Why do People dislike the Scottish Education system?

[Grace040712]

I've seen a lot of posts on here slating the Scottish Education System but never in any detail, so I thought I'd ask why do people dislike it so much?

My kids attend a Scottish school and I have to say there are loads of things I love about the Curriculum Design such as the focus on wider achievement, the focus on thinking and metacognitive skills, the way they learn to read and write in my area is very interesting as well! And I love that they are taught to collaborate with others.

What are people's thoughts?

I have never given it a moments thought

Just wait until you get to exams. All that wider achievement goes out the window and your child will be memorising chunks of texts to regurgitate in exams.

I think a playbased P1 that means kids spend about 80% of the day in unstructured play is not a good start to education. Friends with kids going through primary report that not much learning happened
in P1 - I think it varies between schools.

Scotland also has falling PISA scores and has essentially banned exclusions from school. Personally I think someone threatening to recreate the Colombine massacre should be excluded, not helped to dress up with fake weapons in school time.

https://www.scottishlegal.com/articles/transgender-neo-nazi-teenager-who-planned-doomsday-school-attack-in-edinburgh-jailed-for-six-years

Scotland is going down the PISA tables whilst England is going up. Also, whilst family income is the strongest predictor of a child's educational performance across the UK, that link is much stronger in Scotland than in England. Outcomes for schools in poor areas are much worse than in England.

The falling PISA scores are a sign for me that its just not working.

I also think they cut down the number of subjects far too early- dropping to 7 at age 13/14, when sciences are separate subjects seems far too restrictive- if a child is an all-rounder it risks limiting their options too much. If they have a strong arts/sciences bias it might not be so bad.

The play based early years also really slows progress, having had one child going through an old-style P1 and others doing play based. However I think it does have benefits for some children (i.e. neurodiverse) but for those who can cope with more sit-down learning and concentration, it feels like it does let them down at present as things seem to progress fairly slowly.

@Canyousewcushions I’d say the opposite when it came to my neurodiverse child, she needed a quiet structured classroom and couldn’t cope with this learning through play lark. We switched to English school when she entered year 1 and she was ok, reception would have been a nightmare

I had no idea this was a thing.
The catchment system where everyone just goes ti the nearest state school (like NI where I grew up) is better for a start.
Despite having a Scottish DH, in-laws, nephews and friends I have never really got my head around the exam system

Despite its many flaws, I do think there are many positives of the Scottish system over the English, e.g. going to your catchment school, no grammar schools, no SATS, no holiday fines. Starting school at minimum age 4.5.

We are just entering the exam years so I'll reserve judgement on that.

Is the SQA being scrapped? What will that mean I wonder.

Mine sat eight Nat5s not seven at their secondary schools. I think because many do not go on to Higher Education and instead go into Further Education. I think that's the theory behind it.

Having 2 kids in the Scottish school system the secondary education system is better for ds. He can drop subjects he’s not interested in but had to take in 3rd year.

Dd has autism. She does like school but needs a structured environment. The play to learn is alot of rubbish and doesn’t work for her. It’s 90% play and 10% work, she wants to do work. She struggles at playtime and lunchtime so full school days of this really impact her.

Is the SQA being scrapped? What will that mean I wonder.

Next to nothing. It is just a rebrand.

Mine sat eight Nat5s not seven at their secondary schools.

Many schools have now switched to eight, starting their Nat5 study in S3. But the ‘official’ plan is a ‘broad general education’ from S1-3 and only six Nat5 in S4. Many schools still only offer six though less now than before.

He can drop subjects he’s not interested in but had to take in 3rd year.

English pupils drop subjects they are not interested in when choosing GCSEs too.

Plus the talk of them scrapping S4 exams

And I don't think having 18mths between oldest and youngest in a class is a good thing.
Prior to covid January and February babies could defer and get nursery funding without any reason.
September to December babies needed a reason to get their nursery funding. Now they can just defer which to me makes little sense.

Falling down the PISA scores isn't good.

Our LA limits it to 7, (and I understand some LAs also let them start 8 for nat 4 with the intention of dropping to 7 for nat 5). Interesting that 8 is a thing in some places!!

I much prefer the English system at that stage where you get 10 or poss 11 subjects, and that all 3 sciences are kept to 16 as all (with options of doing them over 1, 2 or 3 GCSEs depending on how academicly minded you are)

Whilst the idea that everyone goes to their nearest state school is understandably popular, the evidence from various international studies is that education systems perform better if schools are able to compete for pupils.

Mine are nuts, can't sit still and have zero focus unless something is a game. Play based is the only reason they've managed in their early school years. I can see that for someone with routine/rule based needs it would be a disaster though!!

But it’s better for equality, prevents children from travelling long distances daily, and largely removes the (to me insane) English parental focus on OFSTED and ‘good schools’.

It also only works in areas with higher density housing. When children are already spending an hour on the school bus to get to the closest school there really isn’t much choice.

Yes, I was going say this as well. Our school is in a very "mixed" catchment and the focus on vocational outcomes it really high. However as everyone from primary was going there, DD wasn't even willing to consider an out of catchment request to see if we could get her into a more academically focused school.

I think having some competition would give schools more motivation to make sure all pupils are well catered for and hopefully do more the children who at all levels in their intake.

At the minute you really need to make sure you move the right area to get your child into a decent school, and that's not a fair system at all for people who cant afford houses in the good catchments. They are really self-fulfilling too- one of my friends looked into it and found that the "value added" scores of the nicer catchments in our area weren't as good, but that overall the kids come out with much better results. Self selection based on the area isn't really a good way to make things fair.

Its usually 8 or 9 GCSEs now, of which 2 are in English and 2/3 in science, then maths so 3 other subjects. (Of which some are restricted by schioks) so doesn't sound that much different.

One thing I cant get my head around is, with the option to defer, staying at Primary school until nearly 13, with 4yos. My (English) DC had definitely outgrown the Primary environment by 11 and were ready for the specialist teachers etc.

That's interesting. Is that true for Nordic countries, e.g Finland as well?

Finland is falling down the PISA tables too (admittedly slowly from a high position). It also has one of the biggest gaps between literacy for boys and girls (girls well ahead). It has taken a path similar to Scotland in that it had a very strong education system but switched over to a new curriculum. The old system and ethos carried forward into the new system for some time so everyone thought the new curriculum was wonderful and it drew a lot of international attention, but as the impact of the old system falls away performance has started to drop.

Scottish education used to be the envy of the world. We produced engineers, scientists etc. less so now. The idea that there's an emphasis on thinking skills and metacognition is laughable once they get to exam years as it's literally just learning answers by heart to churn out. They learn X question requires y answer and just practice writing out the answers. No real thinking skills required sadly. No curiosity, no love for learning encouraged. In the lower stages, your child could be ' working at' level one or 2 for years and show no real progress. It's a relatively highly paid job straight from university so popular but not all teachers are that high quality. There's a huge amount of churn because of the guaranteed probation job which is quite unsettling. My kids have done alright because we have supported at home but it's not great for kids with no support.

If it was better for equality, you would expect the Scottish system to be more equal. It isn't. In both England and Scotland, parental income is the best predictor of a child's academic performance, but the link is much stronger in Scotland.

Big play on 'closing the attainment gap' two ways to achieve that push the bottom up, or pull the top down.
They seemed to go for pulling the top down!