Teaching union calls for ambitious thinking, too much for politicians?

By the time you read this, Scotland’s largest teaching union will have launched its manifesto for the forthcoming Holyrood election.

The document, entitled ‘Stand Up with Us For Quality Education’, includes a number of policies to which the EIS wants political parties to commit, with the goal of improving the experiences of teachers and pupils all over the country.

There are, as you might expect, a few obvious headlines to focus on, but if you take the time to read the manifesto and IPRR analysis properly, and know enough about how the system works at present, you start to realise that this isn’t just a scattergun wish-list, or an attempt to nudge politicians a little closer to one or other preferred outcome: this is an argument for what would be a major rewiring of Scotland’s schools.

Why might such a fundamental transformation be needed? Well, how long have you got?

Speak to teachers these days and there’s a very good chance they’ll tell you of unmanageable workload, intolerable pressure, and the near impossibility of ‘getting it right for every child’. The term ‘pressure cooker’ is used to describe classrooms with concerning regularity, and the overall environment is becoming increasingly corrosive.

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Similar concerns are raised by parents every single day, especially if their children have additional needs or have suffered an incident of violence in school.

Scotland’s Children and Young People’s Commissioner has also spoken out, as have a long list of charities and campaign groups.

It’s important to understand that we didn’t arrive at this point as a result of any single wrong turn or unanticipated challenge. There was no big bang.

Instead, the problems have been compounding, slowly but inexorably, for years.

In no particular order, they include: the additional demands, poor resourcing, and horribly botched introduction of Curriculum for Excellence; the incredible increase in pupils with additional support needs; allowing teacher numbers to plummet and then failing to restore them; a lack of jobs, and respect, for vital support staff; the massive, continuing consequences of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat imposition of austerity; the impact of a wildly out of touch, incompetent, and at times hostile exam board that has never faced competition; near-constant, politically-driven and hugely disruptive policy churn; a seemingly endless list of broken promises, from class sizes to contact time and beyond; a deadly global pandemic; and the ongoing damage caused by Nicola Sturgeon’s ignorance, arrogance, and ‘I want to be judged on this’ rhetoric.

And that is not, by any stretch of the imagination, an exhaustive list.

The result is an education system that has become intolerable for many, and will feel that way for many more in the coming years unless a major change in direction can be secured.

Not so long ago, it looked like the current government might have the vision, and the guts, to pursue such a thing. The SNP launched a review of the key organisations overseeing the system, and another of the way in which qualifications and examinations are organised. They even announced something called a ‘National Discussion on Education’.

It pretty much all ended up being a sham, with anything that looked like serious change either kicked into the longest grass available or simply rejected outright. A rebrand of the failed SQA is underway, if you’re looking for a measure of progress and ambition.

After so much enthusiasm for change, and a feeling that this time, in the aftermath of the pandemic, a transformation might just be possible, the reality has been hugely deflating. Sadly, that feeling has also contributed to the existing pressures afflicting schools: hopelessness, it turns out, can be particularly devastating.

In that context, the scope of the EIS manifesto is notable.

Speaking to me before the launch, EIS General Secretary Andrea Bradley made it clear that the union’s proposals are not just about making things more bearable right now – they are also aimed at dramatically improving the experiences of teachers and pupils for the long term.

To do that, major investment would be required.

For example, the SNP previously promised to raise teacher numbers by 3500 (a promise it has broken) but analysis suggests that an increase of more than double that number would be needed to meet the EIS manifesto demands.

Slashing class sizes would also be dependent upon expanded facilities. A few new schools might even be needed.

As well as cash, we would also need to find a significant supply of that rarest of commodities: political courage.

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Cutting contact time for teachers is absolutely the right thing to do, but it can look counter-intuitive to many people.

Universal free school meals would inevitably be attacked as a giveaway to feckless parents or middle class voters, despite the obvious educational benefits of, and moral justification for, making sure that no child ever goes hungry in a Scottish school.

Even restoring teachers to early years settings would be a challenge, because it requires a quite fundamental, and long overdue, reassessment of the value of the sector.

But at this point, what’s the alternative?

We could go on as we have for years now, with politicians making and breaking promises to deliver relatively minor changes. If so, we’ll watch as the cracks in the system get wider, while more and more children fall through.

Or we could use the coming election as a catalyst to try something radically different, and start building the kind of education system our children actually deserve.

I know which of those options sounds more appealing to me.