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?

I did Latin because it was much much easier to do well in than French - no pesky pronunciation for a start or any need to link it to the real World.

Very sceptical about focus on SPAG, Latin, rote learned facts and adherence to school uniform as measures of educational performance in the modern World.

The Scottish system is now much more research and understanding based than England - I see that as a good thing and I have some sympathy with the view that the tests may not be the most appropriate measures.

Ds' school taught Latin until 5 years ago just before ds started but then the teacher retired and it is impossible to recruit new Latin teachers - which then becomes a vicious circle. (Double )

I believe there is a similar problem in England - although maybe not as bad, as you don't actually need a degree in a subject to teach it.

@howabout, how do you propose to track performance?
I must confess, I am not sure the world has changed THAT much, and anyway... take Big Maths (or should I say, BIG disappointment, so far at least), that is pretty much ONLY rote learning for years on end.

Tests may not be the most appropriate measures of what though? What is that being replaced with? If Scottish education is so great, why are our kids being withdrawn from international assessments?

The Scottish system is now much more research and understanding based than England

To research properly one must be at least literate.

The Scottish system is now much more research and understanding based than England - I see that as a good thing and I have some sympathy with the view that the tests may not be the most appropriate measures.

Scotland has been seeing declining scores in PISA for years. You can take a look at PISA sample questions online--they are pretty much exclusively about critical thinking and problem solving. Stuff like reading news articles and graphs/tables and being asked to think intelligently about them. And Scotland's wooly project-based-learning approach does NOT appear to be doing a good job in preparing students to cope with these kinds of problem-solving exercises.

You see, here is the problem: in order to think intelligently and understand the world, you need to be able to read fluently, you need to be able to do maths quickly and easily and you need to know loads of stuff about as many areas as possible. It's hard to read an article on (say) world hunger and its solutions and form intelligent conclusions unless you have loads of background knowledge about history, geography and science.

And you are only encouraged to view the world from a Scottishe perspective mary

Mary that is terrifying. Effectively you raise a bunch of kids who can't think for themselves and get them to vote for you.

OMG. The communist are go!
When is the country going to wake up ???

Sadly, maths is not setted at our secondary school. They don't set in any subject, at any age. Because setting damages children who don't get into the top set and feel bad about that (or so the head told me).

It's been obvious to me from as soon as we moved to Scotland that the Scottish education system is geared around educating children to think of Scotland as a separate country, to think of themselves as Scottish not British, and to vote for independence. Surely that is also why the voting age was dropped to 16. It is in my view a successful strategy which will lead to independence in let's say the next 10 years.
Similarly with all the gaelic children's books and independence supporting Scottish national papers in the public libraries, the money going into Gaelic song and instrumental courses for children, etc.

Interesting article on latest PISA rankings.

“When I look at Wales, I think the really interesting reforms are too recent to show any impact. I actually think they have a lot of promise but you can’t see them now,” he said.

“Scotland is more of a surprise to me, I would have hoped and expected that some of the efforts they have made would have come out. But in the data there is no evidence, rather the opposite.”

In England, with the advent of academies and greater school autonomy, “you’d have hoped that, certainly at the top end, England would be more prominent than it is. Maybe it’s too soon,” Schleicher said.

“When you don’t see improvements it’s important to revisit maybe not the design but the implementation. It’s important to keep a careful eye on that,” Schleicher said.

www.theguardian.com/education/2016/dec/06/english-schools-core-subject-test-results-international-oecd-pisa

I said upthread I am a fan of the CfE approach but think there are / were implementation issues. This seems to be the conclusion of Schleicher and what the SNP are rightly seeking to address.

Absolutely, could completely buy that it could be the implementation as it is with most things and could be addressed and improve over time. Why ditch the PISA, SSLN and other international assessments though?

That smacks of the SNP not having the courage of their convictions. We'll never be able to measure like for like if existing assessments are abandoned.

