Shameful betrayal

SCOTLAND’S educational report card arrived yesterday – and the results would make any parent wince with shame. Even worse is the disgraceful political spin which the Scottish Government has struggled to impose on the results since their publication.

The report comes from the threeyearly PISA study – the Programme for International Student Assessment, which is the most reliable source of data about education systems around the world.

Globally, around 600,000 15-yearold students took part late last year, including 4,000 students in Scotland, and were tested in reading, maths and science.

They were also asked their opinions about their schools and teachers. They gave information about their home backgrounds – for example, how well-off their family was, and whether or not they have access to books and the internet at home.

The results of this massive exercise were published yesterday, and they make depressing reading.

The least bad marks were in reading, where there was a modest improvement compared with the last time this big test was done, in 2015. But that did not even recover from the fall that had taken place since 2012. In fact, these reading marks took Scotland back to where the country was a decade ago.

This lack of progress in reading is dismaying for anyone who has observed the upheaval in Scottish schools in the past decade.

What children are expected to learn has been turned upside down in the misnamed Curriculum for Excellence. The old exam system for 15-year-olds has been destroyed, and replaced by tests that provide far fewer opportunities. The range of subjects which children can study has also been cut back.

Decline

All this disruption would be worth it if it led to an improvement in attainment, yet now we see the reality. Compared with 2009, reading has not improved at all.

If that’s bad, the situation with maths and science is even worse.

In maths, Scotland has been sliding downwards since 2003. This decline has continued remorselessly in the latest results.

Scotland used to be up with the leaders in science – but those days are long past.

Scotland now performs worse in maths and science than England.

More worryingly still, Scotland is far behind the global leaders – Japan, Korea, Estonia, the Netherlands, Canada, and Poland.

The Scottish Government tries to get away with claiming nothing serious is wrong by comparing the figures only with 2015. But it’s the long term that is truly revealing: Scotland has sunk.

The Government claimed yesterday that Scotland’s education is fairer than elsewhere, especially England.

What they mean by that is that the so-called ‘attainment gap’ is smaller in Scotland.

The problem for this political gloss is that there are different ways to achieve equality – you can level up, or you can level down.

Without putting too fine a point on it, England has levelled up, while Scotland has pulled the best down.

There are two aspects to this. One is what has happened to children living in challenging social circumstances. True, their attainment in reading has improved since 2009 in Scotland. But it has improved more in England. Let that sink in for a moment, since it contradicts the standard political narrative. English education is better for poor people than Scottish education.

That is disappointing enough. But what has happened to well-off people is scandalous.

In Scotland, the socially advantaged – the middle class – have made no progress at all over the decade. In England, they have moved ahead almost as markedly as the poor.

Scottish inequality does remain lower than English but, whether you are poor or rich, the better place to have learnt to read since 2009 has been England.

Scotland now has to face up to the challenge of what to do about all this.

Here we come up against another problem – lack of decent evidence.

The data from yesterday’s report is top-notch, the best in the world. But we get it only every three years. In between, Scotland has nothing.

In other countries, there are regular surveys and test results that allow proper tracking of what’s going on.

That lets people see whether problems are setting in and also allows policy changes to be evaluated properly. These other places – including England – treat education like they would the health service or transport. They insist on frequent, high-quality data.

Scottish politicians have abolished all the other sources of good evidence.

Between these three-yearly PISA reports, we have no reliable way of knowing what is happening.

The annual exam results do not give us any meaningful clues because there is no way of telling whether a decline in pass rates is because the exams are getting easier or students are learning less.

The annual rates of entering university do not tell us much either, if entering is easier than before.

The first thing we need is much better data. But then we also need to know how to start to make things better.

The international evidence points to three changes that could help to get Scotland back on track.

One is to pay attention to knowledge. Incredibly, knowledge is disapproved of by our current educational establishment. They prefer to focus on ‘skills’ – and on whether pupils are happy and fulfilled.

No one doubts that skills matter, or that well-being is important. But the best way to acquire skills is through acquiring knowledge.

You do not learn physics only by doing experiments. You have to do the experiments in the context of developing a body of knowledge about the physical world, and you get that knowledge from expert teachers.

You do not learn how to read and write only by self-expression. You develop these crucial skills by the discipline of reading the best authors, and discussing them with knowledgeable teachers.

Develop

A second reform should be to stop indiscriminate praise. We tell our children they are great every time they do the slightest commendable thing.

Praise should be reserved for truly admirable effort and worthwhile achievement.

Only that allows children to develop the true strength of character to cope with demanding problems.

The final thing we need to do is to free teachers to teach the subjects they love.

We have shackled teachers with so much form-filling and inspection that their idealism is sapped.

The one group to come well out of yesterday’s PISA results is teachers. Their pupils report them to be enthusiastic and committed.

Put them in charge and Scotland could recover from this shameful decline.