Exclusive:It would take 20 years of radical change to improve Scottish schools, education expert says
Professor Lindsay Paterson gave a coruscating summary of the damage to Scottish education and said the system would take two decades to repair
Scotland’s curriculum is inferior to English education and would take 20 years to improve, a leading expert has said.
Professor Lindsay Paterson claimed the only way to improve standards is “seriously devolving autonomy to schools”.
He added that it is vital to have “attention to detail, to structured knowledge, to the authority of the teacher in the classroom”.
But this will, the educationalist said, take at least two decades to see meaningful reform.
READ MORE: Inside the Glasgow school setting the bar for ensuring every child learns to read - and love reading
“If we asked the Scottish government to encourage schools to experiment in that way, from the bottom of the hierarchy of power up,” Prof Paterson added, “It would produce lots of a flourishing of new examples, which might then gradually lead to change over time, but it would take a while - 20 years.”
The academic spoke at an event in the capital for his new book, Lessons From Scottish Schools.
In it, he outlines how international comparative studies such as PISA suggest that Scottish education is in decline.
In 2000, Scotland was among the top five countries in Europe in maths, science and reading.
Attainment has subsequently declined, results show, both in comparison to other countries and to where Scotland had been before.
The Professor Emeritus of Education Policy at Edinburgh University believes Scotland must have a public debate about education standards and how to reshape the curriculum.
Curriculum for Excellence, the curriculum in place since devolution, is not a knowledge-based system but rather one focused on skills.
Prof Paterson said: “What this curriculum does is explicitly reject everything that was excellent about the education that people like myself were fortunate enough to get in the 1970s.
“What was excellent about that was the strong basis of knowledge, the attention above all to academic study, and the intellectualism of all that, was rejected.”
He added that previous Scottish governments had determined that “knowledge is intrinsically alienating, because knowledge is associated with powerful political groups”.
Instead, the curriculum was redesigned to focus much more on skills - deviating sharply from the process English education secretaries have introduced in recent decades.
“It's almost difficult to mention the comparison between England and Scotland,” Prof Paterson said, “Because nobody in Scottish politics ever wants to copy anything in England.
“But England is far and away the most relevant example here.”
Prof Paterson went on to reference David Blunkett’s tenure as education secretary in the Blair government.
When Mr Blunkett became aware of declining standards of reading, maths and science in English schools, he swiftly introduced changes to the curriculum in primary schools to improve literacy.
READ MORE:A barely audible 'guilty' marks the pinnacle of the Peter Murrell drama that has dogged the SNP
Conservative politician Michael Gove, as education secretary, also introduced a disciplinary-based curriculum, and subsequently attainment in England has improved.
He said: “Most people will be unaware of the extent to which their children are not learning as much as they would be learning if they were at a school just across the border.
“I meet people who choose to send their children to a school south of the border.”
EIS General Secretary Andrea Bradley said teachers were well used to commentators citing PISA league tables as evidence of a drop in classroom standards.
“The 'solution' such commentators invariably cite is a return to a prescriptive, knowledge-transmission model of education which was tried and tested decades ago – during a mythical 'golden age' of Scottish education and which failed the vast majority of children and young people,” she said.
The EIS dismisses PISA scores as a “a blunt instrument unfit to judge an entire education system”.
Ms Bradley said Scottish education’s challenges are “beyond dispute” but added: “Our headteachers’ ability to lead is hampered by the crippling demands of external accountability through Inspection and the system’s obsession with a narrow band of attainment data.”
A Scottish government spokesman said ministers already agree with knowledge-based learning and “recognise the need to update our curriculum in a planned and systematic way”.
Prof Paterson referenced the decline in the standards of assessment, highlighting maths particularly.
A Higher in maths now, he says, is the equivalent of an O-level maths in the 1970s.
He said Scotland needs more bold head teachers to challenge local authorities and the consensus.
Removing schools from local authority control, however, would cause “political controversy” and become a diverse from the purpose of improving schools.
“Unless schools provide the explanatory frameworks to everyone, then the children who are not fortunate enough to get it at home from parents, definitely will fall behind,” Prof Paterson said.
“Because the schools are the only source of academic knowledge that children who are not fortunate enough to have university educated parents can ever get access to.
“One of the things about education is that children are not experiments.
“They get one opportunity or they miss out.”
Scotland’s school smartphone ban should be implemented “aggressively”, a Professor Lindsay Paterson claimed ‘dumb phones’ should be handed out to pupils who have a credible need for a device.
However, the Edinburgh University academic described having smartphones “anywhere in the school” as “disastrous”.
Prof Paterson said: “There's lots and lots of evidence that shows phones in classrooms, phones anywhere in the school during the school day, are disastrous.
“They should be so that the ban has no exceptions.”
Edinburgh City Council recently voted to implement a ban on smartphones in its schools.
Meanwhile, education secretary Mairi McAllan announced the Scottish government will launch a consultation on a Scotland-wide ban.
Edinburgh schools involved in a pilot project of lockable magnetic phone pouches gave pupils with additional support needs (ASN) easy to open Velcro pouches as an alternative.
Around 40 per cent of Scottish pupils are classified as having ASN.
“If some students genuinely require a phone for reasons of emergency contact they should be given dumb phones, not smartphones, and that should be supplied if it cannot be afforded by the parents, that should be supplied by the council,” Prof Paterson added.
“[The ban] should happen, and it should happen aggressively across the country.
“I'm astonished that they haven't agreed to this elsewhere.”
Prof Paterson also spoke of the critical issue that schools are failing to attract enough teachers.
Of a 250 target for engaging maths teachers, last year just 49 were recruited.
This shortage means primary school teachers are being used to teach first and second year maths.
Primary teacher training only required a C pass in National 5 application of maths.
“So there are people teaching children S1 and S2 who have no mathematical qualifications whatsoever,” he said.
“The shocking thing about that, of course, is that is not evident to parents, because the official line from the school is that these teachers are qualified to teach maths because they're qualified to teach the full primary curriculum.
“The full primary curriculum contains mathematics, and therefore they're qualified to teach maths. “Now that's a piece of Orwellian doublespeak, and it's really quite astonishing.”
Comments
Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.