AT LAST! A CLASS ROOM SHAKE-UP
Under-fire Swinney finally gives teachers new powers... but critics say he hasn’t gone far enough
JOHN Swinney yesterday unveiled Scotland’s biggest schools shake-up in decades – but critics warned it does not go far enough.
The Education Secretary revealed head teachers will be given new powers to tackle the country’s growing attainment gap, allowing them to hire and fire staff, control more classroom budgets and decide on curriculum content.
But critics claimed the reforms were inadequate and they raised concerns over teacher numbers – which have plummeted under the SNP amid concerns over an attainment gap between pupils from different backgrounds, while Scotland slips behind in global rankings.
Earlier this year, Theresa May claimed that education had become a ‘national scandal’ under the Scottish Government, with standards in literacy and numeracy falling.
The Government has also come under fire from opposition MSPs after it was revealed there are now 4,000 fewer teachers in Scotland than in 2007, when the Nationalists came to power.
In a statement at Holyrood yesterday, Mr Swinney said: ‘We will free our teachers to teach. We will put new powers in the hands of our headteachers. We will ensure that parents, families and communities play a bigger role in school life and in their children’s learning.’ Mr Swinney’s revamp of the system is likely to be the biggest reform since the 1949 Education Act. The powers will be guaranteed in a statutory charter for head teachers and every school will have access to a ‘home to school’ link worker to support parents and families.
Despite the Government admitting there was ‘strong opposition’ to the idea of regional clusters and boards, Mr Swinney has decided to go ahead with plans for ‘regional improvement collaboratives’.
This will reduce the role of councils to providing a support service in payroll and human resources, as well as democratic accountability for the number of schools in an area and the selection of headteachers. Mr Swinney also pledged ‘significant change’ to the Education Scotland quango, which is responsible for delivering both the curriculum and school inspections.
He dismissed claims that it was acting as ‘poacher and gamekeeper’ and should be disbanded.
But Scottish Labour education spokesman Iain Gray hit out at Mr Swinney’s failure to tackle the staffing crisis in Scotland’s schools. He said: ‘The first reform we need is more teachers, properly paid, properly supported and properly resourced – why has his statement nothing to say about that?’
Tory education spokesman Liz Smith backed moves to empower head teachers but said the reforms did not go far enough.
‘We want to see a school system that encompasses more choice and diversity, giving real devolution to headteachers,’ she said.
‘That’s because we believe it’s the existing system, not our teachers, which is responsible for delivering weaker standards in so many areas of our schools.
‘We don’t think the reforms go nearly far enough. They are halfbaked and only pay lip-service to real devolution. These reforms are not enough to deal with the root cause of the problems faced.’
Her colleague, Maurice Golden, also called on Mr Swinney to apologise to campaigners at closurethreatened St Joseph’s primary school in Milngavie, who were hoping to remove the school from East Dunbartonshire Council’s control. The Education Secretary has rejected the idea of English-style academy opt-outs that might have allowed this.
Mr Swinney’s plans to reduce the role of local authorities drew criticism from the council umbrella group Cosla, which responded: ‘The simple truth is that there will be no meaningful local democratic accountability for education in Scotland.’
Meanwhile, new figures show the average debt for students leaving higher education has risen by 13 per cent in Scotland to £11,740, nearly double the figure when the SNP came to power in 2007.
‘Reform we need is more teachers’
WE were once world leaders in education. Now we’re distinctly average. The SNP has been in sole charge of the education brief for more than a decade now, while literacy and numeracy rates have fallen and Scotland has slipped down global league tables.
This isn’t the fault of teachers, who are working hard to do their best for Scotland’s school pupils. The Conservatives have been clear it’s the existing system – not the staff members – which is responsible for delivering weaker standards in so many areas of our schools, especially reading and writing.
For decades, we have lobbied successive Scottish Governments on the need for wide-ranging reform that will create a school system with more choice and diversity, and real devolution for headteachers.
We are grateful some change will now take place and welcome aspects of the moves outlined by Education Secretary John Swinney at Holyrood yesterday.
