On the same day late last year, rival newspapers knew exactly who to blame on their front pages for the falling standards of Scottish education, as measured by the Programme for International Student Assessment.
Confusingly, however, each chose to place the responsibility at different doors. The Herald’s lead article, for example, singled out the number of mixed-level certificate classes for dragging down attainment, while the Daily Mail’s front page blamed non-English speaking children for holding back native speakers.
Everyone has an opinion on education, whether they are directly affected by it or not, which I suppose shows a keen interest in the country’s future. The downside is that complex issues, such as improving standards, are reduced to eye-catching headlines that favour the novel or bias-confirming over the considered response.
When education policy tries to capture the headlines in an easily remembered soundbite, such as “closing the attainment gap”, then its purpose - to improve the education of children - becomes lost in the desire to gain favourable press coverage, and, of course, win votes (as we’ve seen in the run-up to yesterday’s council elections).
We have become so familiar with the idea that education policy is played for political as much as social ends that the following statement might come as a surprise: it wasn’t always the case.
Before the Thatcher government of the 1980s, education authorities, schools and headteachers were left to get on with deciding what they thought would work best for providing children with an education suitable to their needs. What a novel idea! In bygone days, no political or academic careers were dependent on innovative ideas, so if something worked, it stayed the same.
When Ordinary Grades were introduced in the early 1960s, I’m sure they didn’t garner too many column inches. Perhaps this was why the qualification survived more than three decades, as there was no bureaucrat itching to tamper with it.
Standard Grades were introduced in the 1980s and they, too, staggered on for 25 years before being gradually replaced by Intermediate and Access qualifications; these barely lasted a decade before we got to the Nationals, which are still being tinkered with.
Can we really say that the constant modification of how we certificate pupils at this level has happened thanks to a greater understanding of how children learn?
We need to get the politics out of the classroom. This would stop education being the obsession of newspaper editors, whereby flippant remarks by Tes Scotland columnists become worthy of condemnatory articles in national newspapers (yes, that was me), and leftfield schemes, such as keeping poorer children in schools over the holidays, make front-page news.
Education policy needs scrutiny - but not the haphazard, ill-informed condemnation of some sections of the media.
Gordon Cairns is a teacher of English in Scotland
