If an ‘E’ is now a pass, the SNP’s on course for an ‘F’ in education
IN an episode of Yes, Prime Minister, fictional premier Jim Hacker muses about the importance of education. Failure on schools could even lose him the next election, he says.
This prompts his top civil servant, Sir Humphrey Appleby, to reply: ‘Ah! In my naivety, I thought you were concerned about the future of our children.’
The PM says: ‘Yes, that too. After all, they get the vote at 18.’
The rest of the episode details Hacker’s abortive attempts at overhauling state education, stymied at every turn by bureaucrats.
All of which may sound uncomfortably close to reality for Nicola Sturgeon, who has made schools reform her defining mission in office.
That was a ‘courageous’ pledge, as Sir Humphrey might have said: by staking her personal reputation on fixing state education, she would make herself a hostage to fortune.
And in political terms, he would be right — the postcode lottery in council-run schools, known as the ‘attainment gap’ — is a complex problem and the heavily unionised teaching profession is a constant barrier to change.
But on the basis that politics should be about pursuing policies because they are right and not because they are popular, Miss Sturgeon deserved to be taken seriously.
‘Let me be clear,’ she said, back in August 2015. ‘I want to be judged on this. If you are not, as First Minister, prepared to put your neck on the line on the education of our young people, then what are you prepared to?’
By now, Sir Humphrey would have his head in his hands — not least because of the First Minister’s slightly questionable syntax.
But even that wise old mandarin may have struggled to predict the scale of the mess that would ensue. For any reform to work, the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) must retain a high level of credibility: that is non-negotiable.
But the bad news for Miss Sturgeon is that it is beginning to look like a laughing stock, its every utterance riddled with gobbledegook and obfuscation, as it tries — and fails — to explain the latest calamity.
A survey by Holyrood’s education and skills committee last week found 70 per cent of teachers, parents and pupils have lost faith in the exams body. Half said the SQA did not provide a ‘comprehensive’ or ‘high-quality’ service.
Last year the agency faced tough questions after the pass mark in the Higher maths exam fell to only 35 per cent.
This year there was concern over the quality of the National 5 computing paper — which exam bosses admitted contained key errors.
Submissions from teachers to the committee suggested the exam marking system was ‘close to collapse’ and accused the SQA of failing to communicate properly with school staff.
Nearly half of respondents to the online survey said the SQA contributed nothing, or a negligible amount, to the task of making Scotland better educated and more skilled.
The Scottish Association of Geography Teachers said 54 per cent of members thought the most recent Higher exam paper was the ‘worst ever’.
Three-quarters said there was not enough emphasis on physical geography — such as how valleys are formed, erosion and rock formations.
Many of us may remember these topics as being rather central to our own study of the subject back in the unenlightened days before the SNP’s Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) was introduced.
It is worth remembering, though, that the subject of how to claim benefits — clearly now regarded as a vital life skill — is studied as part of the CfE.
Last year it emerged that the chief executive of the SQA had used a taxpayer-funded credit card to spend more than £2,500 on hotel stays in India — and refused to explain why.
Dr Janet Brown, who earns around £120,000 a year, merely said she was ‘on business’.
Curiously, the quango also used a private public relations firm — which boasts of its ‘dynamic crisis PR’ — to deal with some media enquiries.
The trip may have had something to do with a memorandum of understanding that was signed in 2010 between the SQA and India’s National Accreditation Board for Education and Training to develop skills and training.
Then First Minister Alex Salmond said India ‘is one of our key countries of interest for educational collaboration’.
Perhaps we should feel sorry for teachers in India.
But perhaps the quango’s split focus explains its chaotic performance: it has enough on its agenda without sending its chief executive to India armed with a credit card.
Dr Brown did herself few favours when she appeared before Holyrood’s education committee last week and appeared to try to place the blame for the breakdown in trust in the SQA on teachers’ inability to cope with reform.
With a sense of timing that verged on the comic, were the subject not so serious, it also emerged last week that Education Secretary John Swinney was considering the introduction of a new E grade for National and Higher exams, so fewer pupils fail them.
Pupils sitting National 5 and Higher qualifications are expected to get 45 per cent to pass with a D grade, but the Scottish Government is set to lower this to 40 per cent.
It will then add an E pass grade with just 35 per cent needed to achieve this.
Standard Grades were axed in favour of Nationals because their pass rate was hovering ever-closer to 100 per cent, rendering them entirely useless as a reliable measure of pupils’ ability. Nationals are now on the same trajectory.
In this context, it is hardly surprising that in 2013, Dr Bill Maxwell, of Education Scotland — another SNP quango — called for a move from the ‘traditional’ approach of measuring classroom achievement purely in terms of exam grades.
This echoed the stance of the EIS teachers’ union, which has claimed education has ‘moved on’ from the days when attainment was the most important factor in a child’s schooling.
Education Scotland also seems to share the SQA’s love of globe-trotting: it emerged in 2012 that it had lavished more than £10million on travel, consultants, conferences and ‘external advisers’.
The quango has been criticised for its ‘flimsy’ performance on introducing the CfE.
But its staff have travelled abroad to international events, passing on the secrets of our supposed success to other nations, including Afghanistan.
It is striking that Dr Brown and Dr Maxwell remain in post — which may make one wonder how serious Miss Sturgeon really is about being judged on the reform of schools.
But then again, the acceptance of failure is an integral part of the education system.
As we reported yesterday, hardly any Scottish councils have used their powers to sack incompetent teachers.
With deadwood staff clinging to their jobs, and the quangos in charge of upholding standards in turmoil, Miss Sturgeon may be regretting the decision to put her ‘neck on the line’.
Perhaps her growing fear of failure may be the reason behind reprehensible plans to abandon an annual Scottish Government literacy and numeracy survey.
One in five primary school leavers north of the Border is functionally illiterate, illustrating the scale of the crisis.
Admittedly, masking failure is so much easier than attempting to address it.
After all, as Sir Humphrey once cautioned his master: ‘I don’t think we need to bring the truth in at this stage.’
