Throughout 2025, we’ve been exploring what the changes at Education Scotland (ES) should mean for our CLD support. These discussions have been extremely helpful in shaping our plans and CLD stakeholders have encouraged us to continue to engage with them as the refocused ES takes shape.

In August, we published a discussion paper which summarised the feedback we’d had so far and outlined what we planned to do next.

Based on the feedback, our priorities have been to:

1. Support the CLD sector’s contributions across key areas of the Curriculum Improvement Cycle (CIC)
2. Continue to develop our CLD professional learning (PL) offer
3. Play our part as part of the Strategic Leadership Group to implement recommendations from the Independent Review of CLD
4. Continue to explore how Education Scotland’s refocused role can best align with the priorities and improvement needs of CLD stakeholders

As part of that fourth priority, we hosted 2 further webinars with stakeholders on September 16^th and October 3^rd to discuss the points raised in the August paper.

A few strong themes stood out across the feedback from both sessions:

• There was broad agreement with the themes identified in the original discussion paper.
• Stakeholders told us that they were looking for leadership and practical support from a refocused ES to support the CLD sector’s contributions to education priorities.
• The strongest messages concerned funding and workforce. There were calls for longer-term national investment in CLD; and doing more to address workforce challenges around recruitment and access to effective professional learning.
• There was a consistent message about raising the profile and identity of CLD and highlighting the positive impacts of youth work, adult learning, and community development.
• Stakeholders want ES to promote understanding of CLD’s distinct role within Scotland’s learning system. There were clear calls for greater parity of esteem between CLD practitioners and formal education.
• Participants highlighted the importance of continuing to support strong partnerships between CLD and schools.
• Stakeholders in both sessions identified the need for investment in shared data systems that better capture CLD’s impact.
• There continues to be a strong desire for ES to make more explicit links between the 3–18 curriculum and adult, family and community learning.
• ES’s work to increase opportunities for joint training and shared learning between CLD and schools’ staff was broadly welcomed.

Education Scotland (ES) is, as of the first of November, a curriculum focused organisation, with a commitment to embed collaboration in everything we do. We look forward to continuing to collaborate with our CLD partners in our changed role.

If you would like to comment on any of the points in this blog then you can use this Form or email: john.galt@educationscotland.gov.scot