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?

Our school does INCAS testing which gives a good and sometimes surprising insight into pupils' ability. We are currently doing a lot of moderating of work to see who has attained CfE levels - but it's very subjective. I know of a local school who, in the days of 5-14, had kids in P3 supposedly at Level B who were in the supported group when they came to us. So I'm afraid CfE could go the same way with some school being over-generous in their decisions, which does the kids no favours in the long run.

SATS seem to put the fear of death into many kids in England, although I suppose it is a good way of seeing, nationally, where kids are. However I looked at a grammar test recently and wouldn't have had a clue - I have reached my age not needing to know this, so can't see its relevance

Ds (and his fellow pupils) must be very fortunate then as they can pretty much do Advanced Highers in any subject that the school offers at Higher: eg Maths, English, Physics, Chemistry, Modern Studies, Art, Music, French, Computing Science, Graphic Communications (off the top of my head and which I've seen the school mentioning on its Twitter feed) ..... I believe occasion, pupils from the nearby private school have even come along to share in an AH class as they wouldn't/aren't offering it.

It also works with local colleges if someone is wanting to do a combination that the school can't offer (whether at Higher or AH).

It almost definitely probably helps that the school is large with over 150 in S6.

I've already mentioned that there is also the option of the Advanced Higher hub at GCU which, according to its website, offers English, Mathematics, Chemistry, Biology, Modern Studies, Business Management, History and Physics (so, all the "basics") to between 100 to 160 S6 pupils each academic year. But that probably doesn't help people who're not in the Glasgow area

If you're that unhappy with the schooling your dd is getting Whistlerx, why not get involved with the Parent Council and challenge the narrow range of subjects offered at an advanced level, the apparent lack of aspiration and how they are addressing attainment? If the Senior Management Team is not doing its job, as and when a vacancy comes up for a depute/the head, the parent council can be represented on the interview panel (provided they've done the appropriate recruitment training, which, in Glasgow at least, only takes an evening).

I've been involved with Parent Councils/PTAs on & off since ds was in P1 (even though I had a time consuming job) and it was a good way both to understand the issues faced by the school and to support it in its efforts to improve. I was even involved in recruiting the new headteacher at ds' primary school - a very scary responsibility as the previous headteacher had been highly respected . (Hopefully, we chose well )

I think that SATS are quite a good idea, as they do mean that children are all taught the essentials, and work quite hard in the last year or two. Although some schools go over the top with them.

I don't get the angst about SATS. What am I missing? I thought they were essentially a test to make sure the school is doing its job rather than having any bearing on the child's future. Yet parents seem to get in a tiz about them. Have I misunderstood?

I think the problem is that some schools are putting massive pressure on the children, spending months teaching to test and doing practice papers and so on, so children are stressed and anxious as a result.

I get why the schools and teachers get het up about it and I could understand parents being pissed off about the pressure on their kids. What I don't get is the parents that seem to treat SATS like they affect theirs child's future?!

I think it's because they're told it will in some cases - I've read numerous times about parents and kids being told it will dictate the sets they are put in at high school, for example.

I liked the way that tests used to be done in Scotland: that x% of pupils are expected to have reached Level y by Primary/Secondary Year Z and x+10% are expected to have reached Level Y by Primary/Secondary Year Z+1 (can't remember the exact figures) in language/reading or numbers/maths.

Teachers would only download the relevant test when they thought the pupil(s) were ready. In most cases that pupils didn't even realise they were doing a formal test, as they weren't all done at the same time (even within a class).

So it wasn't a case of passing or failing: it was just a case of knowing whether your child was (say) one of the 70% who were expected to have reached that level by (say) P5. And as a school, they could measure whether the cohort was achieving the expected levels; that the appropriate percentage had "passed" the level for the relevant year.

It was one of the few things I missed when CfE was introduced. It didn't matter too much for us as we had confidence in both the school and ds and the fact that he was being stretched, thriving and self-confident - but I can see why if you didn't have that confidence, the "not knowing" would increase doubt.

I've made it sound complicated because I am describing it from memory but it actually wasn't that complicated

I have no issues with tests per se.

I think there are some genuine issues with SATs. They are narrow in focus (maths and English only).

The thing is that England, unlike some education systems, does not have a closely prescribed curriculum in general.

(In some countries, primary schools have to cover a fairly closely prescribed set scheme of work, year by year, term by term, based on state-mandated textbooks, and are required to spend a certain number of hours per week on each subject.)

When a country does not have a closely prescribed national curriculum and then introduces high-stakes tests (punishing schools who do not pass at a certain level), then what tends to happen is that "the tests themselves start to become the curriculum." So schools increasingly dump anything that they think will not appear on the tests. And when tests consist solely of maths and English, well, you can see what is going to happen to other subjects like history, geography, music, art, science and RE.

You could get round this problem by having a much more detailed and prescriptive curriculum including textbooks a la Finland/Japan/Singapore, and having a wider range of SATS that cover all major subjects. And if you did that, you could probably afford to stop making the tests so high-stakes and punitive for schools, because you could feel a bit more confident that teachers are (roughly) following the curriculum that you want them to, so there would be less need to threaten and punish schools and teachers.

