The much-loved son of a family friend was withdrawn from his state secondary school recently and enrolled instead at one of the country’s fee-paying independent establishments and I despaired. Though his comprehensive school belonged to one of Scotland’s middle-class neighbourhoods that have been built on success and aspiration, his performance, like many in his class, had diminished in two key subjects.
The rot had set in following a change of teachers in these subjects owing to long-term illness and pregnancy. Overnight, his two motivated and gifted professionals in these subjects were replaced by ones who are palpably counting down the days to retirement and who have long lost any interest in the subject that they ever might once have possessed. One of them, poor soul, evidently has a problem with alcohol.
The boy’s parents, who have other children, are both committed to the principles of comprehensive education and only with great reluctance opted to pursue the fee-paying route. As soon as they realised how bad the situation was in their son’s classroom, like several others, they had begun to hire tutors. This comprehensive school enjoys several advantages over others just a few miles away which serve communities which are among this country’s most disadvantaged.
It will always attract just enough students of an A-pass calibre to maintain its reputation as a desirable school for parents to send their children but it is easily outperformed by a neighbouring school in the same district. It can always rely on enough pupils whose parents are able to combat the failings of incompetent teachers by purchasing the services of tutors.
All over Scotland, there are schools harbouring teachers whose failings are known to fellow members of staff; the headteacher, the union representative and even the local education authority. All of them know that the lottery of where a child’s surname occurs in the alphabet can significantly diminish their future life prospects for good. I experienced this in each of the secondary schools that I attended and I heard of similar stories from countless others of my generation. Little has changed in Scotland in the intervening years.
Headteachers’ hands are tied, for none in the comprehensive sector has complete autonomy to hire staff. This is because the country’s main teaching union, the EIS, holds a disproportionate influence on the running of this country’s schools. On those occasions when it must choose between the interests of one of its members and his pupils the union will always choose to back its paid-up member.
When teacher failings occur in our leafier schools they can be masked by the academic achievement of well-motivated pupils with access to out-of-hours tuition. In some of our inner-city secondary schools where there are prevailing patterns of deprivation they become just another disadvantage to be overcome by children whose lives are full of them. And there they sit, protected by a conspiracy of silence designed to ensure that parents will be the last to know and only after the point when it becomes too late to intervene anyway.
John Swinney’s appointment as Scotland’s new cabinet secretary for education is being widely regarded as a statement of intent by Nicola Sturgeon. Swinney is one of her most formidable ministers and the first minister has asked us all to judge her on her government’s ability to close the educational attainment gap. Swinney was not two weeks in the job before the latest data from the Scottish Survey of Literacy and Numeracy was released. On the face of it, the figures were depressing and indicated a decline or at least no improvement since 2011. At primary 4 level, standards of numeracy have retreated and at S2 level there has been no improvement on figures that weren’t originally encouraging.
The underlying pattern in these figures, though, was not merely depressing – they were nothing short of a national disgrace. By every indicator and at every stage of primary and secondary schooling, children from our most disadvantaged communities performed much worse than those from more affluent neighbourhoods. At S2, there is an educational attainment gap of 28%.
This trend has been apparent in Scotland since before the SNP assumed government, but they have now been in power for more than nine years. That is more than enough time to have considered all possible solutions and to have listened to the submissions of all stakeholders.
Yet Swinney’s response was merely to talk about teachers requiring more understanding of the importance of numeracy and literacy. No they don’t, John – your government needs to start now to address educational inequality in our poorest areas. This means widening access to university; mentoring schemes; ensuring our best teachers are directed to the poorest schools and rewarding them properly for doing so. Crucially, it means giving headteachers absolute autonomy over recruitment of staff and stringent reviews of teachers’ performance at very regular intervals. It means also looking, wherever possible, to empower communities to run their own schools within the state system and on a non-selective basis.
During the independence referendum and in both the Holyrood and Westminster elections, his boss spoke passionately about the attainment gap. Yet, after nine years in power and faced by figures such as these her answer is… a summit for educational stakeholders.
This will be another bloody talking shop where quangos, unions, chief executives, advisers, councillors, academics and university chiefs will all gather at the public expense to tell the government what they and we already know. It is the sign of an administration that is so fearful of offending people that they want as many people to take the blame if it all goes wrong. It is not government at all – it is an abdication.
A state-funded, non-selective, comprehensive education system remains the best way of helping all of our pupils reach their potential on an equal footing. But this government’s failure to update it, to modernise and to make it work for our poorest pupils is choking it.
