Can Singapore solve Scottish teaching crisis?
MINISTERS plan to tackle career frustration suffered by nearly twothirds of teachers by using reforms based on Singapore’s education system. A Scottish Government paper lays out plans to increase teacher career progression opportunities based on a system used in the island city state.
Singapore, whose students are the highest-achieving in world league tables, allows teachers to choose three distinct ‘career routes’ via teacher, leadership or specialist tracks.
The teaching track is for those who want to stay in the classroom, the leadership track for those wishing to go into senior roles, such as headteachers, and the specialist track for those looking to go into curriculum design and research.
The model is something Scotland is keen to ‘learn from’ according to the Education Governance: Next Steps report signed off by Education Secretary John Swinney.
It is estimated that 60 per cent of teachers become stuck at the top of the pay scale for the majority of their working lives. The new system would allow teachers to progress through a minimum of four different level roles and switch between tracks.
Education bosses plan to implement the reforms by 2019, but experts have criticised the lack of detail laid out, given the complexity of the model.
They have also said that the plans risk fast-tracking new teachers into leadership roles before they are ready.
The report states: ‘We are keen to learn from a range of international examples which support career progression.’
In his foreword to the report, Mr Swinney says: ‘We intend to provide teachers with the freedom and support to reach their own potential.
‘We will introduce new pathways in the teaching profession to develop different and exciting careers which will be more satisfying for teachers and deliver more for our children.’
But several experts have criticised elements of the report.
Jim Thewliss, general secretary of School Leaders Scotland, said: ‘Fastracking people to headship will have serious implications. It may put people into the role quicker than they are currently. Is that a good thing?’
Commenting on the speed of introducing the idea, Mr Thewliss added: ‘Every initiative has to have a timescale but, given the complexity of what is happening, it’s ambitious.’
Education expert Professor Walter Humes of Stirling University told TES Scotland magazine: ‘It is a failure of many organisations to see the need for change principally in structural terms when the problems may be more to do with culture.’
He added that the Government paper ‘does not say nearly enough about how to transform the compliant and conformist attitudes that have been encouraged by previous attempts at educational reform’.
Writing in the same magazine, Mr Swinney defended the reforms, saying he hoped they would ‘streamline and enhance professional learning’.
‘We will introduce new pathways’