PLANS to give more power to headteachers risks damaging the education of the most vulnerable pupils in Scotland, an influential body has warned.
The organisation that represents council education bosses said Scotland’s only self-governing state-funded school had already fallen foul of equalities legislation.
In 2014 Jordanhill School, in the west end of Glasgow, was found to have unlawfully discriminated against a pupil with special needs.
The school said they could not accept the boy, who was disabled and had dyslexia, because it could not afford to fund the levels of support required.
The Scottish Government is not suggesting schools could opt out of council control, but the Association of Directors of Education Scotland (Ades) used the example to highlight potential unintended consequences of more power to schools.
A response from Ades to the SNP’s consultation on reform states: “We are particularly concerned any increased decision-making at school level would be counter to the interests of disadvantaged and vulnerable children.
“Sometimes meeting additional support needs is expensive, requires specialist knowledge and expertise and may require external resources. In some cases additional staffing and specialist equipment may be required.
“The experience from elsewhere in the UK is that increased school autonomy has run counter to the interests of children with additional support needs... Jordanhill School was found in breach of the Equalities Act.”
Ades also warned moves to empower headteachers could place significant additional workload on schools.
The submission states: “Unnecessary burdens could be placed on headteachers, teachers and other colleagues distracting them from the key task of effective teaching.
“Any distraction... through increased administrative or wider managerial burden would therefore be a movement away from sound governance.
“Ades is particularly anxious any changes will impact on headteacher workload and exacerbate problems of headteacher recruitment.”
The response said passing “sole responsibility” to schools for the recruitment and selection of staff would be “unacceptable” because it restricted the ability to transfer staff.
Ades went on to challenge the assumption that Scotland’s declining performance in a recent international survey on standards was a justification for radical change.
The 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) concluded that Scotland’s performance was now “average”.
John Swinney, the Education Secretary, said Pisa underlined the case for radical reform of Scotland’s education system, but Ades said: “We do not believe the case for radical or fundamental change has been made.”
The submission concludes: “We agree with the Cabinet Secretary that the Pisa results make uncomfortable reading.
“However, they require detailed analysis and we should not be using these results alone to argue the case for significant reform.”
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