In 2019 there was some consternation when it emerged that Falkirk Council wanted to scrap form classes - more traditionally known as “registration” in Scotland - as a way of saving money.
The loss of these 10 minutes at the start of each secondary school day, critics argued, would have “an immediate and direct negative effect on pupils”.
Registration, one teacher said, was the “first line of guidance”, a time when pastoral staff could chat with students and nip issues in the bud. More generally, the argument for registration was that it allowed students to settle and staff to get set up for the day.
Now, however, five years after it was scrapped, form class is on the point of being reinstated in Falkirk - with wellbeing cited as a key factor behind the move.
In 2019, it seemed that, rather than having any pastoral value, the council viewed registration predominantly as an inefficient way of checking students’ attendance. It tried to assuage concerns about scrapping it by suggesting that the school online service Seemis could take up the administrative burden when form classes disappeared from timetables.
Wellbeing check-ins
Now, however, papers for a Falkirk Council meeting due to take place next week talk up the return of registration as a way “to support attendance and wellbeing check-ins”.
Is this a sign, then, of wellbeing becoming a bigger priority in Scottish schools?
Well, yes, but it’s not quite that simple.
On the one hand, enlightened attitudes about mental health and wellbeing are not hard to find these days, especially post-Covid (“There has never been such an important time to make pastoral care a focus,” said one headteacher in the midst of the pandemic).
Many schools are explicitly prioritising wellbeing in ways that were not as evident a few years ago, although at the same time, pressures on the mental health of pupils and school staff have rarely been more apparent.
There is, however, another more powerful imperative at play: money.
In 2019, the argument in Falkirk was that scrapping registration periods would save £693,000 a year by removing the need for 16.7 full-time equivalent staff to cover them. If, as one teacher told us this week, form class counts towards pupil-contact time, then its removal allowed teachers more time to teach.
Extra budget pressure on education
Five years on, the pressure has increased on councils throughout Scotland to make significant changes to education, with local authorities saying it is increasingly difficult to find cuts to non-education budgets.
Falkirk Council’s big idea for education, outlined in its budget papers for a meeting next Wednesday, 28 February, is to shake up the learning week: it would follow the example of some other Scottish councils and introduce an “asymmetric week” across all sectors - in plain English, school would end at lunchtime each Friday. (The number of hours in the pupil week would also be reduced, in both primary and secondary schools, an issue we will also look into, especially if it becomes a trend across Scotland.)
However, while there are undeniably educational arguments for asymmetric week, the papers make the key driver clear: “To meet current and unprecedented savings targets, consideration has had to be given to system-level change and service redesign.”
The idea, clearly stated, is to “reduce the pupil week to remove non-class contact cover requirement/cost”.
And there are 19 proposed “protective factors built into this model” - including, at No 2, the reintroduction of registration at the start of the school day.
In the end, as with so many decisions, it comes down to money: five years ago, form classes were a financial drain, now they are part of proposals to save money.
In short, whether an idea is inherently good or bad for schools may not be the deciding factor in its being protected or promoted - at times like these, we are all at the mercy of budgets and the bottom line.
Henry Hepburn is Scotland editor at Tes. He tweets @Henry_Hepburn
For the latest Scottish education news, analysis and features delivered directly to your inbox, sign up to Tes magazine’s The Week in Scotland newsletter
