Interview: Mike Russell, Education Secretary for Scotland

MIKE Russell is praising the attitude of the pupils he visits in secondary schools in Scotland. We are talking about the criticism levelled at school-leavers recently by the car maker Arnold Clark which variously claimed they were “unsuitable” for the world of work, had impossibly high expectations and held no concept of citizenship. The Education Secretary vehemently disagrees. It is human nature, he argues, always to assume that the coming generation has had it.

“Historically, every generation says the generation after is going to the dogs. I think it can be recorded in Roman letters.” He insists the Arnold Clark view of a “desperately sad and thoroughly disheartening” situation is unduly pessimistic. “I have a view of young people that they are a pretty good generation. Kids with more confidence than I ever had at that age. Seriously, kids with real confidence and real ability to go out and talk about things.” It may be so. But a new generation emerging with even more confidence than Scotland’s Education Secretary? Really?

The SNP MSP for Argyll and Bute has been two-and-a-half years in his job this weekend. “Thirty months exactly. I count them,” he says. The job was too hot to handle for his predecessor Fiona Hyslop, and she was moved. Russell has so far escaped any such fate. But in a brief which calls on him to oversee the competing demands of parents, pupils and teachers, all at a time of change and cuts, tensions abound. And Russell’s full-frontal style is mentioned often. A week ago, the Scottish Secondary Teachers Association claimed teachers who complained about the new Curriculum for Excellence were facing “interrogation worthy of a police state”. The morning we meet, one of Russell’s most vehement political opponents, Lib Dem MSP Tavish Scott, is once again airing complaints about his “bullying” behaviour. In education departments in some Scottish local authorities, stories abound of testy exchanges which have taken place between the minister and the local officials who actually run schools. Yet Russell is also admired, as someone who knows his stuff and is prepared to show leadership.

“I am trying to support an education system through a difficult period of change,” he declares, seated in his third-floor office at the Scottish Parliament, as he seeks to explain his position. “I go and meet teachers regularly. I don’t know where it [the “bullying” claim] comes from.” Is it because he is a naturally strong personality? “It might be that. I think it’s also the fact that we have to lead this process of change and that is what I am trying to do.”

Top of the agenda at the moment are those big changes, in the form of the new Curriculum for Excellence. Next year, more than 50,000 pupils in S2 will start studying for new national exams, replacing the old Standard Grades and Intermediaries. There are warnings that teachers’ preparations are undercooked. Yesterday, it emerged that members of Scotland’s biggest teaching union, the EIS, will be asked whether they want to vote on strike action over the way the exams are being timetabled. Russell is facing claims that, when teachers try to express concerns, they have been told bluntly to get on with it.

Russell insists this is not the case. “I think we have done everything we have needed to do, and when we have needed to do more, we have responded to that and done it. Introducing the curriculum is a very complex business.” On top of that, he adds, there are a lot of issues secondary teachers face at the same time, from salary freezes to working reforms.

“There is a lot of pressure. The workload pressure that the new curriculum brings, yes, I recognise that. But to be blunt, I don’t see an alternative because I think we are well down the route of introducing it. What I need to do is to offer as much support as I can.” “Support” is a word he is very keen to emphasise.

As for the reforms themselves, he thinks they will improve education massively – and help answer the concerns people like Arnold Clark have about the quality of Scotland’s school-leavers. He notes the “complete agreement” post-devolution about the need for change. “We are not very good at our immediate history in Scotland. If you look at this, in 1999 one of the clear agreements across political parties was that the education system needed to change. It was over-examined, there were too many tests, it was over-inspected and there wasn’t enough joined-up learning.”

He admits there has previously been a lack of clarity about the new curriculum. It is designed to encourage teachers to design their own classes, to link subjects together, and find more creative ways to teach – for example by using personal finance problems to teach arithmetic. “Was there some vague jargon within the original documentation? Of course there was. One of the things I did when I came into office, if you look back, is that I had two of the documents re-written because I said we needed to communicate it more clearly,” he says.

As for warnings that the new system will sacrifice traditional learning, in literacy and numeracy, as part of a misguided search to be “relevant”, he knocks it back. “This accusation that we are dumbing down subjects – actually we are enhancing subjects. Subject teachers are now working with other subject teachers. The thing I encourage people to do is go and see it. Don’t take my word for it. Go and see schools doing this. When you see it, it clicks.”

The changes will further differentiate Scotland and the rest of the UK, where Michael Gove is seeking to create a nationwide Academy system, in which schools are run separately from local authorities. Claims Scotland should follow England are “foolish”, Russell argues. “Michael and I have discussed this. I think both of us would recognise that there is a different system. He knows it, he was brought up here [in Aberdeen]. Ideologically we are different. I don’t believe the pressure he has put on for Academies is the right thing for Scotland.” The Scottish system will always, says Russell, “distribute” responsibility between Holyrood, councils and schools. “We elect councillors and one of the jobs we elect them to do is to run education systems. I don’t think I should control everything,” he says. Consequently, while he says he is “open” to reforms like those considered in East Lothian, where a cluster of schools had thought of running themselves at arms length from the council, it is for councils to decide. He thinks heads should get more power, noting how some councils are giving them more say on hiring. But again, that will be for councils to decide.

As for the minutae, however, that is for schools and councils. What about school meals? Why is it, when ministers put so much emphasis on healthy living, that schools still allow pupils to wander down to the nearest burger van or queue up for gloop in the canteen. “You need to educate people to change,” he says, insisting enforcement isn’t the answer. He praises the food at one school he visited recently, St John’s Academy in Perth. But there are problems too: he notes the recent viral internet hit of a plate of mush at a primary school in Argyll. “What was it? – potato croquettes and something. You have to say, I wouldn’t eat that. There is no excuse for that. The local authority should take that seriously.”

Likewise, on the issue of school uniforms, and the thorny subject of scruffy teenage boys and rising hemlines, Russell prefers to steer clear. School uniforms are important, helping to add to the “ethos” of the schools. However, as for enforcing a dress code, it is for “parents to say what they believe should happen” and for heads to act on it. He adds: “We can get hung up on the issue of short skirts and potato croquettes, but the issue is what should schools expect from their pupils – and they should expect the very best and more. The schools that really work are the ones that expect the most, and what I try and drive is a sense of ambition and expectation in education.”

As for pupils, their exams last month and this coming week remain as important as they ever were, he insists. “Those good qualifications they hold in their hand are a passport to what happens next. The better qualified you are the better your prospects are in terms of earning and being in a job. The figures are very stark. We need to make sure that everyone in schools understands this.” «