Being education secretary must be akin to being a football manager with tens of thousands shouting advice from the sidelines, Douglas Hutchison acknowledged today in his address to the annual gathering of education directors’ body ADES.
To make sense of all that noise is tough, said Mr Hutchison, who is Glasgow’s executive director of education and the outgoing ADES president.
But while the landscape in Scottish education was “very cluttered” - given the plethora of reports on Scottish education published in recent times - Mr Hutchison was clear about where the government’s focus needed to be.
“Get Hayward done,” was his message at the conference, held in Cumbernauld today and tomorrow.
He added: “For me, the Hayward review more than anything else gives us the opportunity to bring about serious change in the education system that will have a washback effect all the way through the Broad General Education.
“So, in the midst of multiple reports, it is the one I would be putting my money and effort on.”
The independent review of assessment and qualifications led by Professor Louise Hayward, published in June, recommended an end to external exams for all qualifications below Higher level.
It also called for the introduction of a Scottish Diploma of Achievement that would involve students working on an interdisciplinary project and recording students’ wider achievements - as well as the qualifications they had attained.
‘In limbo’
However, coinciding with publication of the report in June, education secretary Jenny Gilruth said she wanted to “pause” reform to hear from teachers.
Today, education directors said that they had supported that pause but incoming ADES president Sheena Devlin, executive director of education and children’s services in Perth and Kinross, said they had been disappointed by Ms Gilruth’s statement to Parliament last week.
The statement - in which Ms Gilruth announced government funding for Regional Improvement Collaboratives would end - had not given “more clarity about what was actually going to happen next”, she said.
Ms Devlin said that education directors now felt like they were “in limbo”.
She said: “We are feeling like we are sitting in a holding room just now - a bit in limbo, champing at the bit to go but we are not quite sure just how it is we’re going to get there.”
ADES is not alone in expressing frustration at the pace of change in Scottish education. The government’s own international education advisers said in a report last week that “the time for commissioning reviews is now over”.
Expert witnesses at an 8 November meeting of the Scottish Parliament’s Education, Children and Young People Committee also called on the government to stop “stalling” or “moving very slowly” on qualification reform. They said Scotland now risked being left behind by other countries.
Radical appetite?
However, in her address to the ADES conference, Ms Gilruth said it would not have been possible to set out the way forward in a “10-minute update to Parliament”.
Ms Gilruth reiterated her concern that there was a “disconnect” between the appetite for radical reform she was told existed when she became education secretary eight months ago and the “reality of schools” and the challenges staff are facing “on a daily basis”.
“I’m not sure how radical that appetite is any more,” she said.
She added: “On reform, we have to take the profession with us at a pace that they understand but also one that means they can engage better with their parents, with their pupils, with their employers and our universities and colleges.”
In a question and answer session that followed, Colin Grant - a former director of education and now ADES professional development officer - suggested it was perhaps unsurprising that teachers were not wholeheartedly backing reform. He said it was part of the “human condition” to say “I’m not that keen on change”.
He said the current system of secondary education was not working for “the significant majority” and was likely a factor when it came to two big issues the system is currently grappling with: worsening attendance and behaviour.
