The following interim report summarises the conclusions of the Partnership Board of the National Response to Improving Literacy (NRIL), which commenced in Spring 2023.    

The content within draws upon themes emerging from the discussions within a series of NRIL sub-groups, which concluded mid-2024 and the interim report was finalised by the NRIL Board at the end of Autumn 2024. In Spring of the same year, Education Scotland commenced work on a Curriculum Improvement Cycle (CIC) with new co-design groups mobilised for literacy as 'Responsibility of All' (May 2024) and for literacy and English as a curriculum area (November 2024).  As a result this interim report now forms part of the evidence base for the Curriculum Improvement Cycle.

About the National Response to Improving Literacy

A partnership board, tasked with formulating a National Response to Improving Literacy (NRIL) was established in Spring 2023.  The Board is co-chaired by the Association for Directors of Education (ADES), Scottish Government (SG) and Education Scotland (ES) and board membership represents the sectors of Early Learning and Childcare, Primary and Secondary Education.  Local authorities are represented by 6 board members from across 6 regions.  In order to consider the nature of the national response, the board formulated the following aspirational aims:

Aims of the National Response to Improving Literacy

The aims of the NRIL are to:

• Refresh the unique role of literacy within Scotland’s curriculum framework as central to supporting all learners in their acquisition of the knowledge, skills and attributes for 21st century learning

• Lead the systems transformation that will empower educators to improve literacy outcomes for all children and young people.

• Support all educators to provide high quality inclusive learning experiences that enable children and young people to progress in the literacy skills and knowledge that they need for life, learning and work.

Navigating educational reform

NRIL has forged the conclusions outlined in the remainder of this paper against a backdrop of reform within Scottish Education.  At the outset of NRIL’s activity, the education system was beginning to respond to a range of recommendations, emerging from a series of significant reports. This commenced with the publication of The OECD’s review of the implementation of Curriculum for Excellence (summer 2021). 

Further, related publications related to the reform agenda have included Professor Ken Muir’s ‘Putting Learners at the Centre: Towards a Future Vision for Scottish Education; the final report on Scotland’s national discussion on Education ‘All Learners in Scotland Matter’; and most recently, in summer 2023, Professor Louise Hayward’s review of CfE’s qualifications system: ‘It’s our Future’. 

In addition, in December 2023 a cycle of Curriculum Review was announced by the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills, to begin with a focus on Mathematics quickly followed by English. Exploratory work, led by Education Scotland looking at a range of ‘core competencies’, including literacy, is also underway.  The NRIL partnership board has accounted for these developments, and this is reflected in the content and the format of this report. 

Recommendations and areas of focus 

The NRIL Board has now made connections across a diverse set of outputs produced from a range of activities, undertaken both by the board itself and in partnership with a series of short-life working groups (SLWGs).  Five broad areas of focus are identified, which are designed to inform the more specific content of NRIL’s action and implementation plan.  The scope of these areas of focus allows for the flexibility in developing planned actions, which will be needed as the cycle of curriculum review progresses. In addition, the evolution of NRIL’s role and purpose is built into the areas of focus, ensuring that NRIL’s valuable findings are accounted for and used to inform the curriculum review process.

• Restating Scotland’s broad definitions of literacy and texts in order to refresh the system’s understanding of the potential of literacy to equip children and young people for 21st century learning.

• Ensuring the findings and ongoing work informs the cycle of curriculum review

• Supporting educational settings to optimise learners' opportunities to develop the building blocks of literacy, throughout the 3-18 literacy learning journey.

• Increasing expertise of a broadening range of research-informed approaches to literacies for 21st century learning in order to build capacity and improve our 3-18 literacy curriculum for the future.

• Increasing and broadening the professional knowledge and skill in literacy of educators who work with learners at all stages of the 3-18 learning journey.

These five areas of focus are understood to be inseparable and interdependent; NRIL is cognisant that, on the surface, the different areas of focus and their resultant activity may appear to be in tension, or their intended outcomes contradictory of each other.  This is reflective of areas of, sometimes polarised, debate in literacy (for example debates about how to teach early reading):

"the field of literacy research is contested terrain…where alternative perspectives are often touted as competing perspectives rather than as offering complementary insights" Wyse and Bradbury, 2021  

For this reason, the areas of focus and their resulting activity should be understood as an eco-system for improvement in which activities within each recognises the messages that emerge from all of the others.  For example, Educators must be clear on how to support learners with the essentials of knowledge and skills needed to engage with and produce both spoken and written communication, but professional knowledge of the range of ways in which children are 'literate' is equally important.

