Hate to say I told you so, but I'm swimming against the stream

FOUR years ago, I was compulsorily transferred to St Paul's High School in Pollok. It was written in the heavens that I should end up in St Paul's; after all, the life of the saint and my life shared spooky parallels. The apostle formerly known as Saul had fallen off his donkey on a journey to Damascus. In, 1961 I had fallen off an embittered donkey in a sombrero at Blackpool's South Beach. Saul became Paul and converted to Christianity - Shug became Hugh and converted to atheism.

Teaching in St Paul's was an eventful chapter in my career, the last line penned when the directorate agreed to my request for a transfer. No longer will I be teaching in the country's only secondary school operating a streaming policy, a policy whereby the academically gifted elite of kids in S1 and S2 are placed in accelerated learning classes and the others, the majority of children, find themselves in so-called broadbanded classes.

Last June, numerous articles appeared in the national press claiming the streaming experiment to be a great success in raising SQA attainment, an odd claim given the national examination results of the first classes to have experienced streaming wouldn't be known until August. To my astonishment, I was told the previous year's increase in pupils achieving five or more Standard Grade awards at credit and general level (up from 53 to 68 per cent), achieved by kids taught in traditional mixed ability classes, was due to the "slipstream" effect - streaming had created an ethos of success that had inspired those non-streamed students.

Cursed with possessing critical faculties, I wrote to newspapers in my capacity as EIS co-union representative, pointing out that assertions that streaming was the panacea for poorly performing schools were premature. Unsurprisingly, the messenger was shot. August came and my position was vindicated when the school recorded its worst SQA results for five years, results headteacher Rod O'Donnell described as "patchy" in an article for the Times Education Supplement Scotland (TESS).

In 2002/3, those achieving five or more Standard Grades at foundation or better was 91 per cent; in 2003/4, it fell to 85 per cent. In the same period, those achieving five or more at general or better dropped from 68 to 52 per cent and five or more at credit or better went down from 14 to 11 per cent [figures taken from the Scottish Executive website].

Defending streaming in a TESS interview, O'Donnell said the school hadn't held high hopes for last year's fourth year, which he described as a "hybrid group" which started out in mixed-ability classes in S1 before streaming began in S2. "Next year we will be fair game... people will be able to say you've had them for four years - what's the result?" he said. The education world awaits the August publication of St Paul's SQA levels of attainment with interest.

As Professor Walter Humes of Aberdeen University has said, those at the top control the narrative of how the education system they are responsible for is perceived. The expected role of the class-room teacher is to toss his professionalism to one side and participate in a pigeon-holing exercise passing for pioneering education. To be fair, the head of Briagolong (population 580) in Victoria, Australia, voiced support for the St Paul's model in an inter-view with a Sunday broadsheet, saying she is determined to spread streaming to other schools in the state. I fervently hope directorates and heads elsewhere scrutinise every piece of externally assessed evidence of attainment before deciding on streaming.

Of course, I could be wrong and streaming may prove to be St Paul's saviour. If that happens, I will accept I have made an ass of myself.