Possible move to Scotland from England but should we be concerned about education?

[Wouldliketomove]

Hello Everyone,

As the title says, DH and I are carefully researching a possible move to Scotland for our family (two toddlers currently) but I am constantly reading worrying things about education in Scotland. I'm aware there are also soon to be significant changes, which complicates things further and introduces more unknowns.

Can anyone with experience either as teachers or parents offer a perspective on education in Scotland at the moment please or any further insight into what is to come? I have tried to read what is widely available.

Thanks very much in advance

There is no ‘American system’. Every single state is different and then it’s dramatically different depending on the wealth of the neighbourhood as that affects taxes and therefore school funding. I would guess the experience of a child in much of Texas would be worse than anywhere in Scotland and perhaps a fancy suburb in Portland better? Leaving aside the guns of course.

I am very happy with my kids’ education though it’s very different to how I grew up (in New York). They like going to school, have lots to tell me about, plenty of friends and feel 99% safe (we are Jewish and no Jewish child feels totally safe). The teachers are lovely and enthusiastic and they have plenty of options post high school. And they go to a very standard catchment school with a high rate of poverty and children going home to all sorts of challenges.

The lack of attendance targets (school having to ensure kids get in to school) means no questions are asked of parents who consistently get their kids in late to school or regularly let them bunk off and go on the PlayStation all day. There are also no grades showing how many kids get straight As. How many get A-c is utterly meaningless.

Do kids get grades in England? Is that the standardised tests they get periodically? Or something else?

My daughter has tests in each subject about once a month now in s3. No tests or homework until high school but I liked that.

Do you get told the grades? We didn’t get told anything until prelims for Nat5. Just the usual meaningless guff about whether they were making an effort, behaving and doing their homework. Made advising which nat5s to sit really hard.

My daughter tells me her grades - usually gets them back the week after the tests. It’s not on her official report which is just a load of nothing.

I went on holiday to Estonia a few years ago. Estonia has a smaller population than Scotland - under 2 million. Having a conversation with an Estonian woman (she spoke excellent English) she talked about the education system. She said that there were high expectations on the children, who worked very hard. And she said something that really resonated with me. She said that, due to the size of the population, every child really mattered. In the sense that they needed to ensure that every child reached his or her full potential. Not just for the sake of the individual child, but for the sake of the country/society.

People wanting Scottish independence sometimes mention Estonia, and how Scotland, post independence, could be like Estonia (which is doing very well for itself, particularly in the realm of technology, and despite an extremely difficult recent history). In Scotland I feel that there's a belief that it would be nice if everyone achieved the basics at school, but that going beyond that doesn't matter, and may even be unfair. I don't think that everyone needs to be reading Moliere or learning Latin, but I do think that every child should be encouraged and stretched. I'd like to live in a country where the politicians, the academics, the teachers, the people working in finance, medicine, the law and the other professions are bright, educated, at the top of their game, and where everyone else leaves school with a lot more than basic literacy.

I think there's too much reliance on university too. "My child did well because they got into Edinburgh" or wherever. A university education can't plug the gaps left by a bad school education. I also suspect that the standards at universities are dropping.

@PollysKenwood "I’d be interested to know what the pupil in the post above was doing for literature study in their own language of that is what they were doing as their second foreign language."

I've just looked that up on ChatGpt and it's absolutely mind-boggling. A large number of really challenging books, going back to medieval literature.

Their first foreign language was French, and I remember the girl telling me that her class were taught French history in French by a native French speaker.

I’d like to know how positive English people feel about the education system there now. Is it generally regarded as one to be prod of? The only people I know who live there are negative about it.Just as Scottish people are often negative about the Scottish education system. It seems to be the other countries are positive about their systems and this is perhaps more to do with that country’s general sense of national positivity.

There is very much the attitude in schools that if you are in the top half of ability in the class then it’s acceptable for your education to be parked while the school focuses on the less able. My child’s head teacher freely admitted that the teacher has to focus their efforts on the weaker children. It’s totally unacceptable but happens everywhere.

