Scottish teaching unions have reacted angrily after prime minister Theresa May criticised the “slipping” standards of Scottish education.
In an interview with the Mail on Sunday, Mrs May said Scottish parents had a right to question why they pay more tax while their children receive a poorer standard of education than elsewhere in the UK.
But Larry Flanagan, general secretary of the EIS teaching union, said: “I don’t think Scottish education has much to learn from how they are doing things in England.”
He added: “They have a high-stakes assessment regime that is putting unprecedented levels of stress upon students; they have a teacher recruitment crisis that is seeing unqualified teachers in front of classes and the Westminster government are supporters of the Global Education Reform Movement [which promotes a more market-driven model for education], which is not a pathway we want to go down in Scotland.”
Seamus Searson, general secretary of the Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association, also reacted strongly to Mrs May’s comments.
He said: “The Tories criticising the Scottish education system is a bit rich, considering the disarray the English system is in. There is no consistency at all in what is delivered - their answer has been to dismantle the education system. We are proud here of more than 50 years of comprehensive education.”
Mr Searson, who has previously worked as a teaching union official in both England and Northern Ireland, added: “There is also a far bigger teacher recruitment crisis in England, as well as bigger issues with teacher retention.”
Scottish education ‘slipping’
The prime minister, who will address the Scottish Conservatives’ conference in Aberdeen this week, had said that people in Scotland had “a right to say, ‘Why are we paying more when we see that our education standards are slipping? That means our children aren’t getting the same sort of opportunities and prospects that children across the rest of the UK have.’”
In a reference to Scotland’s performance in the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa), she said: “That’s what I fear as we see Scotland slipping back down the league tables.”
And, citing Scotland’s withdrawal several years ago from other international studies such as Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (Timss), she added: “In England, we have worked hard to get English schools going up the league tables. In Scotland, they are ignoring the problem and just trying to pretend it’s not there.”
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