Education
Hear Des McNulty MSPs closing speech in the Schools Debate in the Scottish Parliament, where he highlights amongst other issues the reduction in the numbers of teachers and classroom assistants since 2007, the lack of permanent jobs for newly qualified teachers and the problems facing the implementation of the Curriculum for Excellence.
Des McNulty MSP debates the crisis facing Higher Education in Scotland and calls for a proper structured independent review of Higher Education in Scotland.
The Scottish government stands accused of ‘papering over the cracks’ over their mismanagement of Curriculum for Excellence after it was announced that all secondary school inspections were to be suspended later this year to allow school inspectors to work on the reforms.
SNP cuts are causing local authorities to abandon key class size targets that have proven to be effective in tackling literacy and numeracy difficulties.
At least four of Scotland’s 32 councils are no longer following guidelines introduced by Labour of capping pupil numbers at 20 in English and Maths in the first two years of secondary school.
I am not opposed in principle to the introduction of school clusters which has been proposed in East Lothian. There have been school clusters in my own constituency for many years under Local Authority management and they work very well. Bringing schools within a cluster under a single school management structure could well deliver benefits, as could new ways of extending parental involvement in that management structure – but it doesn’t require removing education from Councils. So far I have seen nothing from East Lothian’s director Don Ledingham or from Councillor Dave Berry that leads me to think that schools need to be taken out of the control of an education authority in order to make it possible to change the way they are currently managed.
The Curriculum for Excellence was supposed to promote intellectual enquiry, focusing on ‘deep learning’ and higher order skills. Similar initiatives are taking place in many countries so CfE is the Scottish version of a broader based pedagogical change which has the support of most, although not all, education professionals.
Des debates the merits of structural reform in Scottish education.
