One Scottish academic - arguably more than any other - is reliably scathing in his critique of the education establishment in Scotland. Bodies like Education Scotland, the Scottish Qualifications Authority or the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland often fall foul of Professor Walter Humes’ sharp tongue as he takes them to task over their “deep-rooted conservatism”, the “serious deficit” in the quality of their thinking or their “political and professional deference”.
So the news that Professor Humes is to sit in the expert group leading the reform of Education Scotland and the SQA - which was sparked by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) review of Curriculum for Excellence in June - was received with some delight by teachers familiar with his work.
However, there was also a lot of anger about the complete absence of classroom teachers from the group, with this comment from a modern studies teacher summing up the objections of many: “I’m sure all these professors, etc, are eminently qualified in their subjects, but have they been in a classroom recently, I wonder?”
The only member of the eight-strong expert panel who is currently working in a secondary school is Billy Burke, the headteacher of Renfrew High and a former School Leaders Scotland president.
Teachers’ input on the SQA and Education Scotland reforms
Also on the panel are Khadija Mohammed, a primary teacher by trade and a senior lecturer in education at the University of the West of Scotland with a special interest in diversity in teaching; Professor Louise Hayward, an expert in assessment based at the University of Glasgow; Professor Graham Donaldson, who led Scotland’s school inspectorate and wrote the seminal 2011 report Teaching Scotland’s Future; and Professor Anne Looney, executive dean at Dublin City University Institute of Education and one of the OECD review team. The final two places on the panel are held by Cathy McCulloch, co-director of the Children’s Parliament, and Dr Naomi Stanford, an “organisation design practitioner”, teacher, author and consultant.
At the helm is Ken Muir, the former General Teaching Council for Scotland chief whom we feature today in our Q&A. Professor Muir has been charged with steering the OECD’s recommendations for “structural and functional change of SQA and Education Scotland” and it will be the job of the panel to provide him with “expertise, advice and support”.
The expert panel will, in turn, be supported by the Practitioner and Stakeholder Advisory Group, which has over 40 organisations as members.
It includes teaching unions and heads’ organisations, but this has done little to silence critics who argue that, still, only one person with contemporary experience of day-to-day life in secondary will be at the table when big decisions are made.
It should be noted, though, that many on the expert panel are keen to see changes in the way that senior secondary students are assessed.
Donaldson, for example, has said exams are “at best only a very limited way of measuring learning in all its complexity” and a “relatively poor predictor” of success at university, and Hayward recently advocated taking “a hard look at the qualification system to ask if it is fit for purpose for future generations”.
Looney helped write the OECD report that said Scotland needs to move away from “traditional” exams and embrace assessment approaches that better align with 21st-century curricula.
And Mohammed could hardly be accused of being part of the educational establishment, given her pointed criticism
of politicians for being “painfully slow” in getting behind anti-racism work in schools.
Nevertheless, teachers have grounds for concern - after all, the OECD report simply reflected what they had been saying for years, so why is it only now that the powers-that-be appear to be listening?
Let’s hope then that failure has opened the ears of the establishment and the system is ready - as Humes puts it - for “a degree of disruption”.
Emma Seith is a reporter at Tes Scotland. She tweets @Emma_Seith
