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Inquiry into the Purposes of Education
10 June 2002
Education, Culture and Sport Committee
The Scottish Parliament
Edinburgh
EH99 1SP
Dear Sirs
EDUCATION, CULTURE AND SPORT COMMITTEE
Inquiry into the Purposes of Education
Introduction
The Association welcomes the decision of the Education, Culture and Sport Committee to set up an inquiry into purposes of Scottish education, this to run in parallel with the Executive’s National Debate on the Future of School Education but to have a longer ‘middle distance’ perspective. We would also like to commend the Committee on the quality of the discussion paper that it has produced and the key questions it raises.
Firstly may we comment on the Introduction to your paper. We are very glad to note the ‘plurality’ of the word ‘Purposes’. This holds promise that no ‘current orthodoxy’ is likely to emerge as a result of the Committee’s side of the partnership of consultation with the Executive’s simultaneous National Debate. What this means for a parental organisation such as SSBA is that, in the changing climate originating from the Standards in Scotland’s Schools etc Act 2000, the views of School Boards and parents will rank alongside those of professionals, industrialists, universities, teachers, students and others. It also implies that the academic, the value added, the economic, and the political aspects will all be regarded as worthy of discussion.
Also welcome is the undertaking to have scrutiny of all education issues – which for us implies a thorough airing of issues of curriculum, policy, learning and teaching, partnership with all other stakeholders in an integrated and shared self evaluation of the individual school and the whole system. We agree that there is a wide range of positive thinking about all of these. What must surely come out of this consultation is the networking of these views from all to all, so that the situation in the next 5/10/20 years is not one of compartmentalisation and faulty communication, but an automatic and systematic teamwork among all parties. In particular we are anxious that others should know and realise fully the way in which parents, through their School Boards, are now a force to be reckoned with in terms of the contribution they can make at all levels from school to cluster, to education authority to Scottish Executive.
The Association, which recently celebrated the tenth anniversary of its foundation, currently represents 1969 School Boards. 24 of the 32 education authorities support and participate in the Association’s group membership scheme, which facilitates the adherence of Boards to the Association without making this obligatory. As well as acting as the collective voice of School Boards, the SSBA is the principal provider of training for School Board members and Headteachers in regard to their working with School Boards. The Association is also the main publisher of handbooks, newsletters and information packs on the subject of School Board procedures.
School Boards all have a majority of elected parents, though they also contain elected staff members and members co-opted to represent the wider school community. They are statutory bodies, set up under the School Boards (Scotland) Act 1988, with later amendments to their constitutions and powers in terms of the Education (Scotland) Act 1996 and the Standards in Scotland’s Schools etc Act 2000. Therefore they are the only statutory bodies representing parents. They are also under a legal obligation to encourage the formation of parent associations or parent-teacher associations. Many School Boards now encourage the setting up of sub-committees to encourage social inclusion amongst their parent body and their communities.
SSBA Comment
May we now turn to the six Themes and respond to each. Since many others will have their own angles of view on this, we shall attempt to select those areas which have a special bearing on the stance of School Boards and parents.
‘Change’ is a settled characteristic of life for children and young people in the 21st Century, so that an enhanced ability in parents to support, counsel and advise their families is an urgent need. Flexibility in the provision of education, e.g. to allow individuals to move at appropriate speeds towards their own particular potential has been and will continue to be a welcome characteristic. This ought to mean that in the future, parents should not have traditional tunnel vision about their own offspring only, but be able corporately to focus on the larger horizons for all the children in at least their own school.
The issue of Children’s rights has become prominent in recent years. There needs to be a conscious rebalancing of this with emphasis during this new century on RESPONSIBILITIES too, so that education for citizenship becomes a healthy preparation for life in a society where one hopes effective relationships will be coloured by both elements. Leadership of the school and the education system is not and should not be a purely teacher-professional matter, but something which parents can support. The foundation for this idea has been laid in Section 26 of the 2000 Act.
Theme 1 – Coping with change and uncertainty
Here the issue is the need to help young people to cope with uncertainty. Since they spend 85% of their lives in the home, it seems evident that parents should be fully recognised as a prime source of such support. Education will, one hopes, in the next decades recognise this and ensure that communication with parents is a priority. If parents understand the curriculum, the school’s policy, the ethos and the culture/subcultures of the school and the pressures of the peer group upon their youngsters, they will be enabled to deal with problems more effectively in the home context, and by implication, help to create an effective learning environment.
In 1996 SSBA carried out a consultation exercise with its member Boards. This showed a 98% support for local authorities to run schools. In 2001 SSBA repeated this exercise. The level of support had fallen to 88%. It isn’t likely that Scottish parents will ever wish for power and control in schools, but rather for partnership, in areas to be identified with the school as potentially fruitful. SSBA welcomes the ongoing review of Devolved School Management. The 2000 Act places a responsibility on School Boards to raise the standard of education in their schools. It is hoped that the review of Devolved School Management will encourage the linking of responsibilities with School Development Plans in order that School Boards, teachers and the wider community can play a greater part in the life and understanding of school management system. SSBA’s extensive research into the training and funding of School Boards shows that there is a great deal of difference in the amount of support given to Boards. The Ministerial Review group of the level of support to School Boards is currently underway. The group consists of members of SSBA, SEED, HMIE, ADES and a consultant has been appointed by SEED to produce a report on this issue before schools return in August.
