Pupils don’t fall at the first hurdle — they’re tripped up by a school system failing at every level

By Carole Ford

ANOTHER week, another slew of devastating statistics proving that any claim Scotland may have had to being a world-leader on education now lies in tatters.

Perhaps it says it all when the best news to report from yesterday’s official figures is that the pupil-to-teacher ratio has remained static.

This might indeed be considered good news in a difficult time of financial constraint.

However, no mention is made of the severe cuts to the level of support staff in schools, cuts which have an enormous impact on children in disadvantaged areas or with specific difficulties.

Since the level of support staff does not feature in any Government measure, this has been the primary target for reduced staffing in schools.

The ratio of professional staff to pupils would show a pretty drastic reduction if the Government chose to publish it.

The overall teacher-pupil ratio also disguises the fact that secondary staffing levels are now at a six-year low and shortages of staff in key subject areas are becoming endemic.

Very worryingly for a country which wishes to develop a high-skill economy, the key sufferers from teacher shortages are the academic high-fliers who find that Advanced Higher, and sometimes even Higher, classes are very thin on the ground.

When staffing levels are tight, the smaller classes are the first to go.

The number of subjects offered to senior pupils in schools serving areas of deprivation is another interesting statistic which the Government chooses not to collect.

It probably comes as no surprise that teachers are reporting an increasing attainment gap between children from different socio-economic backgrounds.

Using Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) levels, which is currently the only national measure of attainment we have, the news is not good.

In writing, for example, the gap in attainment stands at 23 per cent.

The phrase ‘social justice’ rings a little hollow when pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds are entering secondary school so far behind their wealthier peers.

And the most damning evidence of all is the news that only 72 per cent of Scottish youngsters are leaving primary school at the expected standard in literacy and numeracy.

For those educated before CfE got a grip on our schools, this indicates that 28 per cent of pupils, more than a quarter of the school population, are performing below the expected standard.

This is a frighteningly high figure and more than somewhat startling.

A primary aim of CfE, and the one which sold it initially to secondary teachers at least, was to improve standards of literacy and numeracy.

It is actually quite a trick for the Government to pull off: a major educational upheaval at enormous public expense which results in reduced standards overall and a wider gap in attainment between more and less advantaged groups.

This situation is worrying on many levels. A developed country relies on a highly educated, skilled workforce.

We are no longer highly educated in comparison to our neighbours — we are merely average.

And there is an enormous personal cost associated with under-performance and the gulf in attainment.

In education, getting off to a bad start is pretty fatal for future progress.

The lack of necessary skills is one thing but the damage to confidence and motivation is even greater.

Those who fall at the first hurdle or, more accurately, are let down at the first hurdle, are unlikely to make it to the end of the course.

To be fair, at a time of austerity it might be expected that standards would fall.

This is slightly difficult to swallow for those of us educated back in the days when Scotland had both a worldwide reputation for excellence in education and primary class sizes upwards of 40 or even 50.

But more concretely, last week’s international survey — the Programme for International Student Assessment — clearly identifies Scotland as a country with declining standards while others are steadily improving.

Bearing in mind that economic austerity has been pretty widely distributed, we cannot blame our relative decline solely on funding.

Scotland has slipped down the international rankings on every measure.

Science used to be our area of greatest strength — but no longer.

England and Northern Ireland outperform Scotland in all three areas of writing, mathematics and science.

Yet England consistently spends less per child on education than Scotland- confirming that financial issues are of little relevance.

For a number of years, we have been seriously outperformed by countries like Finland or Norway.

But now you should forget about moving to the leafy suburbs to obtain a better education for your child: Estonia is a much better bet.

There are higher level of performance in every subject — and the house prices are lower.

Meanwhile, our nearest neighbour to the south, dealing with the same social and economic circumstances, has overtaken us in absolute terms, across the board, and has narrowed the gap in performance between different socio-economic groups. Perhaps the SNP could ask Westminster for some advice.

What has gone so wrong in Scottish education? Just at a time in history when young people have to compete globally for training and employment, they are handicapped by an education system which leaves them trailing both our European and Far Eastern competitors.

The answer is four-fold: there are fundamental problems with CfE itself; the prescribed teaching methods are seriously suspect; there are no explicit expected standards at any stage until the age of 16 — by which time it is too late; and the school inspection system is no longer independent but merely another arm of government.

CfE lacks clarity, particularly at the primary stages.

The content varies widely from school to school, so it is difficult to achieve consistent progression.

The prescribed teaching methods are unsubstantiated by evidence, although it now looks pretty clear that they do not work.

For example, teachers are obliged ‘to teach outside their comfort zones’.

To the uninitiated, this looks suspiciously like teaching subjects in which one has no expertise.

The uninitiated would be quite correct.

You may consider this to be ‘outside the bounds of common sense’, and the secondary teaching profession would agree with you.

There are no standards of performance included in the curriculum.

Neither pupil nor teacher has any idea how difficult a topic should be or what they have to achieve to be considered successful.

Since half the curriculum is described merely as ‘experiences’, then does it really matter? We are certainly finding out now that it does.

The variation in standard from school to school, and from teacher to teacher, is enormous.

Any topic can be taught at different levels of difficulty, and indeed they are.

All of this should have been nipped in the bud several years ago by inspection reports.

The falling standards — brutally evident to experienced teachers — were obviously invisible to school inspectors.

No longer independent of government, they form part of Education Scotland, which is tasked with implementing CfE.

Inspectors therefore had no interest in standards of any kind, falling or otherwise, only in ensuring that schools were toeing the CfE line.

Short shrift to the school trying to maintain standards and avoid the worst of the chaos; brownie points to the school which abandoned books and direct teaching.

Had school inspectors been doing their job properly, we would not have spent 10 years digging this educational hole for ourselves.

So far there is little sign that the SNP Government intends to rectify the problems.

Education Secretary John Swinney made this comment on the latest set of data: ‘The publication of CfE level data today indicates that pupils in our schools are performing well overall.’

Tell that to the Estonians.

*Carole Ford is a former president of School Leaders Scotland, which represents secondary headteachers, and former headteacher of Kilmarnock Academy