Let parents cover school staff crisis says SNP adviser
PARENTS and grandparents should be given jobs in schools to plug staff shortages, according to a senior SNP education adviser.
A prominent member of Education Secretary John Swinney’s International Council of Educational Advisers (ICEA) yesterday said the move could help cover staffing gaps and make schools feel more like part of the community.
Andy Hargreaves, a research professor at the Lynch School of Education at Boston College in Massachusetts, wants relatives of pupils to help with paid and unpaid roles in schools.
It could see them helping with anything from administrative duties to sports coaching, painting and decorating or music tuition.
He made the comments following an ICEA meeting in Edinburgh yesterday. The group was established in 2016 to advise ministers on how best to ‘achieve excellence and equity’ in the Scottish education system.
Professor Hargreaves said: ‘The important thing is to feel you have support from your community, getting parents and other community members involved as much as you can. That’s a very positive way forward.
‘We know poverty and disadvantage is significantly alleviated when a school can bring many of the parents, grandparents, community members and so on into the school, both in paid and unpaid positions.
‘That gives pathways for mobility in poor communities. It is jobs for people. Countries with strong public sectors have better social mobility.
‘So it is both support for children when you create opportunities like this and it is also jobs and pathways for people in the community.’
He made the comments after being asked about teacher shortages in rural areas, where rising numbers of schools are having to share head teachers.
The ten-member ICEA is meeting over two days to discuss poverty and the attainment gap and the curriculum of the senior phase of high school, which is to be reviewed after concerns were raised about pupils’ subject choice and exam pass rates at Higher level.
Professor Hargreaves said there is ‘never a perfect answer’ to the number of subjects pupils should sit. He also admitted it could take time for the Scottish Government to deliver its pledge to close the attainment gap between richer and poorer pupils.
He said: ‘What we know from our international experience is, if you see big gains all of a sudden, they are usually fake – and if you see no gains, you have got no gains.
‘Most systems, like Finland or Ontario, have historically narrowed the achievement gap and raised achievement levels by making sustainable gains over many years. Typically what happens at some point is you will see a leap like a growth spurt.
‘Usually, there is not one strategy but there are many strategies across leadership and professional development, collaboration, partners working together, parents, communities, that begin to come together and people see how they are joined up. If all keeps going well, you will keep seeing gains, about 2 per cent or so every year, and in a few years you will see a big growth spurt.’
Finnish educator and ICEA member Professor Pasi Sahlberg said: ‘In the Finnish case, we talk about 15 years, maybe.’
‘There is never a perfect answer’