The Scottish Government and the First Minister in particular are playing for high stakes by prioritising raising attainment for all pupils and closing the gap between the highest and lowest attainers. Laudable aims, to be sure, but a strategy to match the rhetoric is urgently required,
There is no silver bullet. Challenge funding is welcome but money alone will not do the trick. Back-to-the-future testing in primary schools will simply confirm what we already know:
to put it crudely, many experienced practitioners doubt whether ministers understand the question let alone the answer. The Commission on School Reform describes the Government’s aims in classic Sir Humphrey-speak as “exceptionally ambitious”.
Schools that have raised attainment and narrowed the gap between the haves and have nots have gone about it in different ways. They have, however, recognised that there is no single reason why children underachieve. In short, there is no one-size solution for underachievement.
Those schools have realised that every child at risk of underachieving should be considered as an individual. That is only possible if their needs are addressed in a multi-dimensional context that takes account of their social and economic situations as well as their learning needs. Consequently, it is vital that their teachers know them and their circumstances very well.
Yet, it is questionable whether our secondary schools and curriculum are structured in ways that enable teachers to do so. At present the fragmented curriculum makes it difficult for teachers to get to know their pupils well enough as individuals. This is no criticism of hard-pressed teachers, but much teaching is still directed towards the middle.
Some headteachers feel new benchmarking “tools” such as Insight for tracking attainment in the senior phase do not focus sharply enough on individual children. Tim McKay, headteacher at Ellon Academy in Aberdeenshire, is positive about many aspects of Insight but feels it fails to pick up on individual youngsters at risk of underachieving across a number of subjects. He also believes that the replacement of real-life comparator schools by a “virtual comparator” has not been helpful. “Whilst you can still link informally with another school, you can’t phone the head of a virtual school and ask how he or she has managed to raise attainment”, he argues.
The Commission on School Reform believes transformational change, not tinkering at the edges, is essential if attainment is to rise. Curriculum for Excellence may already have fallen into the same trap as the owner of the Pony Express who said he would respond to the new electric telegraph “by breeding faster ponies”.
If the Government is to achieve its worthy aims it must realise that the causes of underachievement correspond to the number of underachievers. A broad-brush strategy, rich in rhetoric, is unlikely to succeed. A more radical approach is required recognising that teachers need more time to work with individual youngsters, taking account of their social and economic circumstances as appropriate. The present fragmented curriculum simply will not do.
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