Education

Sorry - this is for the Education group I'm in but feel free to read on!

The press in Scotland got itself worked up last week about school inspections, in particular about the fall in the number of inspectors employed by HMIe.

Just once, it would be good if the newspapers' so-called Education Correspondents could get a handle on what's going on in Scottish education. So let me put this reduction in numbers in context.

HMIe has always been a small group of people in Scotland - just 50 to 60 people. It has always been powerful and pretty secretive. I hesitate to use the expression a law unto itself, but I could. After local government reorganisation in 1996, a lot of pressure was exerted to get HMIe to disclose what it was they did and how they went about it. Local authorities wanted to know these things so their schools could be prepared. A lot of the information from HMIe up to this time seemed to consist of them telling us what they did not do, so when teachers and local authority advisers asked about HMIe sharing good practice, they were told: that's not what we do. That's a real shame, because you would think no one would be better placed than HMIe to know what good practice is out there in our schools.

After the Scottish parliament came into being, raising standards in schools became a big issue and it has been ever since. There was pressure on HMIe to do more and to be seen by schools, parents and local authorities to be doing more. So HMIe recruited more inspectors. As you would expect, some of them turned out to be good, some average, and a small number showed a definite lack of experience and expertise.

Employing a lot of inspectors (putting their numbers up to 80) at the top of the pay scale is expensive and even that number wasn't enough to meet the target HMIe had set itself for inspecting schools every 5 years. It became clear that there would have to be a change in how schools were inspected.

Local authority personnel, formerly called development officers and advisers, would have to be drafted in to do frontline 'quality' checks with schools before HMIe came in to do the 'real' inspections. Inspectors could then spend less time in a school, knowing that the basics had been put in place: self-evaluation, planning, curriculum development, staff development, etc.

The first big challenge was trust: HMIe had to trust local authority personnel to know their schools and to make sure schools were heading in the right direction. That meant making sure HMIe and local authorities were, in the jargon, 'singing from the same hymn sheet.' The sensible approach would have been for HMIe to re-train local authority staff to take on at least part of the inspection role, but somehow that never really happened in any coordinated way. Could it be that local authorities didn't trust HMIe not to brainwash their staff? Could it be that HMIe don't do staff development? Maybe they could have recruited a few people from among the local authority advisers who did know how to do staff development. That didn't  happen very much.

So local authorities went about it on their own.

Primary advisers in local authorities had a head start, since they had mostly been on the receiving end of inspection as headteachers and knew what to tell their colleagues.

With secondary advisers and development officers, it was quite different. Changing the job title of an adviser or development officer to 'Quality Improvement Officer' doesn't ramp up the credibility of the office holder. Secondary staff are deeply suspicious of the credentials of people who have no background in their subject area and thus don't understand the exam system or the pressures on their departments to get through the syllabus and get young people moving up through qualifications and then on to further and higher education. QIOs are dependent on the ability of the secondary headteacher to lead principal teachers and on the ability of principal teachers to lead their teachers. When it all works, it's a joy to behold and the benefits for young people are tremendous. When it doesn't...

Then came the council tax freeze and the end of the ring-fencing of education in Scotland. Local authorities had less money coming in from council tax and the compensation offered by the Scottish Government didn't meet the difference in funding. Ring-fencing education budgets might have protected schools through some of the bad years after 2008 but the end of ring-fencing meant councils could raid the education budget to make up for shortfalls in other areas.

This was a double whammy for schools and they have been suffering for it ever since. At a time when local authorities need more people working with schools to make sure they are handling inspection and CfE well and dealing well with the new exam system in secondary schools, QIO numbers are being reduced. There are fewer staff development opportunities than ever for teachers. In secondary schools, more and more curriculum development work is being passed on to teachers. The new exam system also puts more responsibility on teachers, with, for example, the school-based assignment at Higher being worth one third of the total marks, not to mention whole courses being school-based with no external assessment at all.

The winners here are:
1 the Scottish Government: the dumping of 5-14 and the existing secondary exam system and their replacement with CfE were never costed as far as I can see, but a lot of the work has been passed to teachers - and is done free of charge.
2 HMIe: their numbers are back to where they were but they have someone else to blame if schools are crap. HMIe are in total control of Education Scotland and, though that organisation,the exam system and the direction that staff development takes.

The losers? You're clever people - you can work out what I think.

BUT there is plus to all this: HMIe are now in charge of Scottish education - the exams and the
curriculum as well as inspection. Everything that goes wrong from now on can be laid at their door.

Can you see me smiling?