A prominent academic has become the latest to hit out at the way the Scottish government is taking forward the reform of key education agencies,
The Scottish government has promised ”real and substantial change” to the way education is run.
However, Professor Mark Priestley - who carried out the independent review of the 2020 results fiasco - has echoed the concerns voiced by others that “current trajectories suggest that the reform...may become to a large extent a rebranding exercise”.
He says that the planned new education agency - which is one of three new bodies expected to emerge following the reforms - is “at risk of becoming a Frankenstein organisation that has far too many disparate functions and an unclear sense of its overarching mission”.
In a blog published today, which is also Professor Priestley’s formal response to the national discussion on Scottish education that got underway last month, he says: “The likely directions of the post-Muir reforms to governance are a cause for concern.
“Critics have pointed to the number of senior people from existing agencies - arguably with an interest in maintaining the status quo - involved in the strategic boards tasked with redefining the national agencies.
“Current trajectories suggest that the reform of these may become to a large extent a rebranding exercise, with the new education agency at risk of becoming a Frankenstein organisation that has far too many disparate functions and an unclear sense of its overarching mission.
Education reform in Scotland ‘risks being a rebranding exercise’
“More meaningful would be an overhaul which reconfigures the governance structures: an independent (from government) and smaller scale agency, incorporating expertise in educational thought and with an entirely strategic function (something like Ireland’s NCCA [National Council for Curriculum and Assessment]); and a series of operational bodies, some of which may be regional, for awarding qualifications, to undertake curriculum leadership, etc.”
The Scottish government has committed to reforming inspection and curriculum body Education Scotland, and replacing exam body,the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA).
The decision was made amid concern about the organisation’s performance during the coronavirus pandemic - and the way the SQA handled the cancellation of the exams.
The first step in the process was a review carried out by Professor Ken Muir and published in March.
Professor Muir recommended establishing three new education agencies: a new qualifications and assessment body, which he provisionally called “Qualifications Scotland”; an independent inspectorate; and a “national agency for Scottish education” to advise the Scottish government on curriculum and assessment policy, as well as provide professional learning.
The government “broadly” accepted his recommendations.
Since then, however, the government has been accused by Scottish Labour of “stuffing” the delivery boards that are supposed to be “reshaping Scotland’s educational infrastructure” with “the people that are leading the failed organisations”.
For instance, the Qualifications Body Delivery Board has 14 members and six of them are from the SQA. The board is also chaired by Mike Baxter, who is an SQA director.
Education secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville insisted in an interview last month with Tes Scotland: “I’m in charge of education reform in Scotland; I will deliver the change that is required.”
However, Labour education spokesperson Michael Marra has called on the government to review the membership of the boards immediately or risk “nothing more than the cosmetic rebrand the management are clearly working to achieve”.
Meanwhile, Professor Walter Humes, who was a member of the expert panel that supported Professor Muir, has said the make-up of the boards “looks like ‘insider dealing’ on a grand scale”, and that Ms Somerville had “been outmanoeuvred by her own officials and the traditional educational establishment”.
In his blog, Professor Priestley also warns against rushing the reform process - which, as well as the overhaul of the bodies that run Scottish education, also includes the ongoing review of qualifications and assessment, and the national discussion on Scottish education.
He says: “While there is undoubted enthusiasm for reform, the last thing that Scotland’s hard-pressed system needs at present is a new wave of innovation overload.”
Professor Priestley, a professor of education at the University of Stirling, also stresses that any reforms “must be conceived, planned and enacted systemically, rather than undertaken in a piecemeal fashion” and that he is concerned that decisions “that should rightly stem from [the national discussion] appear to have been made already”.
The full blog can be found here.
