Teachers hit out at bosses over call for shake-up in education
BUSINESS leaders have come under fire from teachers and headteachers after calling for a radical shake-up of Scottish education.
Among the measures CBI Scotland wants to see are high-flying graduates drafted into schools without teaching qualifications. Its report also calls for more headteachers to be appointed from leadership roles outside education.
The business group recommends that Scotland’s school inspectorate, run by the Education Scotland quango, should be made fully independent of government arguing it is “weak” in driving up standards in poorly-performing schools.
Hugh Aitken, director of CBI Scotland, said the recommendations were part of a move to devolve more autonomy over the curriculum and finances to schools.
He said: “The new curriculum in Scotland has laid strong foundations with its dual focus on academic attainment and developing the broader behaviours needed for success in work and life.
“For the Scottish education system to be truly world class, more power needs to be devolved to schools, alongside a radical shake-up of the inspection regime to ensure zero tolerance of poor performance.”
He added that the careers system remained a “weak link” in the system with the “vast majority” of businesses thinking it was not good enough vocational routes were being “undersold” to young people.
The recommendations in the document, Delivering Excellence, were attacked by teaching unions who have opposed the introduction of graduates to schools in England and Wales under the TeachFirst scheme.
Larry Flanagan, general secretary of the Educational Institute of Scotland, said: “The EIS and others with an interest in education, including the Government, believe Scotland’s children deserve to be taught by highly trained, well-qualified professional teachers.
“Our teacher training and induction scheme is envied around the world and we should guard against proposals which would weaken the quality of our teaching staff. Scotland’s parents and pupils deserve better than the shoddy shambles of other systems which don’t apply the
highest professional standards, often as a means of saving money.”
Ken Cunningham, general secretary of School Leaders’ Scotland, which represents secondary headteachers, said the appointment of successful business leaders to run schools was problematic.
He said: “I would be very reluctant for someone with no experience of education, other than being a pupil, being given a job as a headteacher because examples of where that has been successful are few and far between.”
A spokeswoman for Education Scotland said: “As the key national agency responsible for driving improvement in Scottish education we have robust arrangements in place to ensure we are able to independently evaluate and report on the quality of school provision across Scotland.” A Scottish Government spokeswoman added: “The current system of independent inspections also allows us to ensure long-term sustainable improvement happens in schools.”
The CBI Scotland report comes after studies have highlighted that around one third of Scottish businesses are not satisfied with the basic literacy and numeracy skills of school and college leavers.