Lesley Riddoch: Testing times for Nicola Sturgeon as Scotland slips behind at school

Every three years, 72 countries take part in the International Student Assessment (Pisa) tests in science, reading and maths – and generally Scots are ahead of the other “home nations”. But this year, for the first time in 16 years, Scotland scored “average” in all three subject areas, with none classed “above average.”

Opposition politicians have had a field day. Education Secretary John Swinney has admitted the results make uncomfortable reading but maintains “radical reform” will make Scottish education world-class again. And some SNP supporters have downplayed the whole thing – after all, Scots pupils are still hitting the European average and disaster is hardly likely to result from being a few percentage points adrift.

That would be fair enough, if average was all Scots are aiming for and if education wasn’t a defining part of Scotland’s identity in the Union and indeed the world. It would be fine if we didn’t know that education is one of the soundest predictors of a child’s future health, occupational and life chances.

It’s not fair enough – this is bad.

So what’s gone wrong?

According to Lindsay Paterson, professor of education policy at Edinburgh University, the most likely culprit is the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE), devised by the last Lib-Lab administration and enacted by the SNP in 2007.

“The students who sat these Pisa tests have been educated under Curriculum for Excellence since they were age 10. Students in England in the same period have not suffered the same decline, and yet share an economic and social context that is broadly similar to Scotland’s except in policy on schooling.

“If Curriculum for Excellence is not the explanation of Scottish decline, then what is?”

Actually, without proper evidence, who is to say? This debate – like so many – is being conducted with plenty of attitude but precious little survey data. Still, those who’ve been active in Scottish education for most of their lives suggest the curriculum itself may be less problematic than the way it’s been implemented and unwittingly undermined.

Margaret Alcorn is convenor of Selmas – a community of independent Scottish education practitioners. Her chief concern is the lack of autonomy and control experienced by Scottish teachers.

“The best way for a teacher to learn isn’t being told how to do things better but to spend time watching others, discussing ideas and taking joint responsibility for each child’s educational experience. But that isn’t the way CfE has panned out. There’s too much micro-management from on high and a lack of trust that teachers can do the job without tests.”

Money’s also a problem. In parts of Edinburgh it’s apparently impossible for schools to hire casual teaching staff so that full-time staff can take time to stand back, think about what they’re doing and learn from one another. This very underrated collegiality is the feature that distinguishes highly successful education systems like the Finnish system. But cuts mean councils have less money to hire supply teachers to cover for staff and fewer students have gone through teacher training. Within councils, experienced staff have also gone – it all adds up to a stressed service in which teachers have no time to step back and think or step forward and immerse themselves in the whole educational world of their pupils. And the stress has been increased by the external tests introduced by the First Minister – the first of which takes place at the tender age of five. With the best will in the world, the presence of tests means the most motivated, creative teacher will still feel bound to teach to the test.

And that’s an old model of education that runs quite counter to the CfE outlook.

Of course, the SNP aims to solve funding problems by top-slicing council tax and handing £100 million directly to headteachers. But many headteachers are nervous of the responsibility, red tape, and expectations likely to come with the cash. Some teachers comment that the SNP’s “attainment challenge” is being run the same way as Labour’s “schools with ambition” project 15 years ago, where one central advisor tells teachers what to do.

Similarly, the data obtained through the testing at age five is not for the benefit of teachers, but for politicians.

If teachers could interpret and use the data it might change the way they teach. But the tests are basically done at the behest of someone higher up the educational food chain.

There are complaints about the regulators too – does the Scottish Qualifications Authority exist to improve learning, or to get kids into university? If schools are judged by exam grades, teachers will inevitably spend all their time preparing kids for the test instead of trying to develop a love for their subject area. There’s worry that the last ten years of micro-management has turned out a passive generation of teachers at a time when the CfE is demanding far more active participation from teaching staff.

Listening to teachers' comments, it sounds as if they are officially encouraged to dance like Kate Bush but still expected to pass ballet exams every year.

On top of all this, of course, there is the failure of Scotland to put equality at the heart of our society. Pasi Sahlberg, a Finnish education expert, said of this week’s Pisa results; “Equity & excellence come and go together. When you’re in austerity, the smallest and weakest suffer the most.”

