Educational reforms – their origins, intentions, development, impediments, implementation and evaluation – have been a major focus of investigation for several decades (e.g., Ball, 1994; Chapman & Gunter, 2009; McLaughlin & Ruby, 2021). The Scottish experience serves not only to illustrate the scale of the challenge but also to point to some of the ways in which progress can be made. Scotland has developed ambitious and aspirational goals for its education system (OECD, 2021). At the heart of reform in Scottish education has been the Curriculum for Excellence programme, covering the age range 3-18 (Scottish Executive, 2004). In this paper we first provide a brief overview of the Scottish context, before highlighting four related issues which are central to the reform process. • the tension between the broad curricular intentions of Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) and the narrow evaluative assessment practices used for National Qualifications and CfE levels; • the role of internal and external actors in shaping the Scottish Government’s management of change; • the extent to which governance reform (i.e., reconfiguring the roles and responsibilities of national organisations) is capable of enabling sustained cultural change; • the best means of encouraging teachers to develop a sense of agency, in which they become ‘curriculum makers’, not simply the implementers of policy devised by external ‘experts’. We conclude by reflecting on the challenges that have faced Scottish educational reform, including presentational and communication issues, a top-down culture that has been difficult to shift, extended timelines for reform, the absence of systematic review processes, and a tendency in Scottish education to overstate achievements while playing down areas of weakness. These issues have presented considerable challenges to the reform process, limiting its impact and even acting counter to aspirational policy goals (e.g., see Shapira et al., 2023).

Chapman, C. & Gunter, H., eds., (2009) Radical Reforms: Perspectives on an Era of Educational Change. London: Routledge. McLaughlin, C. & Ruby, A. (2021) Implementing Educational Reform: Cases and Challenges. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.