What's going wrong with Scottish education??

[TinfoilHattie]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-39856284

Obviously very tempting to start another SNP bashing thread and I'm pretty clear that the blame for this lies at their door. It's shocking that performance is getting worst, not better and that less than half of S2s are performing well or very well in writing. It's all very well Swinney standing up and saying that it's not good enough but WHY is it not good enough and WHAT is he going to do about it?

Is it Curriculum for Excellence? Are the tests unrealistic? Funding? Changing expectations?

It's all very interesting for me as I have children in P4, P7 and S2 and those are the years which are tested. My kids are doing fine and I have no worries about them, but we're a family which values education and encourages reading. I do worry though about my daughter who spelled her new school as "Acadmay" and it wasn't corrected by the teacher.

So what's going wrong and how do we put it right?

Perhaps you would be concerned if your child was bored and frustrated every school day, as mine is.
And personally I hate to see her potential being flushed down the drain due to the school's low expectations of pupils and of the school, and insisting that all abilities should be taught the same.
It could be worse - there don't appear to be any particular behavioural issues at her school, there are some nice (non-academic) clubs. There are certainly far worse schools around. But in almost any English school she would have the chance to work in the top sets for some subjects at least, certainly for maths.

Whistlrex I 'm very sorry that your dd is not being challenged at school - that is so wrong . However, as I have said before - that would appear to be down to the variation between schools rather than the education system itself. Even in England there is variation between schools - hence the angst amongst people about which schools their dcs get into. Still not sure how to address that

Ds (as one of the academic ones) has certainly been challenged at all times in his school - and will get the results to match that . One of his S5 class mates needed to be even more challenged in Maths and so did his Nat 5, Higher and Advanced Higher Maths all a year early (so AH Maths in S5) - encouraged and taught by the school (ie not with private tutoring). He is one of the younger ones and will leave school after S6 at only 17, but with 4 Advanced Highers and 6 Highers . Ds will be leaving next year with 6 Highers and 2 Advanced Highers and a coaching qualification. He will start Uni just before he turns 18 (unless he chooses to have a year out). He's not unusual amongst his class mates. 3 of his friends are off to Unis this year, direct from S5. Is that academic enough?

You're very lucky!
I'm sure that there is variation between schools, but the no ability setting thing, or only setting in maths and maybe English, seems to be far more common in Scotland. There's more of a left-wing ideology in education in Scotland, as in children shouldn't be allowed to feel that they are achieving less than another child, etc. I also get the impression that primary school achievement levels are a lot lower, so that starting levels in Scotland are lower - primary schools are generally pretty good in England.

I'll say I also feel expectations are lower here - I think my jaw fell open when my dd's p2 teacher said 'we don't need to do quarters until p3'. A close friend of mine is an English primary teacher and she was astonished.

I agree it's hard to aggregate from people's feelings though - which is why I'm so cross that the SNP have withdrawn students from PISA, 2 other international surveys and are dropping the SSLN. So any metric that doesn't go their way immediately gets scrapped? On what planet is that good government?

Jaw dropped/mouth fell open I meant. Back to school for me!

It's a pity the thread has taken this turn.
I thought people were concerned about their children further down the school rather than those doing Highers at the moment or in the next couple of years.
I don't think anyone is questioning the calibre of academic middle class Scottish pupils at the end of their schooling at the moment i.e. those who haven't had as much exposure to CfE.
I thought the concern was for those children coming up through the system from the beginning of their schooling.
There is also the strange anomaly that Scottish children from poorer socio -economic groups are less likely to go to University in Scotland despite there being no tuition fees.
Anyway, I'm sure we are all doing our best as parents to ensure we have happy, well-rounded teenagers who are prepared to meet the challenges ( good and bad) that lie ahead in our respective education systems.

whistlr I think perhaps our views differ because I don't really see school as being about pushing my DC to their full potential - they are pretty much capable of self-educating with very little outside input.

