SNP's track record on education has been unmitigated disaster. Here's what needs to happen
Cameron Wyllie highlights the lack of focus on education in the Scottish election campaigns and the need to restore discipline in the classroom
At the 1996 Labour party conference, Tony Blair said: “Ask me my three main priorities for government and I tell you: education, education, education!” He went on to win an overwhelming victory, and in the next ten years increased real spending on education by 50 per cent.
Today, here in Scotland, the vast majority of people working in education – by which I mean working in a school, college or university, teaching people things or managing those who do – would say, echoing St Tony’s famous victory, “things can only get better”. Whatever the SNP may or may not have done right in the last 20 years, their education policy has been a more or less unmitigated disaster; education is, in fact, a wide open goal for the opposition parties.
Over the past few weeks, while preparing for my next podcast (now live) with Rod Grant, a fellow former headteacher, I’ve been trawling through the manifestos of the various political parties, and talking to politicians. Almost everybody, including even the Greens, whom generally I see as not being very interested in education, have some positive and useful suggestions, and to be honest there isn’t much with which I would completely disagree, except for the cutbacks on exams (the Greens) and the universal free schoolbag (the SNP) though the latter I’d like to see happen, just to watch the chaos that ensues.
ASN children struggling to cope
Just to summarise, the four key things wrong in Scottish school at the moment are behaviour management and discipline; the plight of children with additional support needs (ASN); the curriculum; and absenteeism (both of pupils and of staff). They are all inter-related, and several of these can be solidly laid at the feet of the ‘presumption of mainstreaming’, a policy which has left those ASN children who most need our support struggling to cope in mainstream classrooms where teachers often lack the necessary specialist training and other pupils often aren’t learning anything as the teacher faces off with an upset or angry or violent child. No wonder people miss their education through stress, or boredom or fear – not ideal things to be carrying to school in your SNP bag.
The loudest calls on behaviour come from the political right – bring back exclusion, reinstitute special schools (this is, of course, much more to do with getting kids on the appropriate educational pathways, rather than punishing them) and bringing in ‘behaviour specialists’ (the Lib Dems make a big point of this). There is a bidding war on classroom assistants (1,000! 1,500! 2,000!) because they are helpful, but cheap. I was pleased to see Labour advocating the training of 2,000 specialist teachers, though that would take a bit of time.
But why is it the Tories and Reform who want discipline in schools? Well, a long time ago I had a great conversation with Kirsty McNeill, the very clever Labour MP for Midlothian, when I was in my prime and she was but a young thing. David Blunkett, the then Home Secretary, was advocating greater punishments for housebreaking and burglary. “Sounds like a Tory,” I teased. Kirsty was not for teasing, saying the people who suffer most from these crimes are poor people, who are uninsured and unable to replace the telly or computer.
It’s the same thing here – bad behaviour in classrooms; allowing kids to wander about the school when they should be in lessons; not worrying if they don’t do homework… well, education is essential for all but it’s the way out of poverty and disadvantage for some children. Get decent behaviour in schools and yes, you’ll start closing the poverty-related attainment gap, of course you will. This is not just a right-wing ideal, surely?
Voters not bothered?
So, more or less, all parties want to re-examine the curriculum; they want to ban mobile phones, about which I am lukewarm – if behaviour management worked, they could just keep them in their pocket; the Greens want independent pupil unions (or school councils as they are commonly called in every school in the country); Labour wants a return to international benchmarking, so we can see just how far we have fallen, and that’s a good thing. But, sigh, nowhere is there a will for real change.
Why is this? Because people – in general – don’t seem to be really bothered about education. They don’t understand how schools have changed for the worse. Young people at secondary school carefully edit what they tell their parents. Reasonably, we are worried about the cost of living; politically, the voters seem obsessed with the NHS, but then we could all need that tomorrow, in a way that doesn’t apply to education, which takes years to make its impact. And then, for reasons completely unclear to me in their application to most Scots, many voters seem to have become worried about immigration.
Across the piece, politicians are scared to look into the gaping maw of education and therefore back away from real change, change that might see our schools doing better, our teachers more valued, and our young people better informed, happier and with a brighter future ahead.
Such change is too expensive, and they know it, so education policy is not front and centre of any manifesto, and consists mainly of vague and worthy aims. I say it again – calm our classrooms, bring back knowledge, apply expert help to those children who need it most. Our schools need change. They need it now. Oh where is Scottish politician now shouting “education, education, education!”
Cameron Wyllie is a retired headmaster. He writes a blog called A House in Joppa and hosts the podcast, Two Heads are Better than One, with Rod Grant
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