Scottish teachers fear 'disastrous' impact of looming education reforms as pupil behaviour crisis hits

A teaching union has issued a warning over the impact of coming education reforms on Scottish schools amid fears they will add to the existing strain on the profession and will hasten an exodus of staff.

The NASUWT union said changes were due to be implemented at a time when schools were already struggling to deal with a deterioration in the behaviour of many pupils, as well as the “failure” of a policy drive to send the majority of youngsters with additional support needs to mainstream schools.

A raft of initiatives are due to be implemented in coming months, following a long period when the Scottish Government was repeatedly criticised for not delivering reform.

They are expected to include the creation of new bodies, such as Qualifications Scotland to replace the Scottish Qualifications Authority, a new Centre of Teaching Excellence at Glasgow University, and a new office called His Majesty's Chief Inspector of Education in Scotland.

A sign for the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) building in Edinburgh. | PA

Meanwhile, changes are being made to the curriculum following the nation’s worst ever scores in the OECD’s Pisa rankings, and to assessments, with exams being removed from some subjects from the next academic year.

Speaking ahead of the NASUWT’s annual conference in Liverpool today, general secretary Dr Patrick Roach said: “If history repeats itself and reform is imposed on the profession, rather than introduced in collaboration with teachers, it will be disastrous for schools, pupils and staff.

“Change can and must be implemented in a way that both addresses workload and secures a curriculum and assessment system, which better meets the needs of leaners. If teachers are listened to, their expertise respected and if they are provided with the time, space and resources to develop and embed new approaches, there is scope for planned reforms to be a positive step forward.

“Otherwise the result will be higher levels of burnout, more teachers leaving the profession and less time for teachers to be able to help pupils achieve and progress.”

Mike Corbett, NASUWT Scotland national official, said: “Teachers are having to dedicate increasing amounts of time to dealing with challenging and disruptive behaviour from pupils and the failure of the presumption of mainstream policy has heaped additional pressure and demands on classroom teachers.

“Now teachers are facing further major reforms to the curriculum, inspection and assessment systems. We are worried that the current expectations on the profession are deeply unrealistic and unsustainable.

“Previous experience of reform is that change is too often done to the profession, not with it, and has resulted in huge additional bureaucracy and stress for teachers.”

A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “The education secretary has engaged with the NASUWT on potential workload implications resulting from reform, which will require to be managed carefully.

“That is one of the key reasons why the Education Bill was paused for a year, to ensure the views of teachers were listened to and that the approach to reform was rooted in pragmatism, working with the profession.

“The teaching profession must be at the heart of education reform. That is why we have recently appointed a secondary headteacher to lead the schools unit in the new qualifications agency. It is also why practicing classroom teachers are driving forward the agenda on curriculum improvement.

“We know we need to reduce teacher class contact to support the profession with education reform, which is, finally, why it is welcome that through extra funding from the Scottish Government's budget that an agreement has been reached with Cosla to deliver meaningful progress to reduce class contact."