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?

If you have a CSP you are very rare indeed - less than 0.2% of children have a CSP compared to 4.8% of children having an EHCP in England. And they are not comparable either in terms of eligibility or contents.

Yes because not every child requires a CSP. There are other types of intervention frameworks used in Scottish schools other than CSP.

No other intervention framework is anyway equivalent to an EHCP; CSPs are the only legal framework. Child’s plans, IEPs etc cannot be enforced through tribunals, they are the same as IEPs or local plans in England which cannot be either. There is also no requirement for eg NHS to engage with an IEP or Child’s Plan. And no additional funding associated with IEPs etc either. EHCPs are important because there is a legal requirement to implement them, to review them and to fund them. They also provide a means to force access to specialist provision - something that even CSPs don’t provide.

Do you work in Education? Because this is not my experience. I'm very sorry that it's yours and that the service I am recieving in my area is not standard :/. I think this is a very big problem.

It is not about experience, it is about the law. I am surprised as an educational professional you don’t know that.

But then again, a lot of educational professionals try to fob English parents off with an IEP too instead of the EHCP they are entitled too. It may be why councils lose over 98% of tribunals.

Highers enable pupils to continue to study a broad range of subjects in S5 and then either further subjects in S6, the opportunity to resit to improve grades, or study a subject in greater depth with Advanced Highers.

It then continues at university where they don't need to specialise until 3rd year for many Arts/Science subjects.

For pupils not sure what direction they want to go in, the Scottish system is much more flexible. For me, studying 3 A Levels for 2 years would have been a nightmare.

I'm not.

I can only comment on Primary as my oldest is in P5.

Play based learning was brilliant for DC2 last year but I think DC1 would have found it hard in 2020. They were already bored at nursery.

I find it hard to interpret how well they are actually doing, reports are just a regurgitation of the curriculum with the 'working towards level x' statements. I'm told they are both doing well but have no real measure to evaluate that.

Behaviour in school has been a huge problem since DC1 started, they've been repeatedly hurt by the same child and the school have limited abilities to resolve it. I worry about safety every day. It's a nice school in a nice area but there's regular violence towards children and staff from multiple children. Whole classes are often removed from their classroom while staff deal with violence, disrupting that class and other nearby classes.

The stories I hear from teacher friends about violence are chilling. It's so normalised that my children barely even comment on it anymore, even if they've been hurt.

Schools are chronically underfunded so there aren't nearly enough support staff to allow for the mainstreaming policy and to keep children safe, never mind educated. It often feels like all children are being let down by this policy - some could be better supported in a different environment or could benefit from one-to-one time and the rest have to muddle along with significant disruption in class.

The new deferral policy means that the age gaps can be significant - the physical and emotional differences of children 18 months apart are huge.

Violence in schools is just horrific- that was part of our decision to go private. Society condemn violence in the home but it's somehow acceptable in schools and builds 'resilience' - surely it's no different to having corporal punishment in schools?

Saddened to read the responses which support all that I have read about the Scottish school system and the changes over the last few years. I have no friends or relatives affected, though still want every child wherever they are to have a good education.

Also supports my opinion that the best argument against Scottish independence is the SNP.

Telling me DC3 is in the square group for reading is telling me nothing about where he is progress wise compared to his peers...that is one aspect of CfE I don't like.

I remember being P3 when I figured out the Lions were slightly ahead of the Tigers reading group. I was a Tiger 🐅.

But I know exactly what you mean. The school used to produce massive wordy reports cards that I'm told look an HOUR each. Thats a teacher doing a full working week doing reports on top of their day job.
The reports were so flowery and wordy but they told you nothing.

The reports I got as a kid were tick box, so 4 or 5 ticks and a short paragraph. Teachers would have rattled through them in a afternoon.

Edit the tick boxes were like
Reading
Excellent
Good
Average
Poor.

And the same for Maths Writing and a couple of other areas. And a short couple of sentences at the bottom

Children are also measured against what the teacher expects of them, not age expected levels. So the report may say their attainment is good when it is well behind their age group. And the CofE levels mean a child can be three years behind but it is impossible to tell that from their report.

I’m a Scottish secondary teacher. It isn’t being scrapped as such, just ‘renamed’

Same in Glasgow. I couldn’t go to the primary school 5 minutes walk away because I wasn’t Catholic. This was over 30 years though, I don’t think it’s as strict now.

I agree with you regarding deferrals. If a September birthday child was deferred, they’ve start school a month before their 6th birthday and potentially be in a class with a child who’s barely four and a half. It used to be a Jan/Feb child could be deferred, that was fine but it’s getting ridiculous now.

Square group sounds like the particular school/class grouping rather than anything to do with CfE.

The point being that it tells me nothing about where DC is compared to others in the class. Bottom group, middle group, top group etc.

Totally agree
Its like the government are trying to push the starting age up to be more Scandinavian but if they want to do that they really should revamp the whole system and lose a year from primary.

We moved from Scotland to England and my children had a lot of catching up to do, put it that way. I was very disappointed as I believed Scottish education to be among the best in the world

Totally agree re deferrals. In our school it was used by middle class pushy parents, so you had almost six year olds from intensively focused parents in the same class as 4.5 year olds from less privileged homes. These children were so different it is essentially a mixed age class, but without the structures and plans in place to support that. It’s just another way the sharp-elbowed middle class can get an advantage for their children (and before people comment, I know it can be very useful for those with ND.)

It is to avoid stigmatising children. But the children themselves will be aware of where their group lies so only serves to hide it from some of the parents.

It’s just another way the sharp-elbowed middle class can get an advantage for their children

Why demonise parents trying to do the best for their children, rather than the system that introduces unfairness? Why shouldn’t parents seek to give their children whatever advantage they can in life? Many working class parents not interested in education do that too just in different ways and within a different cultural set up.

Because not all of us spot a system brought in to help children who need it, think it could be of advantage to our totally NT children, and spring on it. Facebook groups are full of people advising how it is advantageous. I didn’t defer my son who was the youngest, because he didn’t need it and someone has to be the youngest! It’s like an arms race now

I am a huge fan of play based learning but the SG introduced it in a really shit way. Schools were just told ' its play based in year 1 now' and given no training as to how to work in that way or what it might look like.

Play based learning is a specific approach and practitioners need to know how to work in it. Teachers were not trained or experienced in this.

Why shouldn’t parents seek the best for their children? If it gives them an advantage to be a year older then blame the government for not raising the school starting age. Will you also condemn parents who read books to their children because other parents don’t? Or feeding them a healthy diet because some children have to survive off crisps and coke?

Lets close the gap by knocking down everyone to the lowest common denominator…