It was quite bizarre to see a long-established desire to promote social justice in Scottish education being used as a stick with which to beat Scottish education.
But that’s exactly what happened last week when a certain media outlet trailed a piece on social media by claiming teachers were being made to commit to “social justice, diversity and sustainability”, as if these were somehow ideas to be feared.
Quite apart from the claim that this had emerged from “new” guidance (it came from General Teaching Council for Scotland professional standards that have been around for years), many teachers on Twitter disagreed strongly with the article - summed up neatly by one who wrote that what was being criticised amounted to “the basic tenets on which a society should be built”.
Professor Rowena Arshad, the former dean of the University of Edinburgh’s Moray House School of Education, once told a Tes Scotland podcast that the best thing about Scottish education was the “passion for social justice and fairness and human rights and humanity”.
Similarly, a secondary headteacher responding to last week’s social justice brouhaha - which had portrayed the GTCS values as a smoking gun for left-wing political bias in teaching - said he was “proud to be part of the Scottish teaching profession and our moral quest for equality and equity”. And a university professor of education wrote that she had moved to Scotland “to get my son into an education system that had social justice as a core value … I can’t begin to understand why it shouldn’t be seen as a very good thing”.
In short, many in the education sphere batted the criticism away as a piece of manufactured outrage, baffled as to why a belief in social justice might ever be considered a problem.
Of course, an aspiration for social justice is one thing - the reality is often quite another. That much was clear in the grades fiasco of 2020, which laid bare widespread fears that - even before Covid - the exams system was not fair to all.
The “alternative certification model” (ACM) subsequently deployed in 2020-21 was meant to be a big improvement on the frantic scramble towards results day in August 2020. Yet, as one school leaver wrote for us last weekend, many students still feel they went through the most stressful year of their entire time at school.
“How can pupil experience be compared fairly when the assessment period and methods varied so greatly across local authorities?” asked this school leaver - who was mindful that, with a university place secured, they were one of the fortunate ones, despite having struggled with mental health issues over the year.
The writer was “certain” that many other students around Scotland were less fortunate and had been “let down by the exam system”.
Results day 2021 has now passed (see pages 8-9 for our analysis) and now teachers want to know what they can expect in 2021-22 and beyond.
It is good to hear this week that influential figures in politics are focusing on the long-term need for a more “coherent and consistent” assessment system to emerge from Covid (see pages 10-13).
More pressingly, however, in many parts of Scotland we are just days away from pupils returning, yet - despite a promise that there would be clarity at the start of the school year - the nature of assessment in 2021-22 is still largely unknown.
For all the pain, the past 18 months have at least provoked much debate on how students’ success is measured in Scottish education, on how issues such as poverty, mental health and additional needs should be factored into assessment.
Now, with the Scottish Qualifications Authority due to be replaced and assessment reform as live an issue as it has been for many a year, change is in the air - and we must hope that whatever comes next truly has that spirit of social justice at its heart.
@Henry_Hepburn
This article originally appeared in the 13 August 2021 issue under the headline “When did social justice become something to be ashamed of?”
