Councils are heaping work on teachers by leaving them in the dark about how to track pupils’ progress and lumbering schools with inadequate IT, a government-commissioned report has found.
Inconsistent council practices often force staff to enter the same pupil data multiple times and teachers struggle with poor broadband connections, the study says.
But local authorities have hit back at the report - carried out by Education Scotland - accusing the agency itself of creating workload problems and of “pandering” to education secretary John Swinney with a “hurried and inconsistent” report.
The research, which focused on how to tackle workload linked to Curriculum for Excellence (CfE), praises 15 “proactive” councils, but finds that 17 others are doing less well, including three - Falkirk, Moray and Shetland - whose support for teachers is deemed insufficient.
The report came two days before Mr Swinney said that he would scrap unit assessments for National 5 and Higher, after a chorus of complaints from teachers and parents about the increased workload that they caused. Last month, the education secretary also published guidance to help teachers reduce workload linked to Curriculum for Excellence (see box, below).
The tracking and monitoring of pupils’ progress is a “key area” that “requires improvement in most local authorities”, says the report, which was written after inspectors visited every council for up to a day and a half in August.
The report says that teachers often suffer from “the lack of a clear shared understanding” about how to show that a pupil has achieved a CfE level.
Inconsistent practices around Scotland stem from many councils introducing their own system for monitoring pupils’ progress, which “often requires teachers to enter the same data into two or more different IT systems”, it says.
‘Inefficient’ systems
In about two-thirds of authorities, teachers blame many problems on inadequate broadband coverage, while the same proportion say the Seemis IT system, used by most councils to manage education information, is “inefficient to operate” and causes “unnecessary work”.
But there is recognition of factors that are beyond council control. For example, all secondary headteachers and teachers reported that the new Scottish Qualifications Authority exam arrangements had added to their schools’ workload.
Mr Swinney said the report “clearly shows that many councils in Scotland have more work to do in ensuring that our teachers have the best possible support”.
He praised areas where collaboration between schools had helped teachers understand assessment, but found it “disappointing” that this only happened in about a quarter of councils.
But John Stodter, general secretary of education directors’ body ADES, said that the review had been “hurried and inconsistent”, leading to concerns that the findings were “not wholly based on robust, reliable and consistent evidence”.
Local authorities body Cosla said that it was “ironic that the workload issue was created in large part by the agency sent in to ‘sort out the problem’ ”. It also accused Education Scotland of lacking independence and disputed whether “anything credible or meaningful can be ascertained” from its report.
George Alexander, the vice-chairman of Moray’s children and young people’s services committee, said that all staff would be “thoroughly disheartened” by the “unfair reflection” of the council’s efforts to minimise bureaucracy and support schools.
He said the area’s “chronic teacher shortage” had not been considered in the “hastily arranged review”, which consulted a “tiny number” of staff, turned a “deaf ear” to national failings and “simply panders” to the government.
And Robert Naylor, Falkirk’s director of children’s services, said that the report was not an accurate measure of local progress and that a letter had been written on the council’s behalf to Education Scotland “expressing concerns regarding the conclusions”.
Education Scotland’s chief executive, Bill Maxwell, told TESS: “We put a great deal of effort into making sure we moderated and checked the results coming through from each of the authorities so that we had a consistent view, so I defend the robustness of the process.”
