An old teacher’s wrath: Jenny Gilruth, the EIS and our children

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The fight for the soul of children’s education in Scotland is only just beginning, writes Cameron Wyllie

Just to remind you of a few ‘facts’ – those worthless items in modern Scottish politics – the PISA scores showed that Scottish 15 year olds were being outperformed by English 15 year olds in maths, reading and science and in maths and science by margins equivalent to approximately a year of schooling.

Stop and take that in before going any further

The SNP’s response to these terrifying figures has changed frequently in the six weeks since they were published.

In Holyrood, the day after publication, Màiri McAllan, the latest cabinet secretary for education, said that…yes, the PISA figures were a shade troubling but a) they were only one way of assessing education and b) everything was going to be put to rights by the ongoing review of the curriculum (of which more shortly).

Things moved on. Some in the SNP and its support started to moan about the English PISA results – they were suspiciously good.

The English, it was concluded had cheated, whereas we democratic Scots had done it all fairly. Thus, one could conclude, good PISA results were desirable, and we should be doing better than the English, but the English are, and always have been, a bunch of cheaters. Oil, football, Maths results….everything.

It might have been better to move on ; you know, cover the PISA results with new policies – something free….for the bairns…free abacuses….free fruit…free learning assistants to help them with their reading for Nat 4…free anything really, just invent something and get it made quickly in China.

But leave it to deputy first minister and former education secretary Jenny Gilruth, she can solve problems (well probably not maths equations, or even just sums) and she came up with the perfect solution. PISA results simply don’t matter, because here in Scotland we no longer believe in the ‘shallow rote learning’ which made the English kids do better. It’s just not the kind of education we do now, here in the land of ‘Curriculum for Excellence (except excellence in literacy, numeracy, science…).

Ah well, Ms Gilruth, that’ll be that then. Our PISA scores can sail away doon the watter, while we do our better, deeper education. Forget your times tables, lads and lassies, and reach again for the finger paint: design an emblem for your little siblings’ free schoolbags. A thistle? A saltire? A dole queue?

The Educational Institute of Scotland is, I was told recently by a very pleasant and reasonable union official, the oldest educational trade union in the world. I remember from the distant corners of my youth that at one time trades union were meant to scrutinise government and criticise failing policy. You would think that what with violence in schools, kids swearing at teachers, teachers off with stress, teachers leaving the profession in droves, and educational standards getting lower, the general decretary of the EIS might have a few critical things to say to the SNP at Holyrood.

However, Andrea Bradley, speaking at a Fringe event at the SNP conference, just backed up Jenny Gilruth’s haverings and said that what Scotland was providing was ‘holistic education for peace and prosperity not for performativity and Pisa points’.

Ms Bradley was, you will gather, at some far off time in her career an English teacher and the extract quoted above surely must merit an easy analysis question in next year’s Nat 5 paper – ‘alliteration!’ the nation’s children shout in unison, having rote learned the concept some years before. But, make it a Higher question and the smart candidate, let’s call him Michael Marra, might see that not only is some fairly forced alliteration in the phrase, but also that it’s a contradiction in terms which doesn’t make sense.

Andrea wants ‘peace and prosperity’. Peace and prosperity come from a well educated public. Prosperity depends on people who can contribute to the economic success of their family and the nation. One imagines that will involve being able to do maths and science. I have a feeling that Scotland’s great engineers and scientists of the past may have done some rote learning.

The really weird thing about all this verbiage is that teachers, standing on the pavement watching the emperor ride past, don’t explode with laughter, then rage. One might reasonably have expected a mass burning of EIS membership cards; one might have expected the opposition leaders – and I have faith that there are politicians across all opposition parties who are genuinely interested in improving the dire state of Scotland’s schools, and – of course – gaining the political capital that goes with that. They need to be brave.

The vast educational monolith in Scotland has seemed to me to include the EIS for a long time, cuddling up to government, part of a morass of policies and people, very few of them actually practising teachers, who are taking our young people and their parents down a doom-laden slope. The fight for the soul of Scottish education is only just starting.