The Scottish education secretary has admitted he is partly to blame for the most recent workload woes inflicted on teachers.

However, John Swinney told teachers gathered in Glasgow today for the Scottish Learning Festival (SLF), for which Tes Scotland is a partner, that he remained committed to reducing the pressure on school staff.

He responded to a secondary teacher who said he was in his third year of delivering the new National courses and every year they had changed. The teacher said: “If you want to reduce workload I think you need to tell the SQA (Scottish Qualifications Authority) to stop.”

Mr Swinney said that there had not been as much time for dialogue and engagement over the removal of unit assessments as would have been “desirable”.

He said that he had to put his “hands up” and take some responsibility for that because of the speed with which he pushed through the changes. However, he added, he wanted to act quickly.

He said: “Sometimes ministers turn up and say ‘SQA do this quickly’ and it does not give a lot of time for as much dialogue and engagement as would be desirable. I have to put my hands up - but if we want to reduce workload we have to get on with this.”

Mr Swinney announced his decision to remove mandatory unit assessments at last year’s festival following pressure from the teaching unions.

Unit assessments will be removed for the majority of pupils at N5 this year, with Higher to follow next year.

Workload increase

However, surveys of the profession have revealed a majority of teachers now believe their workload has actually increased because of the changes to examinations and coursework that have been introduced to compensate. For instance, in 28 out of 42 National 5 subjects, pupils will be required to sit longer exams this year.

In the first keynote address at this year’s SLF - which runs today and tomorrow - Mr Swinney reiterated his commitment to creating more routes for teachers to progress and “find professional fulfilment” not just through the “administrative leadership of education” in schools.

He said he was looking to Singapore for inspiration, later adding he had no plans to resurrect the chartered teacher scheme, which allowed teachers who wanted to remain in the classroom a means of improving their skills and salary, but was scrapped in 2011.

Mr Swinney also said that while “new policy announcements” were a “frequent characteristic of speeches by ministers to big events” he would not be making one at this year’s festival.

Last year he had used the Scottish Learning Festival to announce the scrapping of unit assessments but he said he would not be making any new announcements at the SLF this year because the “consistent direction of travel had been set”. 

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