Teachers hit by double whammy of pay and failed Curriculum for Excellence
I have just received an email regarding the massive vote by Educational Institute of Scotland EIS members to reject the recent pay offer, and I was among the 98 per cent of respondents who voted this way.
But the malaise goes much deeper. As teachers we need to get behind our fellow workers in the public sector who have been equally badly treated for the last ten years and more. But who we are fighting against in our attempts to secure decent wages? Is it Cosla, is it the SNP government?
Well, no, it is the self-serving, Eton-educated, austerity-promoting ruling class that presides from London, and the sooner we get shot of them the better.
Meanwhile, as this plays out, I would ask the Scottish Government to take a step back and perform an autopsy on the corpse that is Curriculum for Excellence. Judging by what I hear from my secondary colleagues and my daughter, who teaches in primary, it is impossible to ignore the fact that CFE has failed in its admittedly noble purpose.
Scottish teachers have, since its inception, struggled to make sense of the patchwork quilt of “experiences and outcomes” and “levels” embodied in this disastrous enterprise. But the worst part of it has been the interference by wellmeaning academics in the secondary education structure. Pupils are currently pottering through secondary 3 with an over-abundance of subjects when they should be starting to properly focus on a smaller number of national qualifications. This has been the most damaging aspect.
As regards primary education, I am uncomfortable in that I find myself agreeing with right-wing advocates who call for a return to the prioritising of basics in grammar and basic arithmetic.
But although my motives are otherwise, I am unable to detach myself from their way of thinking, recalling as I do the wonderful grounding in these skills that I received at Elgin St Primary in Clydebank.
Scottish primary teachers are striving to instil better literacy and numeracy levels in their pupils but there is so much else they are being asked to do that they just can’t get there.
To summarise, I don’t know what I should be shouting about the loudest right now in the twilight of my teaching career: fair pay for our profession or my deep misgivings regarding CFE.
DONNIE MCDONALD Milton of Grange, Forres