These five areas of focus will underpin the activities featured within the NRIL partnership’s own action and implementation plan.  However, they are designed to be used by actors at all levels of the system to support reflection and improvement activity.  They are intended to provide scope for improvement planning for literacy, so for this reason the language used to outline each action area is deliberately broad. 

Expanding upon the areas of focus

Restating Scotland’s definitions of literacy and texts 

Support the system’s shared understanding of Scotland’s existing definition of literacy.  Such a ‘restatement’ of our broad definition of literacy should serve to mitigate the unintended consequences of assessment and accountability, which narrow curriculum and pedagogies for literacy down to what can be ‘measured’. 

As a result, the narrative promoted around the restated definition of literacy should reconcile conflicting perspectives on what literacy ‘is’. Through this narrative, competency and confidence in the essentials of the knowledge and skills needed for talking, reading and writing are developed rigorously, through developmentally appropriate approaches. However, at the same time broad understandings of progress and achievement in literacy, through engagement and creation of a broad range of 21st century texts and through many different ‘ways with language’ allow schools and practitioners to put learners at the centre of their own literacy pathways.

Scotland’s restated definition of literacy and texts is accounted for across the remaining NRIL areas of focus and should be referenced across the activities arising from them.

Ensuring the findings and ongoing work informs the cycle of curriculum review

Given their close analysis of the current system for literacy to date, the membership of the NRIL partnership board will become central to the governance of the Curriculum Improvement Cycle. Furthermore, findings from NRIL, will form a key source of evidence for the forthcoming Curriculum Improvement Cycle (CIC).  This evidence will inform conclusions as to the nature of the ‘position of knowledge’ within literacy and English.  It will investigate what improved clarity on the 'key concepts and skills' of literacy and how a clearer, shared understanding of these might support understandings of learner progression. 

Curriculum review must also address the narrowing of what we consider to be achievement in literacy; it is not simply what we can easily quantify.  Any re-presentation of the curriculum framework must function to broaden the parameters of what we consider to be success in literacy. At the same time, it must also acknowledge that the learner's development of the concepts and skills for literacy will not necessarily follow a defined, linear, or incremental path.

Supporting educational settings to develop the essentials of literacy

Activities within this area of focus will amplify, consolidate and add to the range existing programmes of professional support focussed on the essentials of literacy, as identified by NRIL to date. Support for learners to develop essential skills and knowledge that allow them to engage with and create written texts, through reading and writing features within this recommendation.

Professional support in this area will be research-informed, seeking to improve teacher professional knowledge in how learners learn to read and write.  It is important that support provides increased clarity on the most promising approaches to the essentials of reading and writing, whilst ensuring teacher agency and curricular flexibility in order to meet the needs of all learners.

NRIL also emphasises that aspects of listening and talking will be an integral component of programmes concerning the essentials of reading and writing.  However, initiatives focussing on the essentials of effective listening and talking, for its own sake, should also feature in the implementation of this recommendation.  

Finally, ‘essentials’ programmes should seek to promote the planning and implementation of developmentally appropriate curricula and pedagogies for literacy, that meet the needs of learners at different stages of the 3-18 learner journey.

Increasing expertise of research-informed approaches to literacies 

Increase and broaden system-level knowledge and expertise of a range of research-informed approaches to improving literacies for 21st century learning.  Through the SLWG process NRIL found areas such as Critical Literacy and Disciplinary Literacy are deeply researched fields with potential to develop the four purposes of the curriculum, yet well-developed practice in these areas is infrequent and understanding of what they entail can be ambiguous. 

To sharpen this shared understanding, implementation plans should include the involvement of universities and third sector organisations.  Schools, clusters and local authorities, where existing practice is having an impact on children and young people's learning, should also be key contributors to this process.   

Increase and broaden the professional knowledge and skill in literacy 

Improve professional knowledge and skill within literacy for educators working across Early Learning Childcare, Primary and Secondary sectors.  This should include working with universities and colleges delivering Initial Teacher and practitioner (ELC) education to ensure that all newly qualified educators enter the profession with appropriately high levels of knowledge of literacy and developmentally appropriate practice. 

Effective programmes of ongoing professional learning targeted at practitioners in the early years of their careers and those with longer experience should be made more widely accessible through collaboration with and between local authorities and other partners.