By Frank Lennon, Member of the Commission on School Reform

TACKLING the poverty-related attainment gap is at the heart of the agenda in Scottish schools.

Earlier this month the Scottish Government launched its “Consultation on measuring the attainment gap and milestones towards closing it”.

By the time any resultant proposals reach the 2018 Improvement Plan, three years will have passed since the First Minister launched the Scottish Attainment Challenge which included the Scottish Attainment and Pupil Equity Funds (PEF), to bring “a greater sense of urgency and priority” to the issue.

Leaving aside concerns over whether a greater sense of urgency has been in evidence, we are surely at the point now where the Scottish Government’s intention to radically reform some aspects of school education must be supported.

But, apart from the radical assertions, how radical are the reforms likely to be?

Finance and resources are important, but not sufficient, for school improvement so we might begin with some clarification here – no money goes or has gone directly from the Scottish Government to local authority-run schools and all funding continues to be issued to local authorities.

Although the Government has recently outlined its intention to bring forward legislation to introduce a “Headteachers’ Charter” which requires councils to devolve decisions to headteachers– including over finances, resources and crucially, staffing – there are no proposals to change or even modify the mechanism for allocating funding to schools.

Thus, in this respect at least, there are no radical reforms. Even the much publicised PEF went to local authorities in the traditional way, albeit with instructions that all of it be passed to headteachers.

And in publicising individual schools’ PEF allocations, the Government simultaneously issued national guidance which explicitly told headteachers they would be accountable to their local authority for the use of PEF and that any spending arrangements would be “confirmed” by their local authority.

Currently the proportion of a Scottish school’s budget over which a headteacher has effective control is minimal. Even in the secondary sector, this extends only to around two per cent of the total and even that is subject to local authority approval. However, the issue here is not just about the funding mechanism, but about the risk-averse culture of conformity in Scottish education.

The level of risk-averse conformity is evidenced by the fact that not one of the 32 local authorities in Scotland has come out in support of greater autonomy for schools. This is deeply disappointing.

The proposals to significantly increase school autonomy, including the Headteachers’ Charter, could represent a historic opportunity to change the culture of Scottish education. In addition, a “greater sense of urgency and priority” should be given to radical alternatives such as implementing greater autonomy and piloting alternative forms of governance for schools.

Many schools, especially in the secondary sector, are ready and would be willing to move in such a direction were the option to pilot a radical new approach be offered.

Unfortunately, in spite of Government assertions that the aim is to create a system characterised by decision-making at school level and teacher empowerment, the culture continues to be dominated by the unreformed attitudes and procedures of local authorities and Government-dominated national agencies.