It's more likely to do with the fact that there are serious problems with both the Scottish and the English systems. I'm really fed up with the assumption that education systems are all much of a muchness - they're not.

There seems to be very bad behaviour in both Scottish and English systems, though worse in Scotland for reasons that have already been discussed. And the problem of some children starting school still in nappies, unable to hold a pencil, etc. That ought to be less of a problem in Scotland, since children start school later here. It's true that children start school earlier in the UK than in other countries, though some have a kindergarten system which is probably the equivalent of P1 to P2. It would be interesting to find out how other countries handle the issue of special educational needs, which is a big issue in Scottish schools, and whether COVID has caused the same ongoing problems in those countries as it has here.

I'm not saying that there aren't behavioural problems elsewhere, and anecdotally I've heard that behaviour is getting worse in, for example, France. But as far as I can tell behaviour is particularly bad here.

In France, parents are required to be much more involved in their children's education. They're expected to do schoolwork with their child and to make sure that they don't fall behind the rest of the class. So there's parental buy-in.

What can be done to bring parents more on board with their children's education? When looking at foreign education systems, something that comes up and which I think is very significant is the level of respect for education and for teachers. When parents feel that education can make a difference to their children's lives they are more likely to support teachers and children are more likely to behave.
For instance, in China, if there is any kind of bad behaviour the parents are called into the school for a meeting. And I'm told that they always support the teacher. That then resolves the problem, apparently. I've been told this again and again. No other punishments are needed. And we're talking about a system where class sizes can be as big as 80, with one teacher.

I asked my child's secondary school headteacher why there wasn't any setting at the school, and said that I thought that setting would be a good thing for the more academic children. He responded that if my DC found the work too easy, then this would give them the opportunity to learn to teach, by spending their lesson time helping the weaker pupils.

I’m not sure I’d agree that being frightened into obedience leads to the sorts of achievements I’m prioritising as a parent. I absolutely agree that some of the behaviours and lack of accountability by children and their parents is deeply problematic, but rote learning and intense pressure and fear of failure isn’t really what I’d aim for if I was looking to change things.

I genuinely think the major issue is a lack of alternative provision. There are a handful of children across every class who aren’t benefitting from being mainstreamed. They are failing, the children around them are frightened or worried or lack attention because they’re quiet and well behaved… and there’s no real option for the teachers or head teachers or parents. My friend’s son is one of these - they’d love to find another solution for him but it’s mainstream or homeschooling and they both work. If they had an alternative provision that allowed him to thrive in those thing he is good at, he’d be less frustrated and angry and his classmates wouldn’t be around the violent outbursts so they’d benefit too.

But they're focusing on the children who are struggling to understand - your dc can do the task without this support. It shouldn't mean they are abandoned just that they can work more independently.
The numbers of students now needing that extra help is much higher now than I ever remember, so I don't entirely disagree with you.

I don't think anyone on this thread has recommended, in your words, "rote learning and intense pressure and fear of failure". You may be talking about Chinese teaching methods. What I said about China is that they have no significant disciplinary issues. Not because they threaten children or punish children (they don't need to), but because the parents are engaged. They value education because they see it as vitally important to their children in accessing a prosperous and happy adult life. That doesn't seem to be the way lots of Scottish parents feel about Scottish education. Imagine being able to send your child to school in the knowledge that there will be no behaviour issues in their lessons.

It shouldn’t mean they get ignored but it does. When asking why my child is saying they hadn’t learned anything new in maths for years the head had the cheek to reply ‘with my social conscience cap on I have to focus on the weakest learners’. I shit you not. I mean at least she was honest and didn’t come out with the tiresome and dishonest ‘we differentiate learning to meet everyone’s needs’ nonsense, but it was a bit of a shock that she felt free to come out with it quite so blatantly.

