Scottish Education and my Diary of Disappointment
We all know the feeling of being in someone’s good books or bad books. In our family we also talk of the dreadful diary of disappointment. By far the worst book to be in. Is it any surprise that this phrase keeps coming to me in summer 2021?
Scottish Education is in my Diary of Disappointment.
2020/21 will go down in my book as a year of missed opportunity. Missed opportunity to have an open and grown-up conversation about alternative assessment and certification approaches. I do not say this as one who wishes to see an end to a ‘formal’ examination diet as such, but as a professional open to ideas, open to new ways of working and above all open to a finding a more equitable approach suited to our 21st Century world with a probable growth in pandemics.
If we had embraced this during 2020/21, our schools would be much better placed to guide and support our young people at the outset of this academic year. But alas, we are no further forward. Before anyone points to the Alternative Certification Model used in 2021, this rushed, inequitable model caused as many problems as solutions for schools and families.
At the launch of https://exam.scot in August 2020, James McEnaney led with “If ever there was an opportunity to have a serious conversation about examination and certification in Scotland, it is surely now”. Little has changed other than the now desperate need for real dialogue. Whenever I engage with practitioners and students about assessment and certification, they express dissatisfaction with a number of features of the current system. This list of concerns always contains these three points: many great things happen in our schools but these don’t seem to count as exams dominate everything - our system needs to change to capture a wider set of achievements and skills; pressure on teachers to teach to the test and the two-term dash to exams to the detriment of depth and breadth and to the needs of many in our system.
Writing in September 2020 I said – “we need an actual alternative assessment and certification model for the next iteration of a pandemic. There is sure to be one”. Lo and behold, our schools had to close again, the virus continued to spread and a rushed alternative model was implemented. It would be wonderful if assessment and certification was not in the 2021/22 diary of disappointment as a new approach had been explored, tried and tested by teachers and implemented to ensure equality and equity. For all our sakes, the work needs to be well under way now – before the next set of disruptions. Tinkering with SQA or any renamed qualifications body as a structural exercise without fundamental change in the certification system itself, will keep Scottish education in the diary of disappointment for some time to come.
My second entry in the diary of disappointment in 2020/21 is around Curriculum for Excellence. It was clear to all that we had lost our way due in the main to the over complicated and ever-changing rules of engagement around assessment, moderation and inspection. Many of us were seeking and hoping for a reimagined CfE – how did we stray so far away from the UN principles of: Learning to Know, Learning to Do, Learning to Be and Learning to Live Together that undoubtedly underpinned much of the early thinking and discussion of CfE at the start of the century?
Anytime we have had a re-examination or review or refresh at or whatever title was used, it seems to miss the key issues: we need less not more, a good friend coined the phrase ‘Jenga curriculum’ – one whereby more and more is added until it will inevitably collapse. Even when this has apparently been “addressed” more just gets added. As I write, new guidelines for teachers on de-colonising the curriculum have been published. No one will disagree with the need for such information but where will the resourcing come from? Will it feel just like another thing to do? I fear so. The main issue with any refresh or review to date has been a feeling that it has become a vehicle to promote one approach based on research or views of the group doing the review! This is the main reason for the diary of disappointment entry. The problem is not actually CfE: it’s whose voices are heard? Who is included and / excluded from the refresh discussion? Until we widen the scope of enquiry, until we widen the range of participants to ensure practitioners have more say than academics, policy makers and others from within the ‘system’, we will continue to fail to re-imagine a curriculum for 21st Century. We need a curriculum for 21st Century that is flexible, fit for purpose, has teachers at its heart and teachers making recommendations for any changes needed to meet the needs of their children. A curriculum that has genuine interdisciplinary approaches built in and not added on. Until then, it remains in the diary of disappointment.
However, the final straw that filled my diary of disappointment was the announcement this month of the team of experts to explore the reform of SQA and Education Scotland. The group, led by Ken Muir, former chief executive of the GTCS and a former HMI, comprises four university professors, an adult representative from the Children’s Parliament, a consultant, a representative from the Scottish Association of Minority Ethnic Educators and one current Scottish school-based colleague – Billy Burke, HT. Many of this group are well known to me and are very experienced in their fields. It is also good to see a few ‘new’ faces such as Walter Humes included - not a regular in the ‘walled garden’ of Scottish Education.
However, when are we going to be honest about empowerment, about agency, about excellence and accept that classroom practitioners – who are in classrooms on daily basis and undertake continuous professional learning are our real experts? We need to stop paying lip service to empowering teachers, to teacher agency and other current policy buzz words and actually involve key voices at the heart of the discussion. Let teachers shape the discussion rather than be participants answering the questions set by others in focus groups etc. It is not enough.
So, to get into the 2021/22 good books, Scottish education needs to work on real empowerment, autonomy and agency by having strong voices and more voices to be at the heart of debate on assessment, certification, curriculum and reform.
PS
Dear Diary of Disappointment,
Don’t get me started on ASN …………………………