the occasion. But we need to think about it, we need to deliberately plan high end challenge. In a school where teachers are allowed to be creative, allowed to think outside the box about their planning and about the curriculum, then a high end challenge will be available and offered to pupils. Pupils need to engage in that kind of learning and so do teachers and curriculum for excellence certainly seems to be offering us that that opportunity in Scottish education.
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