In the Hollywood depiction of the Muir report, Professor Ken Muir would be cast as an inspirational figure. He’d stride out into the centre of some vast sporting arena and ask the tens of thousands of assembled Scottish educators to give him a “Hell, yeah!” every time they heard something they liked.
“Would you guys like an end to unnecessary paperwork and jargon?” Muir would cry, through the avatar of an action hero of a certain generation - Bruce Willis, perhaps, or maybe Jason Statham?
“HELL, YEAH!” would come the earth-shaking response.
“How about a bigger say for teachers in national education policy?”
“HELL, YEAH!”
“A new national qualifications organisation? A clearer curriculum? More local support and advice for classroom teachers?”
“HELL, YEAH, YEAH AND TRIPLE YEAH!”
The problem is that this scenario seems like something from the umpteenth sequel in a tired movie franchise (the Curriculum for Excellence universe has, after all, been around for the best part of 20 years).
Some things never seem to change, as my colleague Emma Seith observed when, in January, she wrote an outstanding long-read investigation on the legacy of the seminal 2000 McCrone report on teachers’ pay and conditions. She was struck by how similar many of the aspirations back then were to those we continue to hear in reports and policy forums two decades later, whether reducing bureaucracy for schools, giving teachers more time and autonomy or improving professional development.
The Muir report says a lot of things that teachers and other education professionals will want to hear, and the profession should certainly embrace its promise that meaningful change to Scottish education is on the way.
That said, we should acknowledge that there is a lot of scepticism out there among Scottish educators - as, indeed, the Muir report notes itself. On the idea of creating a new curriculum and assessment agency, for example, Muir records the common view that there is a “grave danger” of merely “rearranging the deckchairs” and of simply “rebranding” ineffective organisations.
Muir’s report reflects a sense of inertia in Scottish education and a multitude of reasons for it. School leaders at both primary and secondary level, for example, “pointed to their day-to-day lives being adversely impacted by having to take into account, respectively, 34 and 40 areas of policy”.
As one group of secondary heads pointed out, “such atomisation impedes a truly empowered system”.
Another commonly cited complaint was around the “fairly static staffing” in national bodies, where, as one sardonic teacher put it, there is a largely unchanging “central corps of ‘experts’ dispersing wisdom and scrutiny to grateful recipients at the frontline”.
Many respondents to Muir’s review consultation stressed that reshaping national education agencies would not, in itself, be enough, and he is honest enough to spell out that it could take a very long time to get things right. The Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) and Education Scotland may be on their way out, but they’ll be around in some form until 2024 and Muir says that some of the changes he recommends will only happen in “the medium- and longer-term”, while “necessary cultural and mindset change may take even longer”.
Of course, Muir’s report - which came after the Scottish government announced that the SQA would be replaced and Education Scotland reformed, amid concerns over their performance during Covid - was always intended to focus largely on the more structural matter of what should happen to these two national education bodies. Another big report is around the corner, with Professor Louise Hayward exploring how Scotland’s national qualifications should be reformed.
Even so, some of the quotes from teachers, pupils, and others that Muir has chosen, reveal the depth of dissatisfaction with aspects of Scottish education more generally. Muir was “particularly concerned” when one group of young people told him that the past two years of SQA assessments during the pandemic had been “an absolute nightmare”.
Muir says that his recommendations “unashamedly” place such students and the educators who work with them “ahead of those organisations that make up the educational infrastructure”. He writes, too, of the need for a “redistribution of power, influence and resource within Scottish education”.
The language is, at times, bold, but these words have, by and large, been heard many times before. Now, with Muir recommending a “national discussion” on the future of Scottish education, anyone who wants things to actually improve must get involved.
Everyone should enter into this process with a healthy balance of optimism and realism. A dramatic, Hollywood-style turnaround of Scottish education is not on the cards. Hollywood creates streamlined, simplified narratives out of the hodgepodge of real life, where the pathway to a better future is far less clear.
The eventual outcome of the Muir report’s recommendations is less clear. But what we do know for sure is that there’s an invitation to shape the future of Scottish education - so make sure that you do.
Henry Hepburn is Scotland editor at Tes. He tweets @Henry_Hepburn
