Green, healthy full of ambition - and overloaded

Published on Tuesday 22 April 2008 15:06

PARENTS are faced with a bewildering array of information about their child's school. What is an eco-school? Will it actually make a difference if your son or daughter goes to a health-promoting school? And isn't every school Determined to Succeed? Then we have Schools of Ambition and the daddy of them all, A Curriculum for Excellence.

Last year, headteachers rallied together behind a call for the number of these projects to end. Both the Association of Heads and Deputes in Scotland (AHDS), which represents primary leaders, and the Headteachers' Association of Scotland (HAS) for secondary heads, protested loudly about the pressures of initiative overload.

At both their annual conferences last year, members of the unions were highly critical of the time pressures created by such schemes because of the associated paperwork. Although they said the aims and outcomes of the initiatives were often worthy and very successful, many headteachers revealed they have staff dedicated to nothing but completing such paperwork, with no time to teach.

Learning and Teaching Scotland which runs some of these schemes says all are focused on enriching the learning experiences of pupils. The body is also responsible for the A Curriculum for Excellence coming into schools in August which it says will provide the "canvas upon which the landscapes of these other initiatives can be painted".

However, schools say they are being diverted from teaching because of the bureaucracy involved in proving they are promoting a range of issues such as healthy eating, sport, citizenship and environmental awareness.

Critics say accreditation means schools are doing the job of the Scottish Government, and passing the buck of responsibility for improving society. Brian Cooklin, president of the Headteachers' Association of Scotland (HAS), said last year: "It is the time it takes. You have to produce ring binders full of evidence and that comes with most of these initiatives. You are asked where the minutes are for meetings, where are the artefacts children produced and evidence that this was not just a one-off event."

He revealed teachers often spend entire days dedicated to the paperwork rather than with children. He said: "All these things are very time-consuming. Very often you are not solely providing evidence to the Scottish Government, but also to the local authority."

David Vass, headteacher of East End primary in Elgin, proposed a motion at the AHDS conference last year which was passed calling for an end to the increasing accreditations schools were being forced to achieve. At the conference he said: "It is causing excessive, unprofitable, bureaucratic workload and diverting teachers from their central purpose, learning and teaching. "We are victims of our own enthusiasm – who would argue with schools being health-promoting? No-one.

"But I do want to argue against schools being accredited. It's unnecessary. We are not accredited as maths and reading schools. We are inundated with paperwork. We have innovation overload. We have no more time for profitless tasks. We are spending more time on gathering and polishing evidence than on learning and teaching."

Critics welcome the SNP administration's vow to halt the march of the initiatives on teachers' time. A major move in this direction was the revelation that the Schools of Ambition scheme is to be ditched.

Fiona Hyslop, education secretary, said it will be up to councils to decide which schools take part in which initiatives. She said: "We are not going to add further burdens to the plethora of initiatives introduced by the last government – we must trust headteachers and local authorities to decide how best to deliver."