Tag Archives: John Swinney

Back to the classroom – teacher training and recruitment

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by Stacey Dingwall

Earlier this week, the House of Commons Education Select Committee published a report on the recruitment and retention of teachers in England. Announced in October 2015, the Committee took evidence on whether there was a ‘crisis’ in teacher recruitment, including by region and subject; what the “root causes” of the present situation with regards to teacher recruitment were; and what action the government should take to address issues with teacher recruitment.

“Significant shortages”

The Committee’s report suggests that at present, the government is failing to take “adequate” action to tackle what it describes as “significant” teacher shortages in England. It is noted that the targets for initial teacher training (ITT) courses have been missed for the last five years and that Geography, Biology and History were the only subjects in which the targets for new entrants to postgraduate and undergraduate ITT courses were exceeded. Targets for all other secondary level subjects were missed, with only 68% of Computing ITT places filled, and only 41% of Design and Technology places.

While the report acknowledges the importance of recruiting new teachers to the profession, it also emphasises the importance of retaining the teachers that it already has. Government data shows that more than 10% of teachers leave the profession after a year, and 30% leave within five years. Giving evidence to the enquiry, the National Audit Office (NAO) suggested that the number of teachers leaving rose by 11% between 2011 and 2014.

“Unmanageable” workloads

The Education Committee identified workload as a key driver for those teachers who choose to leave the profession. Last year, 82% of the 4,000 respondents to a Guardian survey described their workload as “unmanageable”. Analysis published by the Education Policy Institute (EPI) in October found that teachers in England work longer hours than their peers in 35 other developed countries, working an average of 48.2 hours per week.

When Nicky Morgan was Education Secretary, three review groups were set up to provide recommendations around the three biggest areas identified by teachers as those that add to their workload unnecessarily: marking, planning and data management. The groups’ recommendations have yet to be progressed following their publication in March 2016 (and Morgan’s replacement).

In Scotland, Education Secretary John Swinney announced his intention to “declutter” the Scottish education system at last year’s Scottish Learning Festival, by reducing teachers’ workload around assessments. In response, teaching union EIS suspended their programme of industrial action over teacher workload in relation to examinations.

Teaching as a second career

Swinney also announced plans to develop new routes into teaching, using funding from the Scottish Government’s Attainment Scotland Fund. These plans were followed by the launch of the ‘Teaching Makes People’ campaign at the start of the month, which is targeted at recruiting more teachers in the STEM subjects.

As well as undergraduates, the campaign is also aiming to attract people from the STEM industries into the profession. In particular, the Scottish Government hopes that it will convince former oil and gas industry workers to retrain as teachers.

The National College for Teaching and Leadership (NCTL) reported in January that more than 6,200 people aged 30 and over started ITT in 2016-17, the highest number since 2012-13.  Entering teaching as a second career has become more common in recent years. In November, Financial Times associate editor and columnist Lucy Kellaway announced that she was leaving her role to become a maths teacher after 31 years in her role.

At the same time, Kellaway set up Now Teach, a charity which works to encourage senior professionals in the business industry to retrain as teachers. Aside from helping with the issue of teacher recruitment, headteachers have also welcomed the benefits of having former professionals in the classroom in terms of their leadership skills and ability to provide careers advice.

Follow us on Twitter to see what developments in public and social policy are interesting our research team. If you found this article interesting, you may also like to read our other articles on careers guidance.

What state is the Scottish education system in?

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by Stacey Dingwall

On Tuesday, the Scottish Government published new statistics on the country’s education system, contained in the evidence report for the National Improvement Framework for Scottish Education. The report outlines progress made against each of the four priorities set by the Scottish Government in January when it first published the Framework:

  • Improvement in attainment, particularly in literacy and numeracy;
  • Closing the attainment gap between the most and least disadvantaged children;
  • Improvement in children and young people’s health and wellbeing;
  • Improvement in employability skills and sustained, positive school leaver destinations for all young people.

