Scottish Baccalaureates disputed

The new qualifications will be offered from 2010

Opposition parties have raised concerns that new qualifications in science and languages for Scottish high school students overcrowd the curriculum.

From next year, pupils will be able to take Baccalaureates combining and extending existing qualifications.

Education Secretary Fiona Hyslop says the courses should encourage more students to take such subjects and help them move to work or university.

But Conservative spokeswoman Liz Smith predicted the uptake would be low.

The new qualification will be taken by pupils in fifth and sixth year (16 to 18-year-olds).

They will be made up of a mixture of existing Highers and Advanced Highers in those disciplines, with the addition of an applied science project for the science Bacc and an interdisciplinary project for the language qualification.

Officials said examples of possible science projects included how the life sciences are used in industry, and ethical issues in science.

Examples for the languages Baccalaureate were how Scotland's tourism and cultural provision are seen by speakers of other languages, and "global citizenship" issues.

University recognition

The Scottish Government says the qualifications - being awarded from 2010 - will be recognised by universities and by the admissions service Ucas, which is to begin assessing what tariff ratings they should be given.

Why is the curriculum to be made more crowded by this award? Rhona Brankin, Labour schools spokeswoman

Opposition parties raised concerns in the Scottish Parliament on Thursday.

Conservative schools spokeswoman Liz Smith said the party backed the aim of boosting science and technology graduates in Scotland.

But she pointed to claims that because of restrictions on taking Advanced Highers, only about 200 pupils would take the science Baccalaureate.

She asked Ms Hyslop: "If she doesn't agree, what numbers does she estimate will end up with the award?"

Labour's Rhona Brankin said: "At a time of swingeing cuts to secondary school staffing and where there's already major curriculum change under way, why is the curriculum to be made more crowded by this award?"

Ms Hyslop said: "It's not crowding the curriculum, but what it is doing is stretching our most able pupils in secondary six, some of them whom perhaps coast through sixth year."

She said that of 30,000 sixth year pupils, only about 3,000 would be eligible. But she added: "That's the point - if we want more pupils to be taking science at universities we need more to be taking more subjects in science and at higher levels in Higher and Advanced Higher.

"So the whole point is to grow the numbers."

Liberal Democrat Jeremy Purvis said: "Qualifications stapled together are not sending strong signals out to either universities or schools and a likely 7% uptake of eligible students is worrying."