Will the current education reform end up being just a “reshuffling of the deckchairs”? Do we need 32 local authorities in Scotland? When will Scottish headteachers be given more control over staffing? Did teachers get assessment wrong in 2020 and 2021?
These were some of the issues raised by headteachers at the first in-person gathering of School Leaders Scotland (SLS) in two years, which is taking place today and tomorrow in St Andrews.
However, when it came to that familiar assertion that the reform of Scotland’s exam body, the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA), and its curriculum and inspection body, Education Scotland, could just end up being a “reshuffling of the deckchairs” - particularly given “the heavy involvement of current bodies in the reform” - Professor Ken Thomson turned the tables.
Professor Thomson, the principal of Forth Valley College, urged the SLS members - who come from the secondary school sector - to engage with the reform and to exercise their influence, adding: “If it’s a reshuffling of the deckchairs, you’ve only yourselves to blame because this is an opportunity for consultation.”
He added: “In my mind, you are the captain of the titanic so you need to steer around the iceberg. You need to be moving as a group collectively - and as a school - to influence what it is you are looking for from this reshuffling.”
Professor Thomson was one of four panellists taking part in a discussion based on the format of the BBC’s topical debate show, Question Time.
Other panel members included Lindsay McRoberts, a former headteacher who is now the director of education in South Ayrshire; Dr Frances Murray, the former rector of the Nicolson Institute in Stornoway and now a councillor in the Western Isles; and member of the Scottish Youth Parliament Gavin Stewart.
Responding to the same question, Ms McRoberts said there were so many consultations out there just now that headteachers could start thinking, “What’s the point, no one listens anyway?” But she cautioned against that.
She urged the school leaders to participate and advised them in particular to engage with Professor Louise Hayward’s independent review of assessment and qualifications because its recommendations would shape the SQA.
“Whatever Hayward comes up with in terms of assessment practice in the future will influence the way [the SQA] has to be structured, has to be run and the voice of headteachers needs to be at that table,” she said.
Ms McRoberts also urged the headteachers to ensure that teachers were ready if the outcome of the Hayward review is more focus on teacher assessment
She said that teachers had been deskilled because of the emphasis on end-of-year exams and that they were not ready for “ongoing continuous assessment”.
Ms McRoberts said: “There’s a real role for yourselves, as school leaders, about how we get the profession to the point where they can accept what those Hayward reforms are because we are not ready for them - and I’m saying that as a headteacher who left school in April.
“Teachers are not ready for ongoing continuous assessment - out there on there their own, the moderation practice, the level of assessment practice - and one thing I would be doing as a headteacher just now is trying to build that capacity in assessment practice so that we are ahead of the game.”
What was abundantly clear was the lack of love in the room for the SQA - another school leader questioned why only 30 per cent of appeals over 2022 grades were successful. Did schools get it wrong, or was there something else at play?
So, SQA director of qualifications development Gill Stewart perhaps had to steel herself before contributing to the debate.
However, in the final contribution from the floor, Dr Stewart said the Hayward review presented Scotland with “the opportunity to do something radically different with the school qualifications and how they are assessed”.
She also reminded headteachers that the reformed qualifications - which began to be introduced in 2013-14 to chime with Curriculum for Excellence - were “a combination of teacher assessment and external assessment”, but there was “insufficient time given to teachers to prepare and build up their assessment expertise”, or for schools to put in place the appropriate “support and quality assurance locally”.
She also said that the original intention had been for school qualifications to increasingly be taken over two years and at the point students were due to leave school - rather than qualifications being taken in S4, S5 and S6.
Dr Stewart said: “If we want to reset that, we need to think, what were the barriers that didn’t allow us to do that before and how can we put things in place to make things better?”