The government’s priority

The Scottish Government has previously identified education as its top priority, with First Minister Nicola Sturgeon stating that her actions in this area are what she wishes to be judged on during her time in office.

Unfortunately, these latest statistics did not bring good news for the First Minister. While Education Secretary John Swinney highlighted that the number of teachers in the country had increased overall, he also conceded that “significant improvements” were needed in some areas. These areas include a worsening of the ratio of pupils to teachers in 12 council areas, and a slight increase in class sizes overall.

2015 Pisa results

The progress report came on the heels of the previous week’s bad news: Scotland’s performance in the 2015 Pisa rankings. The country recorded its worst ever results in the OECD survey, with scores for maths, science and reading declining since 2012. Scotland’s 2015 results in these areas were all classified as ‘average’, in contrast to 2000’s results of ‘above average’.

Although Scotland maintained its position within the OECD statistical average, the results indicate that the country is now performing ‘significantly below’ other countries in some areas, including England (science).

Has the Scottish education system got worse?

Reacting to the Pisa results, opposition parties called them evidence of “a decade of educational failure” under the SNP. Keir Bloomer of Reform Scotland and the Commission on School Reform also said that it was “no longer credible to describe Scotland’s education system as world leading”, and suggested there was now an “urgent” case for reform.

This is not something that the Scottish Government has shied away from admitting. As we reported from this year’s Scottish Learning Festival, John Swinney has made it his intention to “declutter’ the Scottish education system, by reducing teachers’ workloads around assessments. A number of actions have either been implemented, or are in the process of being introduced, in response to the OECD’s 2015 review of education policy, practice and leadership in Scotland, which the government commissioned itself. These include the expansion of the Scottish Attainment Challenge, funding from which enabled 63% of the increase in FTE teachers in Scotland last year.

Pisa overemphasis?

Larry Flanagan, general secretary of EIS, Scotland’s largest teaching union, said that it was important not to make any “snap judgements” based on the Pisa results, emphasising the need for analysis of the full data released by the OECD rather than headline findings.

We looked at issues raised around the influence of Pisa results in 2014, when academics and research questioned the system’s reliability and its claim that when schools are given more independence over spending, their schools achieve better academic results. An evaluation of the Pisa methodology published in May this year found that it had a series of limitations including “an inconsistent rationale, opaque sampling, unstable evaluative design, measuring instruments of questionable validity, opportunistic use of scores transformed by standardization, reverential confidence in statistical significance, an absence of substantively significant statistics centered on the magnitudes of effects, a problematic presentation of findings and questionable implications drawn from the findings for educational norms and practice”.

The OECD itself has admitted that “large variation in single country ranking positions is likely” because of the methods it uses.

Going forward

Conceding that the results were not where she wanted Scotland’s education system to be, Nicola Sturgeon maintained, however that the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) is the “right way forward”. She also highlighted her government’s commitment to acting on the recommendations contained in the OECD’s earlier review of the system, in which the CfE was described in positive terms, with the caveat that the government must be ‘bold and innovative’ in order to achieve its potential. Given the First Minister’s stated determination to improve the education system’s performance, this is advice that would seem logical to follow.

Follow us on Twitter to see what developments in public and social policy are interesting our research team. If you found this article interesting, you may also like to read our other education articles. 

Scottish Learning Festival 2016: excellence and equity for all

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by Stacey Dingwall

Last Wednesday, I attended the first day of the annual Scottish Learning Festival. Launched in 2000 as Scottish Education and Teaching with Technology (SETT), the two day event run by Education Scotland regularly attracts thousands of visitors from the education landscape in Scotland and beyond.

Promoting excellence and equity for all

The theme of this year’s event was promoting excellence and equity for all through:

  • School leadership and improvement
  • Assessing children’s progress and parental engagement
  • Teacher professionalism
  • Performance information

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has made education the priority for her government, telling education leaders earlier this year that they could “judge” her on the success of her policies to close the attainment gap in Scotland.  Despite improvements in Scottish school standards, an attainment gap persists, with pupils in more affluent areas twice as likely to gain a Higher than their peers from deprived areas. Sturgeon’s priority is to ensure that kids in Scotland grow up with the belief that academic success is achieved through talent and hard work, rather than based on the area in which they live.

