SECTION 1 THE PROGRAMME BOARD AND MANAGEMENT BOARD
The next phase in the genealogy of the CfE process spans the period 2004, from the publication of the Review Group Report, up to formal implementation in 2010. The logic of the division between these two phases is based on the clear delineation between the formation of policy and the implementation of policy (see Hill and Hupe, 2002: p. 7). As they suggest, policy decisions are rarely ‘self-executing’; they almost always require some form of implementation (which in turn is worthy of study in its own right). They quote Anderson, (1975: pp.78-79) who notes that:
‘Much that occurs at this [implementation] stage may seem at first glance to be tedious and mundane, yet its consequences for the substance of policy may be quite profound’.
In the case of CfE, this phase was certainly integral to the conduct and outcomes of the overall policy process. The interviews I conducted frequently threw up references to the challenges of translating the initial vision into something that could be implemented. Analysing the development in this way suggests a recognition of the ‘stages’ model of policymaking linked to the idea of a rational policy cycle (see for example Figure 2). In other words, this stage in the development might be understood as following on from the identification of the problem; moving through the identification of responses or solutions; and towards the ‘selection of a policy response’ (Parsons, 1995).
Following the logic and stages of this rational cycle, it would also imply an expectation that later stages in the process would include embedded evaluation and re-evaluation. Moreover, a rational cycle such as this is dependent on very clear identification of goals and associated policy responses. In reviewing the progress of CfE with a number of participants, these stages seem to have unfolded slowly and in a blurred fashion rather than displaying the crisp delineations such a model might prescribe. This lack of purpose and clarity became especially apparent around the next major transition in the process.
92 The Review Group was dissolved following the launch of their Report. The Programme Board was then established with a remit ‘to advise Ministers and to steer this
programme’ (SEED, 2006: p3; emphasis added). In particular, the Programme Board was
encouraged to take forward the action points from the Ministerial Response (SEED 2004b), rather than simply enacting the conclusions of the Review Group Report (interviewee K). According to one interviewee, the Programme Board also fulfilled the role of ‘external validation’ of the Review Group report [G]. The membership of the Programme Board is listed in the Appendices.
A civil servant explained that the Scottish Executive would naturally retain overall strategic responsibility for such a development:
‘…the setting of the direction for the School Curriculum in Scotland will always be a matter in which the Parliament and Ministers have an interest and a
legitimate role in setting the overall direction and the ambitions that we have for schools in Scotland...so that role of oversight was a very natural one for the Executive and one that was, and is undisputed’ [G]
The clarity expressed in the remit and in statements such as the one above appears to be at odds with some of the confusion felt by other participants in this phase of the
development. Two members of the newly constituted Programme Board whom I
interviewed recalled a lack of clarity about the precise status of the group, capturing the confusion between an advisory role and the explicit steering role described in the formal statement from SEED above:
‘Certainly at the time if you had asked me I would have said it is essentially, primarily an advisory group; it is the Executive and over time LTS and some of the other agencies that were actually doing it. We were trying to maintain strategic oversight…we weren’t organised to micromanage [the CfE
93 to push in appropriate directions, make sure things got on the agenda and the like but it wasn’t the kind of project management that came in later on’ [K].
‘There was a lack of clarity about what the Programme Board were doing, where real authority lay, whether policy decisions would be made…we hadn’t defined properly in the end all the things that needed to be done. Just to be given a document with a set of principles and not create the architecture for what comes next didn’t help. So then it left the Programme Board floundering about what they should actually be doing.’ [J]
One of the possible consequences of a lack of direction was highlighted by this respondent in relation to prior experience of policy and curriculum development:
‘My main concern…was that there is a big danger that you can have a group and I think it happened with Higher Still – you can have a group that has the oversight of what you might call the operational side but it lacks a capacity for strategic understanding and strategic planning, in other words it is very good at making sure that the bits of the policy get carried out to a timescale but they might actually lose sight of what it is that the policy is trying to achieve’ [K].
McCaig (2003: p. 475) describes the ‘confusion about lines of accountability when quangos are placed between policy making and service delivery’. In this case he was describing the inter-institutional context that lay behind the SQA crisis in 2000, however it seems that a similar dynamic remained evident by the time of the CfE development.
This confusion around purpose, together with the limited scope of tangible
recommendations arising from the Review Group Report seem to have had an impact on both the genealogy and governance of the CfE process during this crucial phase. While this was presented in a different light at the time, the subsequent dissolution of the Programme Board and the appointment of a new Management Board in 2008 appears to have reflected high level frustration at the pace and direction of developments during this period. Another body, the Management Group, had also been established to oversee the
94 Programme Board. This Group had high level representation from the four key
‘partnership’ bodies, namely, the Scottish Government, HMIE, LTS and SQA. As one Programme Board member put it:
‘What happened essentially was that we had a Management Board placed over us and although this was never very explicitly stated, our remit effectively got narrowed so we were focussing much more clearly on the curriculum in the rather narrower sense of experiences and outcomes rather than the wider strategic focus which included all of the assessment and qualifications and other things that were going on as well’ [K].
Some of the growing concern about the process at this point in time is captured by the same Programme Board member:
‘…we kept on trying to impress upon initially the Executive and then the
Government (from 2007) that you need to make sure this joins up, this is a holistic reform process, it is not something that could be narrowly project managed in the way that you set objectives and you focus narrowly on those objectives. It is very much part of a wider, cultural change it’s going to embrace lots of other things, make sure things join up’ [K].
The proliferation in management structures over this period is captured in Figure 6
below. One respondent suggested that much of this governance structure was created on a reactive, ad hoc basis [J], rather than as a systematic, planned process.
95
Figure 6 CfE Policy Management Structures 2004-2010
The wider transition process in governance from what might be termed a ‘visionary group’ to a differently constituted implementation or delivery body appears to be a recurring pattern in policy development in Scotland. It has been identified elsewhere in relation to in the development of Higher Still, where a Strategy Group was superseded by an Implementation Group in 1997 (Raffe et al, 2002: p172), and in the Improving Our
Schools consultation exercise in 1999 (Humes, 2003: p82). There may be a strong
rationale for such a pattern of project management, however it is rarely articulated, and it leaves such processes open to an interpretation that valuable opportunities for continuity and progression are sometimes lost during longer term developments.
According to one member of the Review Group who did not continue working on the Programme Board, a number of them anticipated that the transition from visionary Report to operational practices required careful consideration:
‘I suppose one of the things that many of us kept hammering about this document was that it was a principles document, it wasn’t a kind of principles into practice document and that a lot of people would find it rather disappointing and empty because it was kind of up here and teachers and others were looking for