AND ANOTHER THING #2 : SCOTTISH EDUCATION (By Faither)
If there's one thing that really hacks me off it's people prattling on about how wonderful the Scottish education system used to be. They paint a picture of some idyllic set-up in which every wee Scottish bairn was lovingly encouraged to develop their learning, producing a society that was cultured and refined. Utter bollocks!
The only people who benefited from that much-vaunted Scottish system were:
a) boys - girls didn't count and in fact that attitude still held sway in many communities as recently as the 1970s.
b) the religious authorities, especially the Church of Scotland, who saw the main aim of education as being to produce - yes, you've guessed it - more ministers
c) politicians and business people who saw education as a way to providing a skilled labour force who knew its place.
But even worse than the fact that so many people still subscribe to this myth is the fact that so many are unwilling to accept that the present education system in our country is in a dire state.
How many people reading this enjoyed their secondary school education? How many left secondary school with a love for learning? How many people still keep an interest in any of the subjects they studied in their teens? And yet I'd bet that almost everyone enjoyed their primary school education! What does our system do to our children that produces such negative results? And remember I'm not talking about levels of exam passes or any of the other normal measures of success. I'm just referring to how people feel about learning at the end of their secondary schooling.
I think the key to the problem is the terribly low expectations we have of our young people in many schools. And these low expectations are shared by those who are supposed to be in charge of the system - the politicians and teachers. Essentially the reason matters have got to this state is the collusion between Scottish politicians - especially the local authorities which means Labour - and the teaching profession - although I use that last word with a certain degree of reluctance!
Throughout the 20th century Scottish education was run by politicians who, largely because of their own background, were in awe of teachers. Teachers were the people who would allow the working classes to better themselves and so, for decades, the education profession was never seriously challenged or held accountable.
Even today the main teachers' union, the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) defends its members right to avoid the kind of regular appraisal that every other worker in the Western world takes for granted. Do you know how many of the 52,000 or so teachers in Scotland have been sacked for incompetence in the last fifty years? None! Does it not defy belief that over that period of time we have been blessed with such a talented group of folk that not one has been incompetent enough to lose her/his job? Even the medical profession accepts that some of its members are not good enough and gets rid of them.
And so over the years no-one has seriously challenged what our education system is doing or how well it is doing it. The low expectations I mentioned earlier have become endemic to the system. We all know schools where there are whole groups of children who have been given up on. Not very grammatical I know but it sums up what has happened. If teachers have low expectations of pupils this in turn becomes what pupils expect of themselves; this leads to low achievement and so we have a vicious circle established.
And of course it doesn't stop there. Look around us and we see whole communities where the parents, and indeed grandparents, have been failed by our education system. Inevitably in most cases this means that they have very low expectations of their own children and so it goes on. Not just within a school but between generations.
So how do we improve matters? First of all we take control of education away from politicians so they stop interfering with the curriculum. Most of them think only of knowledge that is to be shoved into pupils rather than attitudes towards learning.
Secondly budgets should be devolved to school heads who should start managing schools in a more effective way. Identifying proper leaders rather than second rate administrators is what is required urgently.
Thirdly, we sack any teacher who has stopped being enthusiastic about learning and helping children learn.
Recently a Glasgow school was given an award for being the most improved school in Scotland. What made it successful was that the entire staff demanded high standards of achievement from all pupils and this came from the top, from a very hands-on heidie. The school's in a poor part of Glasgow. The normal council response would have been to throw money at it – at least here they did the right thing by appointing a good Head Teacher.
This is the kind of approach we need for all children. Getting them to see that life is full of possibilities and that they CAN achieve their goals if only they set them high enough. And if it means getting lots of weary teachers to change their jobs then so be it.
Wouldn't it be great to hear teenagers talking excitedly about their education? Wouldn't it be wonderful if we all retained the same curiosity about learning that we had when we were in primary school?
Wouldn't it be great if, in thirty years time, people would look back to 2006 as the start of the golden age of Scottish education?
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