It is logical that parents should have an increasing voice at cluster, education authority and national levels as well as in one school. … via membership of Education Committees, on national education agencies and as members of the SSBA Executive Board. (SSBA Executive Board is made up of 33 Directors – 1 from each of the 32 local authorities and 1 representing Special Educational Needs schools. All Directors are elected by School Boards in their own areas).
Theme 2 – Engaging with ideas
Socialisation is something which must have carefully balanced definition, since it must inevitably concentrate both on preparing effective citizens of a cohesive, inclusive and democratic society, but also must have an ability to ‘produce’ the kind of innovative and inventive individuals that society needs to remain politically healthy, to develop technologically, to cater for all needs and to thrive. Parents need to be helped by schools to understand fully this ‘wider than academic’ agenda and to realise they have a part to play in ‘growing’ youngsters who have these personal and professional attributes. Our schools ARE becoming more democratic, and should certainly continue to develop in that direction for a long time ahead.
Once again, there is a dearth of information available to parents, particularly on how to help their children learn. The old Strathclyde ‘Parents Prompts’ were an extremely good tool for helping parents become involved in their children’s curriculum, especially those parents who were hard to reach, those who felt they couldn’t help because they weren’t clever enough and those who felt they simply didn’t have the time. These should be reviewed and made available to parents and schools.
Theme 3 – Keeping Everyone Involved with Learning
As far as poverty, alienation, drugs, racism and gender issues are concerned, firstly we recognise that in these areas there is a hard core minority of parents who do not or cannot for good reasons pull their weight in a partnership between home and school. Education or rather teachers alone cannot be expected to deal with this kind of situation. For this reason we welcome the growing use of ‘New Community School’ approaches, the role of multi-professional teams, of mentoring, buddy systems, chaplaincy, after school clubs, study clubs, and the like.
However, this alienation is not only happening outside the classroom it is also impinging on the life of the teacher in the classroom. Better support must be instigated to ensure that teacher morale does not drop any further due to the increase of violence towards them both in and out of the classroom by pupils and their parents.
Theme 4 – Promoting a Sense of Identity
Heritage is something which should in the discernible future have an increasing role to play. In general Scottish children are fairly ignorant of their own history, the part that Scotland has played in fostering change, development, technology, commerce, the environment and similar in many, many parts of the world. It can only do good for young Scots to achieve a sense of their international role in the past, and logically how it could continue in the future. The template for a successful curriculum in the future is a set of concentric circles which focus national identity, role within the UK, and a global awareness of world issues. In the context of national identity, this must move inexorably away from any sense of a ‘wha’s like us’ mentality to a sense of Scotland as a new and fascinating multiculture within which there is huge scope for the development in school curricula of the relationships which are needed by such a society. Emphasis must grow on eradicating the attitudinal weaknesses of Scottish society, e.g. bigotry, lack of self confidence, and the insistence on narrowing the definition of excellence to an academic one. School Boards and parents have a future role to play in such an agenda.
Theme 5 – Developing Necessary Skills
Areas which stand out here as of significance within the school/home partnership might arguably include: the shared concern which will inevitably grow as technology develops about the ethical aspects of ICT, and in particular the content of the Internet to which future generations of highly computer literate young people have access and the need to educate parents who come from an earlier pre ICT generation about the problem. The recognized core skills as set out in the document are supported by SSBA.
Basic skills in literacy and numeracy must be prioritized in primary schools. The basic grounding in these ‘core skills’ will ensure that our young people will be able to progress. Class numbers will also require to be lowered. SSBA policy on class numbers is currently 25 and 20 as opposed to present standards of 33 and 25. (single age and composite classes respectively).
Theme 6 – Fitting Structure to Purpose
Out first response to the question ‘Are schools the right places for all young people?’ is to forecast that the coming years may see a growth in Home Education as parents become increasingly sophisticated in their awareness of the possibility of such an alternative to school.
As to the possible reappraisal of the comprehensive school itself, there will in all probability be a growing realisation that, although research has shown the success of the idea and practice in Scotland over the last 40 years in boosting the attainment of the vast mass of its students, attention will need to be focussed both on those of the highest ability and those with the most intense learning difficulties. In the case of the former, much debate will focus on the implications of realising the existence of many kinds of ability and the need to cater in some form for them, and in the latter, the issue may well be whether the principle of social inclusion (in the case of severe learning difficulties) means mainstreaming or special schools to ensure social justice and equality of opportunity.
We hope that these points may constitute a useful contribution to the ongoing debate.
Yours sincerely
Ann Hill
Chief Executive
SSBA
