JOHN Swinney has insisted he takes teacher concerns about multiple qualifications being taught in the same class seriously after initially dismissing them as a ‘moanfest’.
The Education Secretary tried to strike a contrite tone yesterday after his remark to MSPs on Thursday was criticised as insulting and offensive.
It followed Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson raising complaints from teachers about “multi-level teaching”, and revealing 120 schools taught three or four qualifications at once in some classes, which she blamed on staff shortages.
Mr Swinney accused her of “cooking up a moanfest” and said he had not see evidence that there was anything wrong educationally with multi-leaving teaching.
The Tories yesterday highlighted a series of recent letters to Holyrood’s education committee about combined classes which appeared to contract Mr Swinney.
One teacher complained of “increasing pressure to have multi-course teaching at same time to fill a classroom” with “pupils getting the short end to make statistics look better”. Another said they “cannot meet the needs of the majority of young people in my class”.
Tory education spokeswoman Liz Smith MSP said: “John Swinney arrogantly dismissed concerns about combined classes as a ‘moanfest’.
“If that’s what he thinks of experts and opposition politicians, is this what he thinks of teachers too?
“These letters show there is widespread concern about the number of combined classes across Scotland. The problem disadvantages children, harms their education and stretches teachers in too many directions. It’s simply not good for the SNP government to ignore these points and plough on regardless.”
Mr Swinney said: “We take any concerns teachers have seriously. Multilevel teaching has long been part of Scottish education and teachers are well-skilled to take account of the needs of their pupils. There will be varying levels of prior attainment in any class and I have yet to see any firm evidence of educational disadvantage due to multilevel teaching.
“However, I will of course consider the conclusions of the Education and Skills Committee, on the range of issues it has been exploring, when it reports in due course.
“It is for local authorities, schools and their partners to design a Senior Phase curriculum that gives their young people the skills and knowledge needed to achieve their ambitions - and last year a record proportion of pupils went on to positive destinations including work, training or further study.
“Teacher numbers in Scottish schools are at their highest since 2010. We have increased targets for recruitment into initial teacher education and created new routes to make it more practical and flexible for people to access courses. We have also taken decisive action through our Teaching Makes People campaign and have made bursaries of £20,000 available for career changers to train in priority subjects. The student teacher intake has now increased for three years in a row.”
Inverclyde Council apologised for telling Ms Davidson one of its schools taught four qualifications at once, which she repeated at FMQs.
It said it supplied bad information by mistake, and the school had 18 bi-level classes and one tri-level.
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