He was quite right in intimating the status quo is no longer an option; how could anyone argue otherwise, given the incontrovertible evidence which shows Scotland’s schools facing so many fundamental challenges?
But these reforms don’t go anything like far enough. Like so much the SNP does, the words were warm, but the resultant action considerably underwhelming.
It’s now widely known how far education standards have tumbled in Scotland under the SNP.
Campaign
There are people trying to do something about this. Take the parents at St Joseph’s Primary in East Dunbartonshire, who we have worked with for some time now on their campaign to take their school out of local authority control because they believe it would be better for the staff and pupils if they had the power to run things themselves.
We agree that they should at least have the chance, as parents in England do. Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson has raised this issue at First Minister’s Questions and Nicola Sturgeon seemed receptive to the idea.
She even took the time to meet the parents, creating an impression the SNP was at least sympathetic.
But yesterday in the Scottish parliament, after stringing the campaigners along for years, Mr Swinney killed off their bid. He says he believes schools and headteachers should have a degree of autonomy but won’t take action.
Another area in much need of reform, but ignored by the Scottish Government, is school inspections. It is clearly wrong that Education Scotland should be in charge of them, when it is the very body undertaking the development of Curriculum for Excellence.
The controversial CfE is a source of constant anxiety for teachers, who have repeatedly criticised the way it is being implemented. It is fair to assume any issues a school may have probably come back to CfE. So it is plainly wrong for Education Scotland to have such a conflict of interests – it’s akin to asking pupils to mark their own homework.
Mr Swinney’s backing for Education Scotland will do nothing to reassure parents already concerned about the kind of headlines CfE has been generating.
Mr Swinney also announced changes to the Pupil Equity Fund. The Scottish Conservatives want to see headteachers given full autonomy on how to spend that cash.
But instead, the Scottish Government will force them to abide by both local government and national guidelines about how that money should be used. That is a half-baked manoeuvre, mere lip service to real devolution.
Power
The SNP also seems pleased about its introduction of regional education boards. It says these set-ups will provide ‘streamlined and strengthened support to teachers’.
But where does this fit with the party’s stated aim of devolving more power down to individual communities? Surely these new boards, on top of all our other structures, will move things in the other direction, create more confusion and bureaucracy.
It remains to be seen what the SNP will do with Teach First, a scheme that operates extremely successfully elsewhere in the UK, taking talented graduates from other areas and putting them into schools with high levels of deprivation. It not only boosts the prospects of children from disadvantaged backgrounds, but it encourages more people into teaching.
We know it’s popular, because hundreds of young people who graduated in Scotland have accepted offers to join the Teach First programme in England.
Presumably, had such an opportunity existed north of the Border, they would happily have embarked on their teaching career here.
I have some sympathy for John Swinney, as much of his task now involves him trying to sort out the mess created by his predecessors.
Not only have successive SNP Education Secretaries sat on their hands, but previous Labour/Liberal Democrat Scottish Governments were equally keen on inaction.
If he doesn’t sort it out, the SNP will stand accused of failing generations of school pupils. And reform of school governance in itself will not get the SNP off the hook.
It has adopted a boom and bust approach to teacher training, which saw it generate far too many training places nearly a decade ago, sending graduates straight to the dole queue, forcing them to find work in other parts of the world.
So the SNP’s response to this was to slash the number of those going through training – leaving us in the situation now where schools are finding it extremely difficult to fill vacancies. Since the SNP came to power, we have lost 4,000 teachers.
Obsessed
In Perth and Kinross, the situation got so bad that a school had to write to parents, asking if any of them fancied coming in during their spare time to teach mathematics.
This is what happens when you have a Scottish Government obsessed with independence, at the cost of every other area of devolved power.
Nicola Sturgeon may claim that education is her number one priority, but all the evidence shows the reverse. Even since those words initially came out of her mouth, a series of statistics on education have shown a nosedive in quality.
Only action will persuade the Scottish voters that the SNP is serious about sorting out education.
And the voters, like me, will be underwhelmed by what Mr Swinney is recommending.
I simply don’t believe that it is enough to deal with the root cause of the significant problems faced by schools the length and breadth of the country.