Hansard

The obvious answer to your last question is that it must. I am not sure that I would describe what is happening in S1 to S3 as chaos. I think that it is a more measured attempt by individual schools to meet the needs of their constituencies. The question is whether they have got it right. The schools at the extreme ends of the spectrum have probably not got it right. What worries me a little is that my current trawl around them all again, a year after the one that is reported in my written evidence, suggests that some of them are going further towards the ends of the spectrum. That is an issue. You asked about staffing. Although it was not the subject of a major question in my recent mini survey, I have some empirical evidence, because I asked my witnesses about it. I run another research team at the University of Dundee, which is looking into the Scottish attainment challenge and pupil equity funding, and we have asked a set of headteachers specifically about staffing. There is no doubt that some schools are experiencing difficulties in recruiting teachers in some areas and some of those areas are quite key to the curricular experiences of a number of young people. It is not simply science, technology, engineering and mathematics subjects; we are all making a great fuss about STEM at the moment but the curriculum is much more than STEM. There are significant deficits in a number of subjects; there are shortages of home economists and computing teachers, for example. However, uptake of computing has developed by the best part of 50 per cent in S4, so the question is whether it is a chicken-or-egg situation. It is difficult to say; my suspicion is that in the case of computing, the shortages are caused more by the curriculum demands than by the lack of teachers. Does fragmentation affect the life chances and future pathways of young people? Yes, it does. Life chances are more affected by the narrowing of subject choice in S4. If you are brought down to six subjects—or, God help us, five; let us assume there are no fives, for the future wellbeing of Scottish children—you inevitably have to have a bet with yourself about column six and what will be beneficial to you. The real problem is not for able kids who pass all their subjects and move on, because they have made the right choices and they can progress. Able children almost always survive in a system, although I completely agree with Marina Shapira’s point that it is harder for children who live in a deprived area The able children who succeed go through. Average and able children, and particularly less able children, who pick up a clutch of six subjects and fail several of them, are then playing catch-up in a way that they were probably not in the situation before CFE. That bears on the original question as well. Those children have had to narrow their curriculum choices anyway—some of the key parts of their curriculum have not worked out, so they are into repeats and catch-up. If you go down from eight subjects to six, you should have 25 per cent more time available to you, which can be redeployed in pursuit of the six subjects that you are still studying. That should mean that the pass rate is higher—the conversion rate from enrolment to pass is higher—but it is not. It should mean that the passes in these subjects should be of a higher quality. There is some evidence that the passes are of a higher quality. That varies from subject to subject, but there is some clear evidence that the quality is improving and there is some clear evidence that the number of children getting at least one pass at that level is going up a bit, albeit more slowly, as I said earlier, so there are slightly contradictory flows there. The bottom line is what happens if you do not get it right at the first hurdle. I remember the national debate on education. It was a highly commendable process in which one of the things that people said was, “Get rid of the two-term dashes.” At that point, we had two two-term dashes. Well, folks—we now have three two-term dashes and children are indeed dashing. There is a big question about the worth of level 3 and level 4 qualifications—the worth to schools, to individual children, to families, and to employers. I suspect that those qualifications would be seen a little more positively by all those constituencies if they did not simply rely on teacher judgment. I remember the Deputy First Minister’s recent comments on teachers’ judgment and CFE levels and I entirely agree with him that there are issues about the quality of teacher judgment across the piece. I do not think that it is any different at level 3 and level 4. Teachers do the very best they can and they try very hard but they are not perfect people. Having an external agency that applies a rigid standard to qualifications assists things significantly.