Meeting of the Parliament 17 May 2017
The essence of the evidence that has been given to the Education and Skills Committee in the past two weeks on teacher education—we were reminded today to call it “teacher education”, not “teacher training”—has been about preparing teachers for an unknown world. I agree broadly with many of the remarks that have been made by colleagues from across the chamber, including the cabinet secretary.
At today’s committee meeting, the context was set out by Jane Peckham from the National Association of Schoolmasters and Union of Women Teachers, who explained why people are being put off teaching. She told us that 75 per cent of her members are thinking of leaving their current post—some of that relates to promotions and some to a lack of ability to go through the profession—and she gave us the worrying statistic that 62 per cent are considering leaving the teaching profession altogether. It is, however, only fair to point out that her union represents only 15 per cent of Scotland’s teachers. The important question is this: Why? She told us that the reason is that teachers’ workload has increased, not fallen. She cited the example of removing the national 5 unit assessments. That was the right thing to do, but it was done too late in the year. The complexity of what has been happening in classrooms is clear to parents, teachers and pupils.
Jane Peckham also cited, as members have done this afternoon, the on-going issue of curriculum for excellence and changes to it. The northern alliance’s submission to the committee outlines a number of issues that are creating challenges in schools in my constituency and across the Highlands and Islands, as well as in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire. It states:
“Considering one of the major elements of CFE was to declutter the system, we have actually re-cluttered it and then added some more to it and this has had a significant effect on the perception of teaching among those who may have considered it as a viable career option.”
That is an important observation about why there is concern, which we have discussed in the chamber many times, and the need to keep tackling bureaucracy in the system, which the cabinet secretary mentioned.
The cabinet secretary’s answer to the question that I asked earlier in the debate cemented for me the need to change the central structure of education in Scotland so that the responsibilities that sit in Education Scotland at the moment sit with the cabinet secretary, and not in some external organisation. That point was made best by Walter Humes, who is an honorary professor at the University of Stirling, who said the other day that classroom teachers’ voices
“need to be conveyed more directly to government, not filtered through agencies such as Education Scotland and SQA.”
That is a powerful argument in the context of teacher training.
I have two final points to make, the first of which is on workforce planning. Moray Council’s director of education made a strong argument to the committee today about the regional approach and the council’s work with the University of the Highlands and Islands and with Aberdeen’s education institutions on what he referred to as “smarter mapping” of needs—in other words, how to recruit locally for local teaching need. That appears to me to be a strong argument that the cabinet secretary would be well advised to heed.
My final point is on resources, which Johann Lamont and Ross Greer rightly cited. What came through as clear as mustard in the evidence today was that—as we parents know—cutbacks in classroom assistants have had an enormous impact on the ability to deal with ASN, which Ross Greer cited, and on other aspects in the classroom. That is having an impact on how people perceive careers in teaching. We must change that to ensure that teachers truly are the future of Scotland.
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