Portfolio Education
is they are better at English because they are better at grammar.” He adds that there should be no disparity between reading English and Scottish literature in relation to literacy levels. Kay believes there is no tension between ancient and modern languages. “Te reason I speak French, German, Portuguese and I’ve got Higher Russian, is because I was brought up speaking a broad dialect of Scots as my mother tongue. Being linguistically aware from a very young age made it a lot easier for me to learn other languages.” Fluent Gaelic speaker, Arthur Cormack, chair of Bord na Gaidhlig, adds: “Gaelic’s influence is evident in history, geography, literature, music, dance, drama, modern studies and art. Te introduction of Scottish Studies has the potential to raise awareness of Gaelic among a new generation of school pupils. [Tey] would be more enlightened about the importance of Gaelic’s place in Scotland’s identity as a result.” Hodgart, who is also an Honorary Fellow of the Scottish Association of Literary Studies, points out a lingering insecurity amongst teachers about Scottish Studies. “In the past, there has been much hostility towards Scottish literature and history in the teaching profession, but much less so now. Today there’s an
From the Chalkface Classroom politics
In the wake of recent economic crises, public services are under the microscope. COSLA has used the McCormac review of teacher employment to seek radical changes to teachers’ conditions. Teachers will feel the pressures. COSLA’s proposals are a mixed bag. Ending the
35-hour week and replacing it with termly aggregate working hours (350 hours for ten weeks) makes sense. It means that a parents’ evening does not end every other teacher activity for that week. COSLA proposes a radical overhaul, failing which the abandonment of the Chartered Teacher scheme which has created substantial anomalies in pay among teachers without differentiation in tasks. A review of the school year, four ten-week terms, is suggested. COSLA has also made a powerful case against teachers’ rights to leave the workplace for preparation and marking at home. That practice atomises teachers and detracts from their working in departments and teams. Other proposals are more debatable. The suggestion
that teachers’ continuing professional development should be intimately linked to annual professional review would focus CPD effectively. Unfortunately, COSLA also makes it clear that it is ‘fiscal reality’ driving this change. After five years during which Scottish teachers have been told to look to Finland for the model of educational excellence, the much-lauded Finnish model of an all-graduate teacher profession with most teachers moving to a Masters degree is totally abandoned in COSLA’s submission. Indeed the
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www.holyrood.com 19 September 2011
insecurity – teachers are lacking in confidence. Because they haven’t studied it, they don’t have the skills and expertise to deliver it. To support that there should be good resources, CPD and opportunities to bring in specialists. In terms of the Curriculum for Excellence, I agree that there should be freedom of choice. But for Scottish Studies, there really needs to be proper guidelines on what’s appropriate.” Allan agrees: “We’ve got to find a way of doing it that’s acceptable,” he says. “But my initial impression is that there is a great deal of enthusiasm, a great deal of good practice and not really the hostility that politicians have imagined.” In terms of teacher training, the onus also falls on universities. But as Kay points out, the preservation of Scottish Studies departments are being threatened by both cuts and the lack of research investment in the subject. He notes that the “political will” is prevalent today, but as more specialists retire, who will replace them? However, he adds: “If people learn it in schools, then it will have to be taught in the future. And universities will have to continue to respond to that.” Hodgart agrees that the strategy has to be
“top down and bottom up”, with teachers at classroom level being encouraged to develop
their own approaches within the CfE. “But from the top down,” he says, universities have to address giving Scottish culture its own place. You have to ensure teachers have appropriate qualifications and training.”
A thornier issue is one of examination, says
Hodgart – in particular, the credit system. Te boundary between Scottish versus English literature and history could potentially blur. “Tere needs to be something in place to barricade one from the other,” he adds. “And there should be some qualification in place that can be recognised by universities to some extent.” With reference to Scottish Studies current status, Allan adds: “Tere are a number of options there; we haven’t settled on a solution. But the point is this is a stream that would run through the whole curriculum from primary to secondary. Whatever we do, we would want universities to be enthusiastic about what we are doing and to give it credit.” With the case for the inclusion of Scottish
Studies gaining strong support from leading education experts, the subject seems set to become part of the Curriculum for Excellence. But then the SNP faces the problem of turning its ideals into a hardened reality in the classroom.
role was to teach. The COSLA proposals scotch that delusion: “...
the primary role for a teacher should not be to teach children but should be articulated in terms of ensuring the development, wellbeing, and safety of children. This is the primary role that teachers should share with other children’s services professionals.” This represents the de-professionalising and
mantra of COSLA’s CPD proposals is the development (at bargain basement prices) of the “necessary skills, competencies and aptitudes of teaching staff to deliver outcomes for children”. That fashionable, accountancy-based model of
public service management assumes that simple causal relationships can be established between teachers’ professional development programmes and such outputs as numbers entering higher education or employment or examination passes. The flaw in the COSLA argument is exposed when the role and purpose of teachers is discussed. The bombshell appears under the heading, Teacher’s role in the delivery of integrated children’s services: “a teacher’s primary responsibility above all others is the wellbeing of children within their care.” The modern teacher has always accepted a duty of care and the duty of cooperating actively with social workers, medical staff, the police. Teachers had always believed, however, that their unique primary
de-intellectualising of teaching. It trivialises teaching’s unique curricular content and pedagogic skills. It turns the teacher’s job into a cross between that of a foster-parent and a social worker – both invaluable but hugely different from teaching. It beggars belief that such a document, presumably drafted by COSLA’s education officials, could have been written by anyone with any experience of teaching. A serious question now requires to be asked of
COSLA, the body which not only employs the vast bulk of Scottish teachers but which represents a powerful part of the Scottish democratic system. If the primary role of teachers should not be to teach children, whose role is teaching? Indeed, does COSLA consider that teaching as a process has any use or value beyond its caring aspect? And if teaching is to cease to be the primary function of local authority schools, will COSLA be surprised if a considerable number of parents then choose to opt their children out of such schools and into schools which still see teaching as their major purpose?
Alex Wood, a retired headteacher, is an Associate at the Scottish Centre for Studies in School Administration and a freelance writer
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