Honestly though, can you imagine the reactions of most English/Scottish teaching unions if governments proposed any of this (textbooks, more govt control over curriculum, a larger number of SAT tests that kids have to sit)? I think it would be wildly unpopular.

Just "remove the tests and do nothing else" is not working in Scotland. But if an education system does not want a high-stakes test-and-punish system, then schools need to be OK with having alternative kinds of government controls instead, like Japan and Finland etc. do. I see no political appetite for this.

Dd mentioned this weekend that the other children in her S2 class (age approx 13) don't do joined up writing - they laboriously print each letter.

Is that the case around Scotland?
I find this mind-boggling. As far as I remember, in England the children were taught joined up writing from around age 6 to 7.
Not being able to use joined up writing must surely slow everything down in lessons and for homework?
If this is the norm in Scotland, I can see it making Scottish education a laughing stock, internationally.

what I find mind-boggling is that we're always hearing tests make children so stressed and anxious but exams are the main way academic knowledge is checked, if you are so anxious you can't do your best in an exam that's a bad outcome waiting to happen by itself.

Surely we have to be sensible and clever about the presentation of the tests and giving children the tools to cope with tests rather than scrapping them.

My teachers taught to the Common Entrance test for my state grammar - i don't remember being unduly stressed by it.

My 7 year old DD is learning to do joined up writing at the moment.

It's not the SATS themselves that are stressing the kids out, it's the actions of the adults around them, getting the kids hyped up and stressed.

I like the way my kids do MALT tests at primary, they're not even aware it's a test, it's just another worksheet.

They usually start cursive in P3...

DD is in P6 in Glasgow and has done joined up writing for quite a while now! Your child is made to laboriously print each letter? I am speechless.

In other news, my class at school all those years ago were also taught cursive pretty early on. We each developed our own handwriting, as you do, and some of us cultivated a 'print' style because they liked the look of it. My own writing was a scrawl because I wrote fast. Perhaps your child and others can use joined up writing but prefer not to?

"Dd mentioned this weekend that the other children in her S2 class (age approx 13) don't do joined up writing - they laboriously print each letter.

Is that the case around Scotland?
I find this mind-boggling. As far as I remember, in England the children were taught joined up writing from around age 6 to 7.
Not being able to use joined up writing must surely slow everything down in lessons and for homework?
If this is the norm in Scotland, I can see it making Scottish education a laughing stock, internationally"
Whistler, this has to be a troll post because otherwise, you're reaching so far for criticism that I'm surprised you haven't toppled over

P3 here, but not even a hint of cursive.
Come to that I don't understand why the teach to print in the first place...
Moreover, the problem is with the jotters which are not fit to learn hot to write. In a school near me the homework jotter for P1's is totally unlined and the pupil is supposed to draw lines... (And don't tell me that that is because of the cuts, because it most certainly isn't).

Like just about all most children in Scotland, ds was taught joined up cursive from P3 onwards.

I do feel very sorry for whistlerx's dd as she seems to be at/in one of the most backward schools/education areas in Scotland (whatever its reputation might be) . It just goes to show that reputation and preconceptions do not count for everything and that I made the right decision in not presuming that Glasgow's education is crap and making a knee-jerk and expensive move out to East Renfrewshire, as I'm very happy with ds' education

this cursive issue really shows the school variation - DD was cursive from P1, and it was an illegible scrawl until, well, the end of P2 as we are now. She made a leap to somewhat legible cursive a month or so ago!

Cursive is and hasn't really been a requirement of the modern workplace for the past 20 years imho. I would probably struggle to find people who can read my immaculate copperplate. I fully expect Alexa and Siri to have taken over by the time DD3 goes to work.

DD3 in P1 is learning her letters complete with joining tails.

^ is not

Dd was also cursive from P1, but our neighbouring school teacher it in p3 or 4

I don't think cursive is of much use in the workplace, but having a quick and fluent style is pretty much essential for note-taking by hand, which will be very important for further education. I have heard that a semi-joined up style tends to be quickest when you are writing at speed, so I think it's a good idea to make sure students CAN join, even if we are aware that they may not write perfectly joined up handwriting throughout their lives in practice.

It's also pretty essential for exams - individually printing each letter is far slower.

I was just going to make the same points - even though people seem to be writing less and less nowadays (I'm old enough to have written letters to friends ).

Ds has been complaining about how his hand hurts from all the writing he has had to do, both revising and particularly in exams. He also knows he has to write legibly.

I know some people get to use computers in exams because of particular issues - but can you imagine schools having to cope with every single examinee using a computer?

Previous posters have mentioned AfE tests. Do you know if the school will let you see the results for your child? Do all schools in Scotland do them?
At the last parent/teacher evening I asked how my child was performing against what would be expected at that year level - the answer was x months ahead in maths, as expected in literacy (or whatever) - I take it these are the AfE results? I'd never asked this question before so had never been told where they were amongst their peers.