Early in her premiership, Nicola Sturgeon declared education to be her “defining mission”. As the then general secretary of the EIS, Scotland’s largest teaching union, I welcomed the apparent prioritisation of education within the government’s programme - it seemed to bode well for action in key areas, such as tackling the poverty-related attainment gap, addressing the growing demand for additional needs support and valuing the role of teachers.
Unfortunately - and I would blame all political parties for this - it led to education becoming a political football where the need for bipartisan point scoring became imperative, leading to excessive and erroneous claims that standards in Scottish education had plummeted from a great height, or equally erroneous assertions that all was rosy in the garden.
Scotland has a good education system, with staff delivering daily for the pupils in their care, despite the constant political “noises-off” and a palpable need for additional resource. The narrative of failure purveyed by some opposition politicians is simply wrong, does a great disservice to our school communities, wearies teachers and hinders progressive policymaking. (Scotland ranked fourth in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development survey of “global Competencies” - hardly an indicator of a failing system.)
Any politician, however, who thinks we can significantly reduce the poverty-related attainment gap without significantly reducing the levels of poverty in our society is deluding themselves. To apply such a yardstick to evaluating the “success” or otherwise of the first minister’s (FM) education mission is to miss the point completely. More children are living in poverty today than 10 years ago - schools have to run to stand still - which is why the “attainment gap” is not closing quickly enough.
That’s not the failure of an individual - it’s a collective failure of politics to deliver a fair and just economy that would see poverty as a thing of the past.
In reality, Sturgeon has not been particularly “hands-on” in terms of education policy, with most of the heavy lifting having been shouldered by each cabinet secretary for education, primarily John Swinney, whose appointment in 2016 (he remained in the role until 2021) was partly designed to shift the education focus away from the FM. She did burden us with Scottish National Standardised Assessments (better known as SNSAs) - her initiative - and while the original “high-stakes summative” approach of these tests was significantly diminished through dialogue with the professional associations, the SNSAs remain as an expensive, burdensome and unnecessary echo of the discredited “testing, testing, testing” approach of other systems such as England.
The fact that the impact of the tests was moderated through discussion is indicative of one of the strengths of Scottish education under the FM’s watch, however, in that there is a genuine commitment to social dialogue, even in times of disagreement - such as the current pay dispute, which has certainly seen the FM’s standing among teachers plummet considerably. Being the first political leader since former prime minister Margaret Thatcher to provoke a national teachers’ pay dispute is a sour footnote to Sturgeon’s time as FM, seeing as undoubtedly many teachers will have admired her obvious leadership qualities.
Her public comments on the pay dispute, however, have suggested a level of tone-deafness around specific teacher concerns and certainly disappointed many teachers who would have hoped for, even expected, a more progressive approach.
I witnessed a similar phenomenon during the pandemic when many teachers felt they were key frontline workers only when it suited the narrative, although, undoubtedly, the FM’s communication skills were to the fore and offered a level of reassurance sadly missing from her counterparts in London.
If the binary political prism through which education is viewed created a negative discourse, it also led to an overly defensive stance from the Scottish government, where any mistake or misstep could not be acknowledged. We are awaiting a report from Professor Louise Hayward on a new approach to certification, for example - it’s just over a decade since we last changed the system. Despite fault lines appearing early in the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) senior phase, remedial action wasn’t taken, as that would have required acknowledging mistakes, with the result that we currently have a poorer qualification framework than we did before CfE.
As FM, for example, Sturgeon often referenced the “gold standard” of five Highers, without, it would seem, any sense of the inference to be drawn around the value of achievement measured by any other metric. The thrust of the reforms being considered, however, would seek to move us away from any elitist approach to achievement and to value the success of all pupils.
Globally, in the face of IT and artificial intelligence advances, and in post-Covid scenarios, education systems are increasingly embracing equity and inclusion as their key objectives. That they are already embedded in our education system is a positive achievement of Sturgeon’s period of office.
In her resignation speech, the FM referenced the “brutal” nature of politics - it’s a point well made but not one we should simply accept as inevitable.
If we can create a more collaborative approach in education, which is the current aim of the professional associations and, indeed, of the empowerment “agenda”, we have a greater chance of success in achieving equity in our system.
Post-Sturgeon, the question is whether our politicians can seize the moment to set aside tribal approaches to education - and trust and resource teachers to deliver for Scotland’s children and young people.
Larry Flanagan was general secretary of the EIS teaching union from 2012 to 2022
