Official Report search · Parliament Workbench

Chamber

Plenary, 15 Feb 2007

15 Feb 2007 · S2 · Plenary

Item of business

Education

Harper, Robin Green Lothians Watch on SPTV

I well remember the time, in 1964, when I was awaiting with a dry mouth and sweaty palms my very first inspection. It was the inspection at the end of my first year of teaching—the one that would determine whether I would continue as a teacher, or not. Those days are long past. As Peter Peacock rightly said, people nowadays, both departmentally and individually, welcome inspections, which are now seen as being extremely helpful.

I will spend a couple of minutes talking about the promotion of good practice. In doing so, I have taken the narrow focus of the eco-schools initiative and how HMIE could, and should, be encouraging such good practice. Seventy per cent of Scottish schools are already in the eco-schools initiative. If we look at the health-promoting schools initiative, we see that it has demonstrated what can be achieved in promoting change in pupils' attitudes towards their fitness and health and their behaviour. We now need to apply that approach to sustainable development education, which offers a unique opportunity to equip our young people with the skills and attitudes that they need to ensure the health of our society, our planet, and the building of social capital in their communities.

A visit just yesterday, in which Sylvia Jackson MSP hosted pupils from Kinross high school and associated primary schools in the area, gave me an insight into pupils' feelings on the sustainable development education that they receive at school and from RSPB Scotland. It is clear that the pupils feel that they benefit hugely from the experience of outdoor activities in education, not only in terms of their personal development and empathy towards the environment, but in the invaluable support that such activities give to the academic side of their studies. I took away from the visit an appreciation of the living reality that SDE gives to book learning, and how it reinforces and extends pupils' understanding.

The week before last, the John Muir Trust and Ross high school gave a presentation at Parliament that reinforced my growing perception—indeed, I would go so far as to say, my growing knowledge—that for all subjects, but particularly for biology and geography, outdoor experiences are not an add-on, but an essential part of education. I now have a real sense that outdoor experiences are so essential that they can be regarded as the only and the best way of doing things.

By using practical outdoor activities such as gardening and polytunnel agriculture, less popular subjects have become the most popular subjects. I refer in particular to biology. That is the experience in Hamilton grammar school and doubtless of all other schools that take up the eco-schools initiative. By incorporating activities such as composting, waste recycling of paper and so on, in a cross-curricular way, Hamilton grammar school has inspired the way in which lessons in geography, biology, chemistry, maths and home economics are taught. In six years, the teaching of biology at Hamilton has moved on from one class at standard grade to four classes at intermediate grade and there has been a massive improvement in exam performance.

The strength of both sustainable development education and international development education is the emphasis that they place on pupil engagement in planning and target setting. That must be valued by HMIE, and measured and commended as the overall level of creativity in our schools must also be valued. The great contribution that HMIE could make in this regard is by assessing bottom-up approaches, computer networking, and staff and parental involvement. If it were to do so, it could change to an enormous degree how our schools operate.

Search Hansard contributions

Plenary, 15 Feb 2007

In the same item of business