Fighting talk over the future of the country's comprehensive schools

Published on Tuesday 8 September 2009 21:58

PETER Wright understands first-hand the power of comprehensive education to transcend economic backgrounds and transform lives.

Without the Scottish secondary school system he does not believe he would be where he is now.

A history teacher with more than three decades' experience in the classroom, the principal teacher of history at Broxburn Academy became president of the Scottish Secondary Teachers' Association in May. And it is a role he is clearly relishing.

He says: "It is a great privilege to represent members. One of the first things I had to do was attend the funeral of a life member and that was a great privilege because he was one of the members who had emerged after the Second World War."

Mr Wright's subject expertise stands him in good stead to place developments in education in a historical context.

"The way secondary education emerged after WWII with the 1940 Education Act was considered by many to be just as important as the health service," he says.

When I meet him he has just come from the National Museum of Scotland on Edinburgh's Chambers Street, where he was inspired by the story of Professor James Black, one of only two Scottish Nobel Prize winners. The other was Sir Alexander Fleming for the discovery of penicillin.

A son of the Scottish coal fields, Sir James was sent into a pit by his miner father for a month in his youth to demonstrate the life that lay ahead for him if he did not study.

It was a trick that worked, as he went on to be feted with the world's most prestigious medical prize, after leading development of a beta-blocker that transformed the way heart disease is treated, as well as the first effective non-surgical treatment for stomach ulcers.

Like Sir James, Mr Wright is also of mining stock, from the north-east of England rather than Scotland, but he moved north of the Border before he could start school in England. "And I'm very grateful that I didn't," he says: "Because I'm not entirely confident I would have ended up as I have.

"At that time the part of County Durham I lived in was very much divided into lower school and grammar."

Whether he would have passed his 11-plus and made it to grammar school might not be known, but what isn't in doubt is the great influence his Scottish teachers had on him.

He says: "Coming from a background of a single-parent family in a council house, I was very lucky to have a lot of teachers who I admired.

"As a boy without a father, there were a lot of male teachers I came across that were very positive role models."

Those role models went on to become colleagues, as he began his teaching career at the school he attended as a pupil, Dalkeith High in Midlothian.

"It was strange," he admits, "but I was grateful because the people I worked with were fantastic."

He later moved to Liberton High in the city: "By then I had done my apprenticeship and it was good for me to get out of my comfort zone." Mr Wright's final move – to his third local authority and third school, Broxburn Academy – has lasted 24 years and he demurs when the suggestion is put that such a lengthy spell might be negative.

"The benefit of being in my situation is you become part of the culture of the school," he says.

"You start teaching the children of the kids you have taught and even the grandchildren. It is good because people know what to expect of you as a teacher."

His decision to stay in the classroom has been a deliberate one, and he balks at what he calls the "greasy pole culture" of people desperate to climb into management.

Mr Wright is one of the last subject principal teachers left in West Lothian, where the move has been to a faculty system. This has proved controversial because it can see a geography teacher in charge of a history department or a French teacher in charge of a department teaching a language they don't speak.

"It is very much a policy of West Lothian which the SSTA has been against," Mr Wright explains. "It is valuing management instead of expertise."

In his years at Broxburn he has seen the demographic change: "There has been an influx of pupils into West Lothian from Edinburgh for the lower house prices. It used to be very much a working class catchment. Now there is much more of a mix in terms of social economic background."

He believes a specialist voice is crucial in fighting for this secondary sector, which is pivotal in transforming the lives of its pupils.

"By definition, primary education doesn't take kids up to adulthood. You need a socially inclusive secondary education to do that and create the society you need in a modern democracy.

"Ultimately I think secondary schools have a role to play, and it is different, not necessarily better. There is a function of secondary education that definitely requires a secondary teachers' union to match those challenges."

A malaise in union activism amongst the latest recruits to the profession is something he says saddens him.

"The reality of life is if you don't fight you get squashed," he contends. "Unfortunately a lot of younger teachers don't appreciate that, mostly because a lot don't come from that background of trade unionism that I did.

"My mother's family were all miners and they came from a background where it was perfectly normal and you would have expected to get involved with a trade union."

Mr Wright finds this particularly poignant at a time when there is so much he and his colleagues have to fight for.

"Public spend is going to be a key issue," he notes. "Teachers are going to be hard pushed and it's not just salaries that are of concern, it is things like additional administration staff to let teachers get on with the job of teaching.

"Given that some local authorities are not exactly putting in that additional money as they should be, we are already on the back foot in some respects.

He continues: "And a 35-hour week just doesn't exist as far as teaching is concerned. Teachers will always do more than required, but what we need to make sure teachers actually do is teaching children. So much of what teachers do is not actually teaching, it is paperwork and doesn't drive forward good teaching."

Mr Wright cites a former stalwart of the union, Barbara Clark, whom he obviously holds in high esteem.

"I remember having a conversation with her about a newspaper article which described us as Scotland's most combative teaching union. That's what I would like to see again for many reasons.

"Our job is to fight for our members. I don't mean pick fights, but that is what our members pay their subs for."