Mine have honestly never come to me and said they were bored (they would get short shrift if they did mind). The open ended nature of CfE has worked very well for them. If they have a research project they may produce the minimum if under time pressure but will generally end up researching and writing up and therefore learning far more than if they were taught a tightly defined list of exam points - are you sure your DD is similarly self-motivated. This may well be an issue with transitioning from a different system, with more clearly defined goalposts, at her stage.

Our school also does accelerated exam entry for a few pupils exceptionally, but personally I am not a fan - may be my left wing ideology showing but I just don't understand the rush.

The average mixed ability class will as a whole be at a lower level than the average set / selective environment. However the top 20% within any mixed class is likely to be at the same level as the set class. There is evidence that setting may damage the progress of the bottom end but very little that it improves the progress of the top.

I accept that English students will probably be, on average, better at whatever it is that the SAT tests cover. However I am less accepting of the conclusion that SATs are examining the most important things for progress in later education. (My Mum left school at 14. She is exceptionally good at analysing the grammatical structure of sentences. It was the only thing her primary teacher could be bothered to teach. My DF's Mum was a primary teacher for over 20 years. Her classes may not have been top at SATs because she was forever filling their heads full of loads of superfluous educational nonsense including history, geography, music, science experiments, art projects).

The way I look at it is that in my DS1's case in particular - yes he could probably be pushed harder, however he is glad that school stuff comes easy, he gets top marks and he has loads of time to spend on stuff that interests him such as software and coding and building complex lego models etc.

He is more likely to build a successful career around that than analysing poetry.

As long as he does enough to get decent marks to get him into uni to do whatever he decides the rest really doesn't matter.

When your child is an adult nobody is going to care whether they got 70 or 99 in a biology test and if your child is Uni bound, no-one cares what or how many Nat5s they have.

The issue is in getting the unengaged and underperforming and not very bright (non PC phrase I know but couldn't think how to put it) enough of an education that can take them further than they might otherwise go. Lifting that generation out of poverty and benefits will do more for the following generations than stretching already engaged pupils to get 99% instead of 90% in their exams.

I know for a fact that I could have done better than I did in school, however the fact is that in the system I was in at the time, it got me enough to get a start in a job and then i built from there. Taking me and my children away from the life that my parents had.

That's what we need from our education system.

My "middle class" children will do well regardless of CfE because they are already advantaged by the fact that they have our support.

Cream the thread, I think, was provoked by the latest PISA testing of 14/15 year olds. I have one and she has been wholly educated under CfE. Her sister is a year older and was in P3 / 4 before she encountered it.

I made the point earlier that the PISA rankings have only been going since 2000. They are only performed every 3 years. That only gives a 17 year history and 6 test diets. For 10 of those years the Scottish system has been in transition as CfE was rolled out, first in primaries and then into secondaries. It takes a long time for changes to work through and there are almost inevitable teething problems with any change. It is far too early to know whether the system is working.

As I understand what Swinney is saying, there is a recognition of a need for added rigour which is being addressed.

CfE is modelled on the Finnish system. Here are a couple of US articles which compare it to the US system and look at the drivers of its previous superior performance and more recent decline in PISA rankings. They both touch on a lot of the issues we have been discussing.

fillingmymap.com/2015/06/08/the-three-real-reasons-for-finlands-high-pisa-scores/

www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/finlands-schools-were-once-the-envy-of-the-world-now-theyre-slipping/2016/12/08/dcfd0f56-bd60-11e6-91ee-1adddfe36cbe_story.html?utm_term=.efb717391b70

@how, this thread started because on the SSNL (sp?) Report published by the Scottish government. I think you will find it linked at the top.

Besides, if there are "teething" problems they'd better address them now, otherwise my kids, currently P1 and P3, will have to play catch up. It is very well to have a system that in paper.is super duper, but my kids get only ONE shot at it.

"but the no ability setting thing, or only setting in maths and maybe English, seems to be far more common in Scotland. There's more of a left-wing ideology in education in Scotland, as in children shouldn't be allowed to feel that they are achieving less than another child, etc."

