St Matthew's Primary School (Scotland)

St Matthew's Primary school is a school which is situated in the suburbs of Glasgow, Scotland's largest city.  It has 360 students and 25 teaching staff and a further 12 support staff.  The school has a small number of socially disadvantaged pupils and some pupils with additional educational needs (15%).  On the whole the pupils are well-behaved but in the transition to the new democratic curriculum described below much more has to be made of the design of the curriculum and its impact on behaviour. They have not had a great experience of working with international partners and need to get a more rounded perspective on global issues.

In Scotland we are moving from a prescriptive curriculum to a more progressive working skills curriculum to better reflect the needs of the this century rather than the historic reasons for the subjects and pedagogy from the past.  This has led to a number of challenges for schools as the design of the new curriculum demands more autonomy for class teachers, parents and pupils and a flattening of the management structure to help create a more democratic, collegial working environment.  In the space of 30 years, from the banning of corporal punishment in schools, student indiscipline has increased.  The new Curriculum for Excellence in Scotland aims to use positive, proactive apporaches to creating and maintaining a stimulating learning environment that embraces modern life and technologies and one in which pupils have a say in what, when and how they learn and hopefully this with allow student indiscipline, along with the old curriculum, to become consigned to history.  If this approach works in reducing indiscipline in schools remains to be seen, but as an area of study and comparison across the partner schools' countries and cultures over the next few years will surely go some way to answering the one of the biggest challenges facing education and educators today.