Meeting of the Parliament 28 February 2024
I welcome the constructive and open discussion that we had last week with the cabinet secretary. I thought that that was quite a helpful session; she was much more open than I was expecting her to be, which was a good thing.
I have to say that it is ridiculous to have only four minutes to sum up my thoughts on the issue before us. We need much longer to discuss such matters, so I hope that we get more time at a future opportunity.
This is not year zero; 2016 was not even year zero. It was year zero way before then.
I think that the education community has been expecting significant reform after the reviews that Liam Kerr very meticulously set out. I pity the researcher who was tasked with working all that out. There have been a number of committees—lots and lots of them—and there have been various reviews that have built up an expectation in the education community that change is going to come. Therefore, this sudden change of direction—it is quite a sudden change of direction, and I will come on to explain what my views about it are—has discombobulated the education sector. Those in the sector are a bit confused as to exactly what is going to happen, and that is why this debate needs to give them clarity.
I have sympathy with the argument that there is enough going on. I accept that, with issues in relation to behaviour, additional support needs and high absence rates, together with various other things, the sector is under a lot of pressure and we need to be really careful about how we proceed. The problem with that is that there is an expectation—our previous First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, set it out—that, by 2026, we will have educational improvement in international terms and we will be closing the poverty-related attainment gap, whether substantially or completely. There is an expectation among the electorate that that is going to be done. The problem with the argument that there is enough going on already is that it implies that we are just going to stick with the status quo until we have things under control. We cannot just accept the status quo—we need to make improvements.
The problem that I have in relation to the behavioural issue and the absence policy that the minister set out is that I do not think that enough is being done. We need to have leadership from the top explaining why we think that the assessment on behaviour needs to change. The education secretary knows that I am in favour of setting clear boundaries and having consequences—or microconsequences, as some people call them—so that pupils know where they stand. I think that that is required in our schools, and teachers need to know that the education secretary has their back when they take those steps.
We need change. Before Christmas, I set out a number of changes that I thought should be included. On knowledge, I think that the education secretary has moved on. It is a welcome step to increase the knowledge content in maths. On resources, Pam Duncan-Glancy set out the contact time—we need progress on that. I am not particularly confident that the cabinet secretary will be able to deliver it, but we need it. I have talked about behaviour already. We need to change the Scottish national standardised assessments. The standardised assessments for P1s are ridiculous and they should go. They undermine the curriculum for excellence approach that we have adopted—that broader approach to education.
On accountability, the problem with delaying the reform to the national bodies is that we are leaving a vacuum. We need national bodies that have heft and are able to challenge the educational establishment.
I have not even got on to Hayward. I will quickly rattle through the Hayward review. On exams, I broadly accept the position of Carole Ford and the Commission for School Reform on nat 5s. I disagree with Pam Duncan-Glancy—I think that we should move back to the two-plus-two-plus-two model, as it avoids the two-term dash. I have sympathy with changing the continuous assessments. Looking at reform of the number of qualifications that we have is sensible.
I have concerns about introducing a personal pathway. The personal pathway is a big step, particularly in relation to how we are going to validate it. We could do more project work, not just the tokenistic stuff that some are implementing.
On parity of esteem, we should be using the Scottish credit and qualifications framework much more explicitly and we should be looking at the insight programme, which drives much of the behaviour in schools in terms of what headteachers try to encourage pupils to participate in. I have not really dug into that. We need so much more time for this debate.