Local authorities are failing to close educational poverty gap
YOUR columnist John McLellan (“Parents could teach politicians a few lessons”, The Herald, January 5) emphasises the vital importance of parental support for pupils but calls for schools to improve their standards in order to combat social disadvantage.
The OECD Report on Scottish Education informs us that reports by the Education Scotland HM Inspection record that eight per cent of primary schools in the least deprived areas are deemed “unsatisfactory”, compared to 15 per cent in the most deprived areas.
Their “unsatisfactory” reports for secondary schools is 10 per cent (in the least deprived areas) and a massive 29 per cent (in the most deprived areas).
The OECD Report also cites PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) reports that, since 2003, the sense of belonging in Scottish secondary schools has dropped, with more adolescents feeling left out of things.
Clearly, local authorities are failing to narrow the poverty-related gap in Scottish education.
This is why the OECD Report recommends a shift in educational governance,with less top-down control from local authorities and more power exerted from the “middle” – i.e., from education regions run by professional teachers and parent and community representatives.
Education Secretary John Swinney is currently consulting on this very issue as we face governance changes in education for the first time since the 1980 Education (Scotland) Act – 37 years ago. Councillor Tom Johnston, Education Spokesman, SNP Group, North Lanarkshire Council. 5 Burn View, Cumbernauld. YOUR leader comments regarding the consultation on radical changes to the governance of Scottish schools touched on a number of relevant and troubling issues (“The risks in more powers for schools”, The Herald, January 6 ).
However I feel that one of the potential dangers is referred to only obliquely within the consultation paper, “Empowering teachers, parents and communities to achieve excellence and equity in education” .
Under question nine, the paper suggests governmental action to de-clutter the Curriculum for Excellence.
The inherent risk of handing more power to schools and the proposed educational regions is that some areas of the secondary school curriculum could find themselves having an uncertain future.
Given the apparent Holyrood obsession with their university entrance-for-all goal, only the core subjects might find that they are fireproof in pragmatism-led establishments. It is after all, not called the Curriculum for Breadth and Balance.
I believe that in a newly empowered drive to focus on three or four Higher grade accepted passes, the curriculum in some secondary schools may well swerve towards a Darwinian approach in their envisaged future.
Additionally, the limits of the power to be bestowed on educational regions is also far from clear.
Since not all our schools seem able to achieve this mysterious output of excellence, the regions may see fit to designate certain schools by academic ranking.
Such a device could effectively see the active re-introduction of essentially senior and junior secondary schools under the guise of meeting local community needs.
While I agree with the late J F Kennedy who suggested that “conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth” we must, in this case, be circumspect.
We should remember that in designing a framework it must trammel the path of newly-empowered schools and regions.
It is our pupils who should be empowered with individualised success, not the schools. Bill Brown, 46 Breadie Drive, Milngavie.