OMG Whistler, how sinister! Gaelic childrens books? Independence supporting newspapers [you're telling me there's more than one?] in the library? Surely not. That is simply outrageous.

So what you're telling me is that all Scottish teachers are yes voters and they have one aim when educating our children. Bloody hell. I'm surprised. I wasn't aware politics was in the primary curriculum.

It has nothing to do with families then? You think because she's in school in Scotland, DD's friend, whose dad plays the flute in orange walks, is going to vote yes when she's older. Hmmm. She has a Union Jack schoolbag. Can't say her teachers have said anything at all to her about that (and neither have her peers).

Looks like my DD's school is a lot more tolerant than some posters here.

Oh just by the way, I know quite a few gaelic speaking people who voted no. So having gaelic around isn't quite the bad influence you seem to think it is! Don't stress too much about the gaelic childrens books and songs and indeed gaelic medium education. Being bilingual is supposed to be very good for a child's brain (and doesn't necessarily make it lose sight of the entire rest of the world). FGS. I expect you'd like a return to the days when gaelic and wearing tartan was banned.

*were banned.

Gaelic books

Our primary school library is going to be get some Arabic / Kurdish / Polish books and I think Pashto books! I must obviously write to the school and demand they only allow monolingualism in English (and definitely not Scots!)...

This I suspect is part of the problem

The SNP like to ignore the experts.

I do wonder why this year they do Gaelic at my school. The closest native speaker must be at least a 4 hours' drive plus a ferry journey. (we are in the central belt). To me it has a cute/twee factor, but no real utility. Said that, when in the previous years they did a bit of French and Spanish it isn't they were going all to turn into little Molières or Cervantes, so perhaps one should question the way they "teach" languages as a whole.
From what I understand the main aim is to make sure that kids know there are people who speak different languages in the world, rather than being able to speak the language itself.

I have nothing against Gaelic. But the local library has literally not a single children's book in any language other than English, other than a large number of Gaelic ones.
It does not take any of the national (by which I mean UK wide) newspapers. It only takes those that are Scotland only and loudly pro-independence. There is a lot of emphasis on Scotland focused books.
My DC isn't at primary school, she's at secondary. There is a huge amount of emphasis on Scotland - Scottish history (William Wallace etc, which I understand was also studied at primary), Scottish geography, Scottish culture - the task she mentioned was simply "write about Scottish culture", dedicated Scottish days with Scottish songs and stories, Scottish politics too apparently.
I don't have a strong view on whether Scotland should go independent or not - haven't formulated a view as of yet. But I do think that if you educate generations of children that way, independence will soon become almost inevitable.
That's all I'm saying. Are you so sure that I'm wrong?

Is it not normal for children in a country to learn about things as they relate to that country?

And there is only one pro-indy Scottish newspaper....

Well Whistler, your local library is nothing like mine then. We do have books in other languages - it's not a huge library but there are some. And when you say "it does not take any of the national (by which I mean UK wide) newspapers. It only takes those that are Scotland only and loudly pro-independence. ", which newspapers are they? And as for having an emphasis in school on Scotland, Scottish geography etc. Excuse me. We are in Scotland. Should we hide that? Should we pretend we are somewhere else? It is fairly relevant, you know. My daughter has studied all sorts of things so far, and not all of them (believe it or not) relate to Scotland.

As for independence being inevitable. I personally hope it will become reality before my DD is old enough to vote. But as I say, I believe that family will influence a child on these issues more than the classroom. Are you thinking then that if a child knows enough about Scotland, the culture, the language, the geography, then it will automatically vote for independence?

Cross post Itsall - and you are much more succinct than me!

i quite like the cultural nationalism, we get treated to beautiful renditions of Caledonia - but I do object to the SNP ditching independent assessments so we can't measure the impact of their management of education. That does matter and I can't believe they get away with that. Surely whichever way you vote on independence, you'd like to be able to measure whether your children are being taught well...