THE proposals by the Commission on School Reform in response to a Scottish Government consultation on the governance of schools are founded on questionable assertion.
The deficits in the Scottish education system are not down to the quality of teaching, it says, arguing that new teachers, their training and the continuing professional development they receive are all better than they have ever been. Therefore, it concludes, the problem factor is the way schools are managed. But one does not imply the other.
It could be, for instance, that having councils run schools is not working as well as it could because they are under-resourced, as teachers union the EIS claims. Or because the efforts of councils to run a truly comprehensive state education system are being undermined – in Glasgow, say, by the flight of middle class families to schools outwith the city, or in Edinburgh by the high numbers opting for private schooling.
However, if it is accepted that there is a need for change, the commission argues that it should be thoroughgoing. That would mean radical change to the role of quangos such as Education Scotland, which inspects schools and has a quality improvement role, and reconsidering the role of the Scottish Qualifications Authority. Schools should be free to use the services of other providers of examinations, including potentially in he private sector, while the use of inspections should be reviewed - as there is no evidence they make a difference to performance.
The proposals are strongly supportive of the Scottish Government’s existing plans for giving headteachers greater autonomy and more direct funding to schools. But the commission goes significantly further in suggesting that schools should be free to seek support from a wide range of sources including the private sector and that school clusters could engage business managers to help run budgets.
For some, this will sound rather too like the kind of marketisation of the health service which has been deeply unpopular, particularly south of the border. As the commission admits, there would also be a significant impact on local democracy, breaking the link between what is done in schools and accountability at the ballot box. It is a risk the commission appears sanguine about - but it is a significant problem.
In this much, the commission is right. If the management of schools, and their budgets and the provision of educational support services is no longer to form part of a council’s role, the question arises about what councils are for This would be an opportune time, the report says, to look more broadly at the functions of councils and set out a positive vision for the future.
There is certainly a need to look at Scotland’s local authority structure and whether having 32 councils of such varied size is a model which has exhausted its usefulness.
How schools are best managed is nevertheless a different debate and there are positives and dangers in the commission’s proposals. Its report is a provocative contribution to that discussion, if not an entirely convincing one.
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