Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS)
Larry Flanagan, general secretary
This year’s exam results highlight strong overall performance by pupils across Scotland with a record number of pupils being successful in achieving the grades required for acceptance to university.
This demonstrates that pupils and Scotland’s schools continue to perform well despite the introduction of new qualifications and the heavy unit assessment burden that continues to be placed on pupils and teachers by current Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) policies.
While pupils and teachers deserve praise for the strong set of exam results that have been achieved across Scotland this year, it should be recognised that the past few years have been a challenging time for Scottish education, with a major programme of curricular change and the introduction of new qualifications during a time of significant budgetary pressure.
Despite the enormous workload pressures faced by the profession, Scotland’s teachers have again gone that extra mile to support their students’ learning, but as the EIS has repeatedly stated the current workload pressure is unsustainable.
Since the introduction of new qualifications – first the Nationals (which replaced the old Standard Grade), then the new Highers and finally new Advanced Highers – teachers, parents and pupils across Scotland have complained of the excessive burden of assessment that has been imposed by the SQA.
The process of change is seldom simple, but teachers across Scotland have worked extremely hard to deliver major changes such as Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) and the new qualifications. A complicating factor has been the cottage industry of bureaucracy and paper-chasing that has arisen around these initiatives – much of it unnecessary.
We have been working with the Scottish government, local authorities and national education bodies to reduce excessive bureaucracy to free up more time to teach. While some progress has been made, following a ministerial review process, much more still needs to be done to deliver real workload reductions across the country.
Teacher goodwill has been exhausted by repeated broken promises of action to address these concerns. Following an overwhelming vote in favour of industrial action, EIS members are now engaged in an on-going programme of industrial action in relation to excessive qualifications-related workload, amounting to a withdrawal of cooperation from the SQA.
While it is absolutely true that the qualifications system must be robust, the reality is that current SQA policy on matters such as unit assessment and verification procedures is overly bureaucratic, excessively time-consuming and extremely stressful for pupils and teachers alike.
The EIS has been calling on the SQA and the Scottish government to streamline these processes, to cut duplication and unnecessary bureaucracy to free up time and space for deeper, more effective learning and teaching. The steps taken thus far by the SQA fall far short of what is required and, having been promised improvements for the last three years, the patience of secondary teachers is now exhausted.
This is a dispute that we are determined to win, in order to lighten the assessment burden on pupils and teachers. The cabinet secretary himself has recognised that there is a need to cut bureaucracy and reduce excessive workload to free teachers up to teach and to concentrate on initiatives that can have a positive impact on attainment.
Other initiatives outlined in the cabinet secretary’s Delivery Plan, which was published at the end of June, will generate significant debate over the forthcoming session. While there is the potential for a turf war between Scottish government and local authorities, there is also scope for cooperation and agreement around measures which will support teaching and learning in the classroom.
The EIS will study the proposals regarding the review of school governance and funding closely. If these proposals are about enhancing support for schools, and ensuring that teachers have a fair say in the allocation of resources for learning and teaching, then this will be welcome. However, if there is any suggestion of centralising control of schools and reducing the role of democratically elected local authorities in running education, that would be an issue of huge concern.
While the EIS is clear about supporting the role of local authorities in terms of education delivery there is considerable scope for additional and more effective support to be made available through a level of regional operation of agencies such as Education Scotland, enabling professional networking across schools without the distraction of structural reorganisation.
Additional funding going directly to schools is welcome, especially if it effectively ring-fences education spending; it isn’t difficult for this money to be managed and channelled through local authorities thereby avoiding issues of increased workload and bureaucracy for senior management teams.
The EIS welcomes the Scottish government’s commitment to continued investment in the Scottish Attainment Challenge, and the continuing focus on targeting the poverty-related attainment gap. Similar initiatives in other countries have demonstrated that additional investment in teaching and support staff, and the deployment of additional targeted resources, are key to tackling lower attainment associated with poverty.
