IT HAS been a difficult week for Scottish schools.
It started badly on Monday with a survey of teachers by Holyrood’s education committee uncovering concerns about training.
While by no means the majority view, some young teachers told how “appalling” experiences in lecture halls and on classroom placements had made them re-think their career path.
On Tuesday the Scottish Survey of Literacy highlighted a fifteen percentage point decline in standards of writing in the second year of secondary school since 2012.
And there was no let up yesterday with an evidence session at the Scottish Parliament at which trainee primary teachers said they did not think there was enough of a focus on basic skills on their courses.
Education Secretary John Swinney stuck to his script admirably in the face of the ensuing assault from opposition politicians accusing the SNP of a decade of failure.
Of course he was disappointed and of course the decline in standards was unacceptable, but the government had a “relentless” focus on improvement, he said.
Indeed, rather than seeing evidence of any failing on the part of government, Mr Swinney suggested the figures demonstrated the need for further reforms such as new guidance on what is expected of teachers, the reintroduction of standardised testing and extra finance direct to headteachers.
The prospect of more government intervention would not have appealed to one teacher at yesterday’s Holyrood session who asked whether there was now a case for a non-political body to be in charge of education “that doesn’t change every time a minister changes”.
There are also some important perspectives to take on board to fully understand the complexities of the current furore.
It is obviously a concern that the percentage of pupils in S2 who are performing “well” in writing has fallen, but it does not mean they cannot write.
What it actually means is that when assessed in S2 they have not yet reached the standard expected of them by the end of S3 which may be more about a lack of understanding of the latest benchmarks within schools, rather than a failure on the part of teachers to appreciate the importance of writing. Hence the new guidance.
It should also not be forgotten that the decline has been identified in the school years most impacted by curriculum reforms which have seen the familiar pursuit of now defunct Standard Grades scrapped for a broader general education which is generally held to be poorly understood and interpreted in many different ways.
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