New Education Scotland Associates (ESAs) in Education Scotland CLD Team – 2025 / end March 2026

During 2025 Education Scotland recruited Education Scotland Associates (ESAs) across the organisation to support and develop key projects. The ESA’s are all CLD practitioners working in the field who joined Education Scotland on a part time basis.

We wanted to highlight each of the projects to give further details on what has been developed in each one. The first project we are publishing is Project 4:

• Project 4 – Research: What does UK and international practice tell us about greater synergy between CLD and Curriculum Improvement Cycle – Fiona Robertson  (John Galt / Laura Starkey)

Building on the initial Literature review published in July 2024 on Community Learning and Development (CLD) as part of the Still report and as part of Education Scotland’s changing role from Education Reform. Education Scotland delivered engagement sessions in 2025 which led to the publication of a discussion paper. This research project was to further investigate what community education/CLD approaches exist across the UK and internationally in relation to curriculum and produce a publication to share the findings.

Fiona’s question was, “What does UK and international practice tell us about how greater synergy between CLD and Curriculum Improvement Cycle could improve outcomes for learners of all ages?” and she looked at this using a literacy lens. The paper can be read in full here ESA Project CIC literacy FINAL DRAFT

The paper highlights various international sources which are useful to learn from in a Scottish context.