Scottish education reform risks falling short of its ambitions unless it gains momentum, the Scottish government’s International Council of Education Advisers (ICEA) has warned.
A new ICEA report says that rather than commissioning any more reviews of Scottish education, the reform process needs to progress more quickly than it has until now.
The report was published this week on the same day that education secretary Jenny Gilruth announced two new bodies charged with overseeing reform. Ms Gilruth also marked the start of a new round of consultation on reform, and confirmed that the Scottish Parliament will not debate qualifications reform until 2024.
The ICEA says that “the time for commissioning reviews is now over”. Using the insight gained from past reports, it is “timely now and indeed critical to implement change that will bring significant benefits to Scottish education”.
The ICEA report states: “There is a strong consensus about the need for action but the specifics remain to be determined.
“We recognise that some changes take time and that fiscal austerity is a limiting factor. But we are concerned that the momentum of change might not match the appetite for change within the system.”
‘Unwanted structural change’
However, the ICEA also warns of the danger of “imposing an expensive and unwanted structural change on teachers and school leaders”, and calls for “human-centred, teacher-led change” and “pulling back from big structural system changes”.
It also highlights possible areas for “cost savings without sacrificing equity or excellence”, including: “ring-fencing certain high-priority parts of education from public sector cuts”; “digital supports for, or supplements to, in-person teaching, learning and professional learning”; using artificial intelligence (AI) in areas such as curriculum planning and assessment; and helping teachers innovate by “removing external obstacles”, including “overly complicated lists of outcomes and performance measures”.
The ICEA sees a key role for Regional Improvement Collaboratives (RICs), even though Ms Gilruth’s parliamentary statement on education reform this week indicated that the Scottish government would be withdrawing funding from RICs.
The report from the ICEA, across seven areas, makes a series of recommendations to the Scottish government, including:
1. Improve the teaching profession and professional learning
- Improve the working conditions of school leaders and teachers.
- “Articulate more clearly” national, regional and local bodies’ roles in “facilitating professional learning”.
2. Curriculum, pedagogy and assessment
- “Re-examine issues that hinder the potential of [Curriculum for Excellence] to be fully realised”, such as exams being a “principal driver in secondary education” and the use of “narrow metrics as school accountability measures”.
- Help teachers become more expert in continuous assessment and create more space and time for “innovative pedagogies, deeper learning, knowledge application and skills development”.
- “Urgently examine” the pros and cons of AI for exams and assessment.
3. Support collaboration among teachers and schools
- “Strengthen relationships between school and regional personnel, including within and across RICs”.
- Invest in technology so that teachers “all have access to highest quality professional learning, irrespective of their context”.
4. Engagement of students, families and communities
- Find new ways to help pupils’ voices be heard and “inform educational change in the system”.
- Ensure that families and carers “have a strong understanding of the learning pathways and opportunities available”.
- “Innovative” work with social services should “support families, deal with mental health and wellbeing issues, and inform curriculum, teaching and learning”.
- Continue to help schools build links with universities and other sectors, creating “spaces for learning outside of the school walls and school day”.
5. Governance and leadership
- Give education professionals a bigger say over decision making.
- Establish “clear roles and responsibilities” and “minimise duplication”.
6. AI and the digital world
- “Urgently explore” implications of AI in education, to pave the way for measured implementation of changes to the curriculum and professional learning.
- Policy designed to tackle inequality in education should now also reflect “the likelihood of an increasing digital divide associated with access to AI”.
7. Equity and excellence
- Improving policies and practice, partly through the establishment of “clear lines of accountability”.
- Improve data collection so that it can “adequately assess the effectiveness of policy initiatives and progress in improving both equity and excellence in education”.
