From shoddy IT systems to poor guidance on monitoring pupil progress, school inspectors have named and shamed the Scottish councils that have not done enough to reduce teacher workload.
The report comes in the wake of education secretary John Swinney’s announcement that the role councils play in delivering education is to be reduced, with decisions about learning to be taken, as far as possible, at school level.
The timing of the council bureaucracy report - which was carried out by Education Scotland on Mr Swinney’s behalf - has prompted local government association Cosla to accuse the government of “looking for a problem to which they think they already have a solution”.
Cosla also pointed out in its response that the workload generated by government agencies had not been included.
Meanwhile, the review was described as “hurried and inconsistent” by John Stodter, general secretary of education directors’ body ADES. And there’s some truth to that accusation: it was written after inspectors visited every council for no more than a day-and-a-half in August.
It is not without irony, therefore, that the Dutch schools inspectorate has, in a review of Scottish school inspection, criticised Education Scotland for taking too long to reach conclusions and for asking too many questions; in this instance, such an accusation would seem unlikely.
Scottish councils will likely be starting to view the time when all they had to do was maintain teacher numbers as ‘the good old days’
It is hard to see with all the bad blood that exists now between councils and Scottish government how they are going to work together. Yet Mr Swinney announced only last week that, as part of the governance review, he would be meeting Cosla’s education spokeswoman Stephanie Primrose once a month to discuss the progress forming new educational regions - the bodies that he wants to create through councils collaborating more closely. These meetings were never going to be entirely comfortable, but they are now likely to be about as awkward as Sir Philip Green popping into a BHS retirement do.
Scottish councils will likely be starting to view the time when all they had to do was maintain teacher numbers as “the good old days”, and perhaps they are wishing that they had just toed the line.
Because while the rebellion over maintaining teacher numbers was short-lived, it highlighted the fact that councils were in charge of schools. Now first minister Nicola Sturgeon has staked her reputation on closing the attainment gap, it seems that she’s not willing to run the risk of councils getting in the way again.
So while just a few short months ago the Scottish government stood accused by local government of ring-fencing by the backdoor, now the SNP is marching in through the front entrance - without even bothering to ring the bell.
The £100 million of council tax the government plans to give direct to schools based on the proportion of pupils claiming free school meals is likely to be the first of many pots of cash that will bypass councils altogether.
The responsibilities and cash that councils will be left with remains to be seen but if the government is serious about empowering headteachers, some argue that their role as employer should also be devolved to schools.
We just have to hope that all this is about doing what is best for Scottish pupils and not clawing back more power to the centre - or that it’s not a case of SNP “illiberal control freakery”, as some have put it.
@Emma_Seith