There are challenging timescales outlined in the Delivery Plan proposals, which were published when schools were closed for summer and after this year’s school improvement plans had already agreed. There is a risk of repeating previous errors of making high-level statements but not allowing schools the time to consider them – at what feels like a key moment, it is more important that we get this right than simply getting it done quickly.
The EIS is encouraged by the cabinet secretary’s emphasis on the need to invest in teachers to ensure they are highly qualified and empowered within their school.
UNISON Scotland
Sarah Duncan, regional organiser
Support staff in Scottish schools, like their counterparts in other parts of the UK, are used to getting on with their job while being ignored by the policy-makers and government ministers.
Teaching staff attract press coverage, their justified workload concerns are heeded and action is promised on teacher numbers and recruitment. At the same time, their support staff colleagues bear the brunt of local authority budget cuts with posts being deleted, more staff on term-time only contracts and plans for more complex roles and training being abandoned due to budget pressures. School support staff are the forgotten workforce.
So, we probably shouldn’t have been surprised in June when the Scottish government’s new road map for education policy up to 2020 – the Education Delivery Plan – didn’t mention education support staff once. The initiatives trailed in the Delivery Plan will undoubtedly have an impact on them, however, and support staff are crucial to ensuring that the main aim of the plan – closing the attainment gap – is achieved.
The Delivery Plan promises changes to the structure of education sector, with a governance review starting in autumn 2016. Scottish schools have not been subjected to the structural chaos inflicted on English schools – there are neither free schools nor academy chains in Scotland. The Delivery Plan contains a welcome commitment to “a publicly owned and run, comprehensive education system in Scotland – a mutual system, not a market system, which supports every child to achieve”.
However, it is clear that changes are afoot. The Scottish government wants to decentralise education management away from local authorities to school clusters and new education regions. These “education regions” may have important consequences for school support staff – will they be the employer, rather than the council as at present? How much freedom are school clusters to be given over devolved budgets and deployment of staff? Will staff be compelled to move workplaces within a cluster? UNISON will be pressing for answers to these questions on behalf of our members during the governance consultation which is expected to start this autumn.
Although day-to-day management and budget decisions are to be devolved down to schools, the Scottish government will keep a tight rein on the overall funding formula and there will continue to be central advisors and inspection systems.
National standardised testing is also being introduced in all Scottish schools by August 2017. It’s clear from the Delivery Plan that the Scottish government sees a reduced role for local councils in providing education, and prefers to drive change from the centre. This raises important issues about local democratic control over education.
The Delivery Plan emphasises the need to close the poverty-related attainment gap so Scottish education delivers excellence and equity for all. We are far from this goal at the moment; a pupil from the 20 per cent least deprived areas of Scotland is almost twice as likely as one from the 20 per cent most deprived areas to leave school with a qualification at level 6 or better on the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework (Higher equivalent or above). Schools can’t change this in isolation – co-ordinated action to tackle income inequalities and provide strong public services is also needed.
Equally, teachers on their own do not deliver the positive learning experience that all pupils need; education support staff, including school librarians, technicians and pupil support assistants all play their part.
The contributions of all school staff towards a positive learning environment must be properly recognised and supported, which is why the omission of support staff from the delivery plan is frustrating.
There has been positive work engaging with school support staff. UNISON has worked with Education Scotland to promote better training and professional development opportunities. We have lobbied for dedicated training resource for support staff on in-service days and time off to attend seminars which boost confidence in dealing with challenging behaviour and promoting respect in the school.
We participate in the Scottish Advisory Group on relationships and behaviour in schools and the Support for Learning Working Group. Practitioner experience from support staff means more relevant policy and guidance, and we want to see this continue.
The Education Delivery Plan kicks off a process of consultation on important changes in Scottish education. School support staff have as much interest in this process as teachers, pupils and parents.
Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association (SSTA)
Seamus Searson, general secretary
Scottish education is at a crossroads in its challenge to close the “attainment gap”. But the way forward is not as straight-forward as some would like us to believe. We all applaud the government’s objective but it needs to work with, and listen to, its teachers to make that happen.
