Why Scotland must learn from the success of England's schools
Education must be a major issue at the next Scottish Parliament election if schools are to improve from their present, parlous state
Scotland needs to learn from England. There, I’ve said it. As we feel the early rumblings of the Holyrood campaign, with the whole caboodle to play for, I’ve committed a grave sin. I’ve suggested that even in these days of Scottish exceptionalism, where doing everything differently to England is expected, there might just be some sense in paying attention to something English.
This would, of course, be in the field of education and, since that’s my field, I’ll restrict myself to saying just this: whatever we think of the policies and practices of the various SNP governments over the past 18 years, it’s almost impossible to deny that education at all levels has been their greatest failing, and that opposition parties would do well to highlight that in their upcoming manifestoes. Will they be brave enough?
Whatever we say about all that went wrong in the years when the Conservatives ran the UK, (and there’s plenty to say), education improved a great deal. A wise friend recently gave me Nick Gibb’s book, Reforming Lessons. As many of you will know, he was the schools minister for a large tract of these Tory years in power, most notably under the leadership of Michael Gove, the clever Scotsman who provokes such wide-ranging reactions.
‘A sense of malaise’
During those years, with what is best described as courage, they took on the English educational establishment, quangos, local education authorities and university departments of education and, in doing so, they improved English schools to the extent that, by every available measure, they became better than their equivalents in Scotland. Mr Gibb’s book is a brilliant read for anyone interested in the current condition of Scottish schools.
This is what he says about English schools when the Conservatives came to power: “A sense of malaise… hung over English schools. During the preceding decades, stories of failing schools, poor pupil behaviour, and low literacy and numeracy had become fixtures in the national conversation. Of course… the picture was mixed. Throughout these years, there were model schools providing an excellent education for their pupils. But in aggregate, the national view was one of entrenched mediocrity and a general hopelessness about the potential for change.”
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This sounds depressingly familiar. The SNP – under the spell of what is ironically called ‘progressive education’ (seems to be taking us backwards to me) – has watched educational outcomes in Scotland grow progressively worse by comparison with England and many other countries; behaviour in many secondary schools is frighteningly bad; and the teaching profession is largely dispirited.
In search of ‘excellence’
The Scottish Government’s two big ideas thus far have been the much trumpeted (and entirely worthy) desire to close the poverty-related attainment gap, which they have significantly failed to deliver, and Jenny Gilruth’s headline policy – the establishment of a ‘Scottish Centre for Teaching Excellence’, which clearly suggests that, in her view, the fault essentially lies in the lack of ‘excellent’ teachers.
The great struggle which Gove and Gibb began in 2010 was a fight to overcome the educational philosophies and prejudices to which Scotland still clings.
These hold that education is best kept centralised, and that head teachers should lack the autonomy necessary to running their schools effectively; that skills-based, child-centred learning is more effective than a teacher-led, knowledge-based curriculum; that poor behaviour isn’t the fault of young people or their parents or the lack of clear and consistent rules and regulations (with appropriate sanctions) but instead a sign of poor teaching.
‘The soft bigotry of low expectations’
According to this way of thinking, educational success can, by and large, be put down to your background – what former US President George W Bush (that well-known educational philosopher) called “the soft bigotry of low expectations”, a phrase which is so true that his speechwriter must have got a bonus.
The Conservatives’ reforms took a great deal of time and effort to achieve, with the greatest effort being the struggle to overcome the vested interests of the educational establishment.
So I commend Mr Gibb’s book (co-written with the highly successful head teacher, Robert Peal) to all of you – teachers, parents and young people – who are interested in the prospect of Scottish schools improving from this historic low and can see that the current state of behaviour in Scottish schools needs to be improved; that Curriculum for Excellence has failed; and that the best people to decide how to run any individual school are those who manage the schools and their staff.
Radical change required
This book is an inspiration to those of us beginning to fear that it’s too late for Scottish schools to improve and for us to revisit past times when Scottish education was the best in the UK, and much admired throughout the world.
But – please – most of all it needs to be read by those politicians and policy advisers charged with manufacturing the education proposals for Holyrood manifestoes. They need to be big and brave in their thinking, ready to turn the curriculum in Scottish schools back into one that prizes knowledge, consider best how to support pupils with additional support needs, and admit that classrooms work best with children learning directly from skilled, happy teachers.
In essence, this is not a ‘political’ matter at all, it’s a question of looking at the hard evidence available to us all and doing what’s right for young people in Scotland. This needs to be a major issue, if not the major issue in the forthcoming campaign, and it needs to be a radical vision of change.
Cameron Wyllie is a former head teacher. He writes a blog called A House in Joppa and is the author of a book called Is There A Pigeon in the Room? My Life in Schools
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