Hmm, it's not that common for there to be no setting at all - and that's actually not the reason for it, research shows that setting creates an issue for children in middle sets and lower sets, they do better in mixed ability groups.

Also mixed ability does not mean that pupils are all doing exactly the same work.

Longtime lurker, first-time poster here, though I’ve been lurking since Statistically’s IndyRef threads!

A few people have asked about the impact of CfE on Scottish university standards. As a university lecturer I’d say we’re having to work extremely hard on remedial measures to counter the lower standards which are coming through. I’d say that we pretty much manage this, but at the expense of coverage: students (eventually) attain the same levels, but they have a narrower knowledge of the field than was the case when many of the pps were at university.

What I would say is that our incoming Scottish students are very well qualified (they have strings of A and B grades at Higher, far exceeding the UCAS requirements), but they are poorly educated. As I understand it, the aim of CfE was to develop the ability to learn and to apply knowledge, rather than focusing simply on the learning of facts. That sounds positive, but in practice generally speaking the students I meet have neither facts nor the ability to think critically, meaning that they are in a weaker position than previous generations. These are the pupils who have succeeded in the school education system, which worries me. Of course, there are exceptions, and by the end of a degree they have developed a great deal, but that’s the basic situation.

As context, two-thirds of our Scottish students are coming direct from Highers, and one-third from AH. In my experience, AH helps pupils a little but after the stress of Highers many pupils (understandably) seem to take their foot off the gas in sixth year and make less progress than might be expected. Moreover, having spoken to students, many tell me that their school either couldn’t offer AH, forcing them to travel regularly to a nearby school for classes, or couldn’t timetable the full number of contact hours, so that they receive teaching for 2 or 3 hours a week, and have to complete the rest of the course as independent study. To the pp who said that the independent study component is good preparation for university, I’d say that my first year students are barely capable of studying independently, and that sixth year pupils need formal input because they have so little subject-specific knowledge.

A Level students are no more intelligent, but they tend to be better prepared (they are horrified when they hear their peers telling of their AH experiences). They are also more focused, because they are paying fees. But our strongest students are often German or Italian students, despite the fact that they are taking their degree in their second language.

User - the current first year students are the only ones to have gone through CfE, anyone older than that has been through the previous curriculum.

Looking at the article linked in detail - it does indeed focus on S2, while also quoting earlier years. It also references PISA. The SSLN has only been going since 2009 and was designed to track CfE. Again there is a limited track record to compare with.

Reading S2 performance has actually improved since 2014 but is marginally below 2012.

Writing is where there has been the highest drop off. This is not showing up significantly till P7 and then widening into S2. Not necessarily an early years issue. The article goes on to discuss a lot of the home environment issues which may be driving this. They are the same as the ones referenced in the Finnish system article I linked.

The attainment gap is unchanged.

The previous year's Maths tests show a drop from 2011 to 2013 in P7 Maths of 6 points but by S2 in 2015 the same cohort has made up all but 2 points of the drop. The P4 and P7 drops do not appear to be hindering later performance and may well be a symptom of a change in approach rather than a cause for concern.

Anecdotally I asked my DDs about these tests. They said they never get selected to sit them as they are not "average" - no idea if this is accurate. As they are administered internally it would be pretty easy for schools to manipulate, depending on the message they want to send. Teachers were / are sceptical about CfE. I am equally sceptical about the sample testing.

That's an interesting added perspective User - and welcome out from the shadows

I agree with you about the lack of support at some schools for Advanced Highers: I have one friend whose dd (at supposedly one of the best state schools in Scotland) got a shocking level of support for one of her AHs (which she needed for the course she wanted to do), with the excuse that "it's supposed to be self-directed" (yes, but you are supposed to provide some teaching and the fact that you haven't bothered to get in supply cover for the teacher who is off ill doesn't mean you can abdicate responsibility ) Ds is fortunate in that his school is large enough to offer a range of AHs.