Opening keynote: John Swinney

The festival’s opening keynote address was delivered by John Swinney, the recently appointed Education Secretary. Swinney stated his aim to “declutter” Scottish education. This is to be achieved by replacing the current mandatory requirement for unit assessment at National 5 and Higher levels with enhanced course assessment. Swinney explained that the aim of this was to reduce teachers’ workload around assessments, and suggested that teachers must also take additional steps themselves to reduce their workload. In the wake of this announcement, the EIS teaching union agreed to consider suspending their planned industrial action over teacher workloads.

Swinney also launched the inaugural Digital Schools Awards at the festival, which aim to promote, recognise and encourage best practice use of digital technology in primary schools. Prior to the event, the education secretary spoke of the importance of supporting Scotland’s digital sector by developing the skills and confidence of learners, and pointed to evidence that technology use in the classroom can enhance learning and teaching, and lead to improved educational outcomes for pupils.

Improving schools in Scotland: an OECD perspective

The first afternoon session I attended was presented by Chris Graham from the Scottish Government Curriculum Unit, and focused on the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD’s) 2015 review of education policy, practice and leadership in Scotland. Chris explained the background to the review, which was commissioned by the Scottish Government to:

  • Highlight key impacts of the approach taken to developing the curriculum to date
  • Analyse key aspects of education policy and practice in Scotland, and integrate insights from PISA and other evidence from different countries/regions
  • Highlight areas where further change or development could add value to an ongoing programme of educational improvement

The review made 12 recommendations, across the headings of quality and equity in Scottish schools; decision-making and governance for the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE); schooling, teachers and leadership; and assessment, evaluation and the CfE. A particular point that the OECD team made was that they didn’t believe that current activities around equity were as well aligned as they could be, and suggested that more should be done in terms of sharing evidence of ‘what works’ from individual interventions across the board. While the OECD did not specifically evaluate the CfE itself, the team did suggest that a new “narrative” be developed around it in order to clarify its scope – and perhaps even rename it. They were positive about the CfE overall however, but emphasised the need for the government to be bold and innovative in order to achieve its potential.

Chris also highlighted a range of measures that have been implemented since the report was published, some of which were under way when the OECD were carrying out their review. These include the expansion of the Scottish Attainment Challenge to secondary schools, and the launch of the National Improvement Framework and Delivery Plan for Excellence and Equity in Scottish Education. Chris described these developments as relevant to the recommendations made by the OECD team, and sees the next steps to be taken as currently an “open conversation”.

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Inverclyde Attainment Challenge

The final session I attended looked at the experience of Aileymill Primary School in Inverclyde with the Scottish Attainment Challenge. This initiative was launched in February 2015 by the First Minister in order to bring a greater sense of urgency in achieving equity in educational outcomes in Scotland. Aileymill, along with five other schools in the area, was awarded Challenge funding in August last year in an attempt to bridge the gap between pupils from deprived and more affluent areas in Inverclyde.

The session featured presentations from Aileymill’s headteacher Catriona Miller and Marie Pye from Barnardo’s, who worked with the school to provide a dedicated family support worker and implement plans for families who were struggling with issues such as poor attendance. Catriona spoke of the extent of some of the issues facing the pupils in her school, where 70% of the roll falls into the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) categories 1 and 2.

Two key things that emerged from Catriona and Maria’s presentations were the importance of establishing trust to the success of the partnership between the school and Barnardo’s, and the need to develop a sustainable model to support pupils and their families due to the limited availability of funding. Also key was the relationship-based approach employed, not only to their partnership, but to the support they provide to pupils and their families. It was really inspiring to listen to how much of an impact the funding has made in Aileymill, where parents who had been previously completely disconnected from their child’s education are now engaging with both the school and social work, and there are pupils whose attendance has increased from 23% to 80% within a year.