The UK government has, in a number of policy documents, repeated its commitment to help every schoolchild (in England, obviously) reach their potential. They've repeatedly said that that applies both to those who are struggling to achieve, and to those who are achieving but could do even better. For instance, the recent policy paper "Every Child Achieving and Thriving", published under Starmer, says "children progressing well but capable of even more will be stretched and challenged to soar."
Having those commitments in policies helps school to spend time on all children, not just those who are academically below average.

Believe it or not, for our countries to thrive we need well-educated people in those professional jobs. Focusing only on getting children through the very basics at school leads to a society in which mediocrity reigns. And we live in a global economy - other countries are not making this mistake.
I'd actually suggest that the Scottish Government actively doesn't want some children to do better at school than others. It wants everyone to come out at the same academic level. In order to achieve that, it is trying to level down, by dumbing the curriculum down and making exams easier to pass. This tactic isn't actually achieving its aim of everyone coming out at the same level, in fact from what I've read the gap is widening, but it is reducing the educational level of the average Scottish child. If you put that average child against the average Scottish child from 40 years ago, you'd find an enormous difference.

Did your school set for maths (ours didn't). If it did, it doesn't sound as though you found that particularly helpful?

No, and there were composite classes which made the spread even bigger.

Tbh I think the bigger issue that your children will be immersed in Scottish culture. They will read Scottish literature in English, act in Scottish plays, learn some Scottish history, sing Scottish folk songs. Class mates will be learning to play bagpipes. You have to be ok with that. Your children won't have an English cultural experience - Scotland has a very different cultural heritage and it runs through the educational content.

This is true. I’m American so I enjoy learning alongside too but I would guess it’s different if you’re English. Our primary school has Scots month every year where they learn poems in Scot’s and do a whole month on Scottish history. Still remember when we went to the parliament when my daughter was 8 or 9 and she knew all the flags except the British one. Was very sure which one was Scotland!

I’ve been following this thread mainly because I have an interest in education generally and have been watching the CfE progress with interest, I have no direct experience of the Scottish system.

But I do have two children in the middle of the English system (one just finished primary and the other mid secondary). Despite their primary being a bit rubbish (it had a different interim head every year for the past 4 years and I can’t remember how many teachers my second child has had), academically they’ve had a great time and I’ve been considerably more impressed by their education by that their nephew has received in Northern Ireland. Both DC had a very, very solid grasp of phonics and numeracy very early on - no matter whether they had temporary /cover staff or school leadership, there was a laser focus on the phonics check, times tables and eventually y6 SATs. They both got really strong scores in their y6 SATs and have covered a solid grounding of other information - lots about the Romans, Victorians, Iron Age settlements, usual orimary school geography etc. I think they didn’t get good PE, language or music at primary.

Their secondary school is absolutely excellent - but it’s not our catchment, which is generally regarded as poor, but on the up. That said, our catchment is the anomaly in our region with the rest of them being generally outstanding.

I feel the focus on the basics at first and academics in general is absolutely the right thing.

At school maybe but Scotland and England are part of the same country and outside school the culture is dominated by English culture, e.g. how many BBC TV history shows are about the Tudors and I bet everyone in Scotland knows what happened in 1066 and 1966 and who Shakespeare was. All countries prioritise their own culture in their education system and every Scot who lives in England has experienced the same in reverse (I get particularly annoyed about the celebrations in English schools for Chinese New Year rather than Burns Night at the end of January).

I too am Scottish in England. Tbh it never occurred to me that they would do Burns stuff at school.

When I was in school in Scotland, albeit a long time ago now, we only read Scottish literature in English. I had zero exposure to the Greats. I had to discover the Brontes, Thomas Hardy etc on my own. The only Shakespeare play we did was MacBeth!

Here is the current choice of Scottish texts. I don't think any of these are in any way the equivalent of Hardy or the Brontes, for example. Which is a shame.
Scottish texts for National 5 and Higher English courses

It was Sunset Song that really harpooned my love of learning. Absolutely diabolical dirge. Why on earth would they think kids would want to read that?