Have you seen things change that much then in the last couple of years? The first CfE Highers were the 2015 diet (and even then, not every council/school sat them; some - like East Ren - chose to stay with the "old" Highers until they were forced to change over the following year), so they are only a couple of years old and the first CfE Advanced Highers were only sat last year.

Impressive about the German and Italian students. I sometimes wonder if the Scottish tradition (habit? or nowadays, cost constraint?) of going to your "local" University is counter-productive. There's nothing like being away from home to force you to grow up and focus. But maybe I'm just projecting, as I chose (and was encouraged) to go away from home for exactly that reason

Cream it is factually incorrect that proportionately more deprived DC in England go to Uni than in Scotland. The newspapers published corrections to that effect having failed to properly take account of the various college entry routes. Proportionately far more pupils from deprived areas use the college routes.

Because 2/3 of our students come after 5th year, many of our second years sat the N5 and new Higher exams. But I suppose my comments were driven by the trend in standards reflected by the SSNL and PISA reports, which so far there is no sign of the CfE reversing.

The SS of Literacy seems to pick random kids from random schools. My pupils have been picked twice - once for Talk (someone came to assess them) and once for Writing (sent away). On both occasions we were given the names of the pupils they wanted, we did not choose. They seemed to be a fairly random sample of 10 pupils in each case but we have very small numbers so it was about 1 in 3. Not sure how it works if bigger schools are selected.

Oh aye 5th year leavers, forgot about them, lol

2/3... that seems a lot? Is that a particular course? Or?

This describes how the process was supposed to occur -ie it is supposed to be totally random and as such could include kids with EAL or SEN . All schools in Scotland, excluding special schools, were asked to register for the survey each year. Schools with insufficient pupil numbers were not required to participate..... 3 pupils [from each school] in each of P4 and P7 and 14 pupils in S2. Nationally, about 4,000 pupils participated in the survey at each stage.

No idea if some schools then tried to "tutor" the random kids chosen.

www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/School-Education/SSLN/SSLNFAQs

Howabout, I missed all those corrections in the newspapers. Of course there isn't a problem then!
TBH I get the impression some posters aren't interested in pupils from poorer backgrounds, not when there's the opportunity to tell us how well their own children are doing and how well qualified they are.
V interested in users comments though. Clearly I was wrong as I didn't think the changes to Scottish education would be affecting those in 5th and 6th year yet.
If my children decide to apply to Scottish universities, I will make sure I have all the facts to hand.

Iirc, the initial headlines of "low access" to further/higher education" was because the "UK" figures were based on UCAS' own statistics and even though UCAS themselves said that it didn't include all the Scottish students as they applied via a different system to FE (there was a footnote explaining this), lazy journalists didn't pick that up.

It therefore presented a distorted picture.

I'll have to go back and check though - it was a wee while ago that I read up on that.

That’s the particular degree that I am head of, but I don’t think it’s unusual. I wouldn’t be worried about the standards in Scottish universities, by the way; I have a lot of contact with English and N Irish colleagues, and there is a fairly consistent standard by final year. That might change, of course, because of the on-going impact of funding/fees, school standards etc. but for the moment it’s OK.

I wish I could see more encouraging signs. My DC are primary-aged, and I am horrified looking at the SSLN and PISA trends.

There is probably a huge range of causes for the current situation. The attainment gap is an obvious one, as PPs have discussed. In addition, there are certainly issues with the standards of some new teachers: I see students who are doing teacher training for both primary and secondary, and they are rarely amongst the strongest students. Also, CfE encourages active learning, which is great if done well, but which at primary level often seems to mean keeping children busy with activities which involve very limited teaching input, and therefore produce limited learning. And as PPs have noted, the lack of clear objective academic expectations and measurement against them means that even engaged parents don’t know where to focus their support.

As a parent I worry a lot, and can’t see an easy answer.

I repeat what I said in an earlier post... For me now school is where my DC learn about teamwork, socialising, etc.
FOR NOW, academic stuff is done at home.