Why Scotland's opposition parties should 'weaponise' education in fight against SNP

After listening to the Cabinet Secretary for Education, Jenny Gilruth, they wrote: “Ms Gilruth said that our education system in Scotland has not changed but our pupils have. Keen that education does not become weaponised in the future. We are asking education to do a lot and schools are now meeting more societal needs... compared to 20 years ago.”

Then, one minute later, came this: “Also wishes to incentivise young people to stay in education for as long as possible.”

All of this must, I imagine have caused teachers throughout Scotland to return to their long-established hobby of finding a wall and banging their heads off it.

READ MORE: Here are the 10 best performing primaries in Scotland according to a new report

A Two Ronnies sketch

It is, quite obviously, a load of meaningless verbiage. The first sentence reminded me of a long-ago sketch involving the Two Ronnies, in which R Barker as a scoutmaster, says to R Corbett as a scout: “Remember, it’s not the things you say and do that count, but the things you do and say.”

I mean, what does Ms Gilruth mean by saying our education system has not changed? Of course it has changed! Of the last 20 years – which she herself picks as a timeline – the SNP has been in power for 19 of them and the education system has changed greatly in almost every respect – curricularly, pastorally, behaviourally, and in terms of international ranking.

READ MORE: Inside the classroom of Scotland's most inspirational history teacher

None of these changes has been for the better. The emphasis for the last decade has been on something called ‘pupil wellbeing’, not on, say, learning, while of course our young people have become increasingly disenchanted with school, and indeed, in many cases, now choose not to go at all, with many staying off because they are stressed, anxious, scared or depressed.

While teachers’ pay has gone up considerably – a great triumph for the EIS – teacher satisfaction, recruitment and retainment are down.

READ MORE: Sarwar: Increase in campus police needed as children 'feel unsafe in school, at home and on the streets'

Blaming teachers

Of course, this happened in close proximity to the announcement that teachers were to get an extra 90 minutes of non-contact time to prepare high-quality lessons. For secondary teachers, that change would be established by… 2029.

Ms Gilruth, as May’s Scottish election approaches, has thrown a tiny bone to teachers: more free time, she asserts, will improve learning, because teachers will have more time to prepare. Again, what she’s really saying (cf. the Centre for Teaching Excellence) is that the crisis in Scottish schools will get better when teachers learn to deliver ‘quality lessons’.

The fault in Scottish schools lies with the teaching staff, not the Curriculum for Excellence, or the ‘presumption of mainstreaming’ all pupils or the expectation that teachers will cope with the explosion in additional support needs or the fact that violence is a day-to-day fact in some schools. Actually, if the SNP get re-elected, then teachers – those of them left by 2029 – may need an extra 90 minutes a week just to tend to their wounds.

A newly released document which accounts for the 20 ways (yes 20!) that the Scottish Government is improving ‘relationships and behaviour’ in Scottish schools is a masterclass in talking about nothing and hoping a bad thing – that big rough elephant in the corner of the classroom – will just disappear.

Endless committees consult and produce papers, safe at Holyrood or Cosla or Education Scotland, while teachers are sworn at, assaulted and off with stress, anxiety, fear and depression. Like pupil, like teacher.

The benefits of hard work

So – just to make sure we understand this – Ms Gilruth thinks that the Scottish education system has not changed under the SNP’s watch but the kids have. Again, really?

Obviously, as generation passes to generation, we change: my generation of schoolchildren didn’t have social media; they were, in the main, responding to a different parenting style and teachers tended to tell them things and worry a bit less about their ‘wellbeing’. But, essentially, today’s young people know, like we did, that working hard at school represents the best way to get on in life, even if it may be more difficult for them to see how that works.

And… just one other thing, I don’t imagine that anyone will fail to understand why the Cabinet Secretary is keen that education doesn’t become ‘weaponised’. There’s an election coming, and in the armoury of issues about which opposition parties, right and left, can criticise the SNP government, the biggest gun is education. I can just hear the croaking of the SNP candidates – ‘the Labour party/Tories/Lib Dems/Reform are weaponising the future of our baaairns.’

Well, if schools do need to meet a greater number of societal needs than 20 years ago (and that’s true), whose fault is that? Some of the blame must lie, of course, with some parents, and some with Covid, but most with the relentless onslaught of initiatives – so loathed in practice by Actual Teachers in Actual Classrooms – which have scarred schooling in Scotland for the past two decades.

As we wait for parties to publish their manifestos, I sincerely hope that those doing the writing will be polishing the education missiles, for the SNP’s abject failures in education are their most obvious target.

Whether the electorate will manage to break their obsession with health, the cost of living and the faraway vision of independence remains to be seen, but please let’s try to defend the interests of our young people, for everything else will, in time, depend on them.

Cameron Wyllie is a retired headmaster. He writes a blog called A House in Joppa and hosts the podcast, Two Heads are Better than One, with Rod Grant