When writing about Scottish educational reform, it’s all too easy to slip into analogies of battlefields, repeatedly fought over for little purpose or gain. Instead of overrun redoubts and burnt-out tanks, the educational battlefield is littered with the wreckage of expert reports and proposals for reform and improvement.

Their authors have usually been drawn from the ranks of Scottish education’s officer class. Therein lies the problem. Like First World War generals, those directing operations have been too far behind the lines to be fully in touch with what was happening at the front.

As a former secondary head, I remember many of those centrally-driven reports from the past; the 1999 Guidelines on Flexibility in the Curriculum for example. The bright yellow cover gave rise to the nickname, the “yellow pearl”, more commonly s spelled “peril”.

The top-down reforms of the S5 and S6 curriculum, dubbed Higher Still, led to near mutiny in the ranks. As part of a wider industrial dispute, teachers engaged in guerrilla warfare, refusing to develop learning materials for the revised courses.

I and others, rightly warned the proposed assessment and certification arrangements were badly flawed. The subsequent 2000 exam fiasco led to the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) being described as “fundamentally negligent”.

Yet, lessons weren’t and still haven’t been learned. Change and supposed improvement continue to be centrally driven and implemented. The disappointing impact of Curriculum for Excellence came as no surprise.

Additionally, the effectiveness of the organisations charged with moving Scottish education forward has been limited. The SQA survived (just) the 2000 fiasco, but was holed below the water line. The performance of umbrella body, Education Scotland (ES), has faced similar strictures.

When Professor Ken Muir of The University of the West of Scotland, was invited to provide the Scottish Government with independent advice and propose “structural” and “functional change” for both SQA and ES, he could have been forgiven for thinking he’d been handed the educational equivalent of the “black spot” in Treasure Island.

His proposals for a new “super agency”, a National Agency for Scottish Education, have understandably, attracted most attention. Yet, it’s the title of Professor Muir’s report, “Putting Learners at the Centre”, that offers the prospect of more significant change. At long last, we have a report calling time on the failed top-down model and investing in the professionalism of teachers. As Professor Muir puts it, we need to shift to, “a bottom-up hierarchy”.

Professor Muir’s report challenges both the Scottish Government and Scotland’s teachers. Firstly, the government needs to break with control freakery and accept its centralising policies and actions have brought little improvement.

Secondly, teachers must have greater say in setting the direction of travel, for example through focusing unwaveringly on learning and developing the curriculum locally in ways that best meet the needs of their pupils and communities.

The challenge for Scotland’s teachers shouldn’t be underestimated. Professor Muir has consulted widely and is convinced that, “despite the past two years” they are “up for it”. He recognises additional demands cannot simply be superimposed on already heavy classroom commitments.

Scottish teachers already spend more time in the classroom than their European counterparts. If they are to assume greater responsibility for the design and improvement of the curriculum, learning and assessment, they need more time and space. Wasteful bureaucracy must be severely pruned. The proposal to restore the independence of the education inspectorate opens the door to more regular inspection, focusing on the quality and consistency of learning across all schools and classrooms.

Scottish education has gone down too many blind alleys and we can’t go on this way. Professor Muir’s report offers a different and more imaginative way ahead. Courage and an element of risk will be required to bring about transformational change and put learners at the centre. But, as WH Auden put it, “Look if you like, but you will have to leap”. Too many previous efforts have been diluted and quietly forgotten. For the sake of current and future learners, Professor Muir’s bold report mustn’t suffer the same fate.

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