The government has said that “Scotland has a good education system, with great schools and teachers” and we would all agree that, to deliver excellence and equity, work needs to be done to close the attainment gap. However, some of the proposals in the Education Delivery Plan could take the attention away from the learning that takes place in the classroom. Unfortunately, the teacher unions were not involved in the preparation of the Delivery Plan and a vital opportunity was lost in pre-empting many issues which will arise.
The education system must focus all possible changes on enhancing the interaction between the teacher and the pupil. Every child needs to see education as the way forward, and teachers need to lead and be given the support in meeting the needs of the young people in their schools.
The government needs to see teachers as part of the solution and not part of the problem. The teacher in the classroom needs to be listened to and trusted to deliver the education system of the future.
The local authority is a representative body of the community and needs to play its role in supporting the learning taking place in schools and, where necessary, urging improvement. It is in the interest of the community that all young people reach their full potential.
The review of school governance to consider how parents, colleges, universities and local employers can better support efforts to raise attainment, could deflect all community efforts away from support in the classroom. The task should be to encourage the community, including parents, to support the learning rather than creating another level of administration for the school.
Creating new school clusters and new education regions just creates more bureaucracy. This would appear to undermine the role of the local authority and put additional unwanted pressure, responsibility and bureaucracy on teachers and headteachers. Local authorities are already moving in the right direction by bringing schools together.
They have an important role in retaining, recruiting and managing education staff including teachers. Decentralising these functions to the schools just adds more bureaucracy. Local authorities need to collaborate across authority boundaries to ensure there is a sufficient number of teachers, including supply teachers, in our schools.
Good examples of collaboration would be a national supply teacher register, a joint recruitment strategy, and a national professional development network for all education staff.
Passing more responsibilities to schools and encouraging them to work together in clusters is an unwanted gift to an overburdened system. Schools must collaborate with other schools, colleges and local authorities and see themselves as part of a joint network with the sole purpose of raising attainment of all young people in the area, not just those within the individual school.
The government wishes to establish a fair and transparent needs-based funding formula for schools and make sure that more money goes direct to headteachers.
This issue is a constant headache as a formula based on free school meals alone cannot guarantee that the money goes where it is needed. It would be far better to trust the judgement of the teachers, the professionals in the classrooms, to identify the need of every individual young person. The challenge would be for government to meet this need with the appropriate resource.
The prospect of further delegation of responsibilities and funding to headteachers in schools will only worsen the headteacher recruitment crisis. Headteachers want to focus on leading learning and do not need to be forced into spending more time on bureaucracy and administration. The local authorities must bring together all local services and play an important part in removing burdens and obstacles from teachers and headteachers and allow them to exert all their energies on learning.
The National Improvement Framework (NIF), including standardised assessment, is intended to support schools with more consistent and reliable information at local, regional and national level.
However, the NIF has the potential to set teacher against teacher, school against school, local authority against local authority in the drive for statistics and against the need for collaboration in addressing underachievement and allowing every young person to reach their full potential.
We need a wide vision of learning and achievement and the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) is moving us in the right direction but it needs to be broad, balanced, flexible and inclusive. It needs to meet the aspirations of all our young people. CfE is the way forward but teachers need to be trusted and given the freedom to make it work. Unfortunately, the cuts in education and the shortage of teachers have and will continue to create a narrowing of the curriculum. This will lead to some of our young people disengaging with education, which will have consequences down the line and create further problems.
Qualifications and assessments need to fit the teaching and learning and not the other way round. Teachers’ professional judgement must be respected and not tested at every opportunity. The government must be prepared to deliver on its commitment to “focus on embedding CfE across S1 to S3 and ensure that assessment is proportionate and appropriate from S3 onwards”.
Unfortunately, little progress has been made to relieve this burden and the SSTA has had no choice but to move to an indicative ballot of our members for industrial action against excessive and unreasonable workload. Our view is that the government must ensure that good education is an investment not just in our children, but in our society and our economy too.