You can read more about the 2016 Scottish Learning Festival here. Follow us on Twitter to see what developments in public and social policy are interesting our research team.

The Scottish budget 2016-17: what does it mean for digital?

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THe Scottish Parliament, Holyrood, Edinburgh

The Scottish Parliament. Image by dun_deagh via Creative Commons

By Steven McGinty

Last week, the Scottish Finance Secretary, John Swinney, published his budget for the next financial year. Unsurprisingly, it begins by outlining the financial challenges facing the Scottish Government. Mr Swinney highlights that the Scottish Budget will continue to fall year-on-year, and by 2020 will have fallen by 12.5% in real terms since 2010. These figures paint a very bleak picture for Scotland’s public finances.

However, with this pressure on public funds, the Scottish Government has given a clear commitment to digital. The budget states:

“The Government will take steps to extend digital applications in public services, increase the use of shared services, secure further value from procurement developments, ensure effective use of assets and reduce overlap between public services. The digital agenda will both produce savings and improve the quality of our services.”

What funds have been made available?

In cash terms, the funding for Scotland’s digital strategy has more than doubled to £116 million. This has been achieved by merging a number of distinct budgets, which, according to the Scottish Government, reflects the integrated nature of the strategy. The majority of the funding has been allocated to capital expenditure projects, which have increased their share to £92.2 million.

It’s expected that these resources will cover areas such as digital infrastructure, digital participation, digital public services, and the digital economy.

What digital initiatives have been introduced?  

The Budget makes a number of commitments to support digital change in Scotland, although, very few details are given about specific digital projects.

The main initiatives outlined in the report include:

  • Spending over £100 million to improve broadband services, as part of the £400 million Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband (DSSB) programme. It’s expected that by the end of 2015, 85% of premises will be connected to a next generation broadband network, rising to 95% by the end of 2017.
  • Establishing an ‘Alpha Fund’ to help improve the efficiency and quality of digital public services. It’s hoped that this can be achieved – like most digital transformation programmes – by developing common services that can be used across government.
  • Supporting the Digital Transformation Service to develop digital public services from a user perspective and to realise the benefits of digital technology.
  • Developing the National Records of Scotland’s (NRS) digital services, including progressing with the ‘Data Linkage Framework’ strategy, which is expected to deliver data research projects that benefit the public. The NRS will also be preparing for the next Census, in 2021, which will mostly be delivered digitally.

What other announcements may impact digital?

For the ninth consecutive year, the Scottish Government have continued with their manifesto commitment to freeze council taxes. Councillor Michael Cook, who is vice president of COSLA, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, has argued that Scottish Government cuts to local government revenues are “unprecedented”, and are coming at a time when local government are already facing massive pressures. He suggests that this could lead to job losses and changes to services.

In addition, the Scottish Government has chosen not to change the Income Tax rate for Scotland – a power recently devolved to Holyrood. Mr Swinney argues that this new power is limited, and any changes would go against the principle that taxation should be proportionate to the ability to pay.

Both of these decisions will have implications for the digital sector. For instance, companies that provide services to local government may find some new challenges as local government revenues have been cut by 3.5%.  It may mean that companies will have to further prove their value, as local government looks to reduce their costs or improve the services they provide. Yet, it could also bring opportunities, as the need for technical solutions that provide efficiencies has never been greater.

The decision not to raise Income Tax may also benefit Scotland’s digital sector. If Income Tax had risen in Scotland, recruitment might have become more challenging, or at least more expensive, as skilled staff might have been tempted by lower taxes elsewhere in the UK.

Final thoughts

The Budget has not provided any real surprises. Local government needs to make savings, and politically, increasing taxes would be difficult, especially with the Scottish Parliamentary elections next year.

Therefore, the digital sector needs to focus on addressing the challenges highlighted in the Budget. This includes providing creative, efficient, technological solutions that support the everyday needs of both central and local government.

Follow us on Twitter to see what developments in policy and practice are interesting our research team.

Further reading: if you liked this blog post, you might also want to read our other articles on digital policy.