SNP's talk of 'excellence' in education cannot simply be an empty boast

Education Secretary Jenny Gilruth meets pupils at Madras College in St Andrews earlier this year (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell) | Getty Images

After the Scottish Government announced plans for a new ‘Centre of Teaching Excellence’, secondary headteachers’ body School Leaders Scotland criticised the name, suggesting it should have a “more aspirational but reachable goal” than “excellence” and noting, acerbically, that the word had been “tarnished” by problems with the SNP’s ‘Curriculum for Excellence’.

However, news that the centre – announced by Education Secretary Jenny Gilruth at last year’s SNP conference – is to be based at Glasgow University suggests she is determined to press ahead as planned. Her aim is a bold one: to make Scotland “a world-leader in teaching practice”. “Excellent learning and teaching must be the foundation of all that we do in Scottish education,” she declared.

Attainment ‘declined severely’

There’s no faulting the SNP’s ambition on education; their track record is another story. After the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) published its global rankings last year, the leading educationalist Professor Lindsay Paterson described Scotland’s results as “dismaying”, saying attainment had “declined severely”, with a typical 15-year-old now doing no better in mathematics than a typical 14-year-old in 2018.

The centre itself sounds like a good idea – on the face of it, at least, few of the details are known. However, there is a question over whether it represents the best use of scarce resources. Is it better to spend public money on thinking about how to best educate our children or on teachers to do the actual educating? The EIS teaching union has said that, while the centre might offer “welcome advice”, it would not reduce class sizes or provide greater help for children with additional support needs.

Failing generations of young Scots

In 2021, the SNP promised to recruit an extra 3,500 teachers by 2026. Since then, numbers have actually fallen by 873. And while teacher numbers are thousands below where it is thought they should be, they are facing significant behavioural problems linked to the Covid pandemic, smartphones and social media.

If the situation in our classrooms continues to deteriorate, we will end up failing generations of young Scots. This country desperately needs a truly ‘excellent’ education system, not empty boasts that change the meaning of the word.