The theatre of an election campaign does not, to put it mildly, create the best forum for considered education policy. We all know about the age-old problem of the disjuncture between electoral cycles - with the pressure for quick, eye-catching results - and the sort of change that education really needs: sustained, incremental and not at all showy.

In the midst of an election campaign, the gap gets even wider. When parties have to pull stunts like having their leader dangle his legs over a giant deckchair or carve platitudinous promises on a tablet of stone, you know that deep thinking about pedagogy or education policy are not exactly going to be priorities.

There is, however, a flip side: the pressure to garner votes can jolt politicians into action - look at the SNP announcement about doling out a laptop or tablet for every pupil in the country - when previously the same urgency had not been on display. It may prompt accusations of electoral bribes but, if a policy is sound, the beneficiaries will care little about how it was brought about.

Many bold ideas get an airing during an election campaign - look at the Greens and the Lib Dems jostling with each other this week to get credit for proposing to raise the school starting age to 7. Sometimes, a party tries to cover all bases rather than focusing on a single headline-seeking education policy, at the risk of appearing vague rather than all-encompassing. Labour has been a case in point lately, with its “education comeback plan” covering mental health, a “resit guarantee” for national qualifications and digital training for school staff.

And sometimes education is used mostly as a tool for getting on to what a party really wants to talk about: so the Tories, seeing Scotland’s constitutional future as a big vote winner, have gone big on why they believe the SNP government’s education record demonstrates that independence detracts from the day-to-day running of the country.

You do get some interesting ideas in the mix and, ultimately, some results - although the book of unrealised election promises would resemble a first draft of War and Peace - but education pledges in an election campaign are designed to grab votes rather than lay the foundations for meaningful change. So, what would happen if you got teachers to draw up election manifestos? Just how far would their ideas be from what the politicians are putting on offer?

That was exactly what secondary headteacher Billy Burke sought to find out on Twitter last weekend. The responses were often thought provoking but not - to use that horrendous word - “sexy” enough to ever make waves at an election manifesto launch. There were calls, for example, to provide better training on additional support needs, a commitment to “inclusive pedagogy”, more time for collaboration between schools and more of a focus on pedagogy.

But what really differentiated the priorities of the politicians and those of educators? It was this: the politicians were largely preoccupied with stuff that might happen in education while the educators were more concerned with the people who make stuff happen.

There were calls for the landmark McCrone report on teachers’ pay and working conditions to be revisited; a reduction in teachers’ contact time was cited a number of times; and one response called for a “huge investment” in the profession so that “deep intellectual preparation and planning can occur”. As that person put it: “Rid us of all the nonsense and noise so that teaching is what we discuss and think about the most.”

The politicians’ promises have not said much about teachers’ wellbeing and working conditions; they appear to be playing to a gallery of parents, not teachers. If the parties really want meaningful change in education, that’s a mistake - because no education policy will work unless educators are in a fit state to realise it.

@Henry_Hepburn

This article originally appeared in the 2 April 2021 issue under the headline “Promises are empty if teachers are in no fit state to fulfil them”