Now of course, austerity has been generated south of the Border – mostly. But the Scottish Government had an option to use the admittedly blunt instrument of the new Scottish tax rate to avoid cutting council incomes. It didn’t. And the Scottish Government has no clear plan yet to equalise incomes or redistribute cash with the new powers that have finally reached Holyrood.

Educational attainment is inextricably linked to family income and a positive social background. That’s why state schools in wealthy suburbs outperform expensive private schools, and wealthy children in large classes do better than poor kids in small ones. There is indeed only so much a school can do to equalise life chances when society won’t invest massively in pre-school where substantially better outcomes are still possible. Schools can only apply sticking plaster – but they can do that badly or well. According to an OECD report in 2007, schools in Scotland “are not strong enough to counter the negative effect of low social status on educational attainment”. It said other countries were far better at ensuring that children from disadvantaged backgrounds reach their potential. And those other countries aren’t just the maddeningly efficient Nordics. That’s worrying. If Scotland is a society riven with inequality – and it has been since industrialisation – we should be past masters at targeting compensatory resources on predictable problem areas. We’re not. Inequality and failing schools are two sides of the same tarnished coin. The most successful countries won’t even touch it – the Scots are still vainly fighting to flip it. Take Finland, where 95 per cent of kids go to state schools. Only the best students become teachers, and even primary teachers have Masters degrees that take five to six years to complete. Primary school is not glorified childcare – that’s done at kindergarten. So kids start school at seven ready to hit the ground running in formal education. Teachers are not necessarily higher paid than other professionals, but are definitely held in higher esteem. And by the by, Finns have smaller schools and class sizes than the Scots.

In Scotland, political energies are so focused on the “national question” that we constantly postpone that real moment of reckoning when Scots finally decide how much we really want to end poverty, under-performance and the need to plead “special circumstances” during international comparison. If poverty is churning out unteachable, unreachable Scots, why is there no sense of urgency, no national commission, no cross-party agreement on the permanent Nordic-style shift of resources to equalise income and opportunity that underpins their success?

Another factor that can’t be swept away is the unusually early starting age of Scots schoolchildren. Yesterday Professor Sue Palmer, founder of the pressure group Upstart Scotland, tweeted; “Since 2000, Slovenia up; Scotland down. One key difference: Slovenia has high-quality play-based state kindergarten 3-6yrs.”

Indeed, a 2013 letter to the UK Government, signed by around 130 early childhood education experts, advocated a delay to the start of formal “schooling” so Britain could join the 80 per cent of countries whose kids only begin formal education at the age of six or seven.

But north and south of the border, that call has been ignored. Scotland talks the language of play, but remains firmly wedded to what’s ae been, with disastrous results for the poorest kids whose parents are least likely to coach, talk and encourage engaged play. Durham and York University academics recently found Scottish pupils from the most deprived areas are 14 months behind their more affluent peers when they reach primary school.

No amount of national testing will wish away that gap. And while a more equal society is the main solution, a move away from early “schoolification” may be equally important. Evidence suggests children taught literacy skills from the age of five do no better in the long run than those who start at seven. On the other hand, an early start at school is linked to social, emotional and mental health problems in many children forced into formal learning before they are ready.

So why isn’t a later school starting age on the political agenda?

Partly because it rocks the boat. But mostly because even progressive politicians fear voter reaction to the tabloid backlash that would inevitably follow a move away from our rigid, top-down system of schooling. Yet that is also why reform would be transformational. Parents, newspaper editors, teachers, politicians and wider society would have to decide if Scottish education should be based on modern evidence or what’s ae been. Change would require a collective and empowering act of faith in the innate ability of children to blossom if supported, not restricted. It would also signal the end of our panicky spoon-fed approach to learning – the product of centuries of o’er early formal schooling.

Above all, Scots would have to embrace the hard truth that less (intervention) is more (productive). Eagerly stuffing education into five-year-old brains may be understandable – but it’s not rational, helpful or kind.

Since education really does matter most to First Ministers, parents and civic society, shouldn’t we decide to discuss these tough questions instead of playing the predictable political blame game and wringing hands over lost Pisa positions?