The History of Scottish Education since Devolution

Donald Gillies

'The Scottish Parliament, adjourned on the 25th day of March in the year 1707, is hereby reconvened.' With these suitably dramatic words from Winnie Ewing at the opening session on 1 July 1999, political power formally returned to Scotland under the devolution settlement. Winnie Ewing's role was probably apt because, in some ways, it was her Scottish National Party (SNP) victory in the Hamilton by-election of 1967 which can be seen as the source of the subsequent decades of struggle for devolution and home rule for Scotland. While the referendum of 1979 had resulted in a narrow majority in favour of devolution, the margin was insufficiently wide to meet the electoral requirements of the time. The election of the Labour Government in 1997 produced a further referendum which resulted in a convincing victory for those supporting devolution: 74 per cent voted in favour of de-volution, with 64 per cent voting in favour of the second question on tax-varying powers.

While the devolution settlement marked a significant shift in political structure, it should be remembered that Scottish education - along with the church and the law - had never been integrated into a British system, remaining separate for the duration of the union of Parliaments. However, what did alter hugely was that, rather than be the subject of policy and legislation at Westminster, where Scottish Members of Parliament (MPs) were always a small minority, Scottish education would now be governed from a Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. As one of the two key devolved areas alongside health, education became a major focus for political debate and public engagement and it was significant that the first Act of the new Scottish Parliament should be focused on education: the Standards in Scotland's Schools etc. Act of 2000.

Since 1999, the Scottish Parliament has had only two forms of government, essentially: the elections of 1999 and 2003 saw the formation of a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition 'Execu-tive'; the election of 2007 resulted in a minority SNP Govern-ment, followed by a majority one in 2011, but returning to a minority government from 2016. There has been, therefore, some degree of continuity and, as the nature of coalition and minority government would suggest, a relatively conservative agenda throughout. There have been two major changes only during the whole period as far as school education is concerned: the first was the development of Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) from 2004, and the second the introduction of the National Improvement Framework from 2015. Other education issues which have had the biggest impacts are the increasing role and scale of nursery and early years' provision, the inclusion agenda, the mergers of further education colleges and the continued commitment to free tuition fees in the tertiary sector.

CURRICULUM CHANGE

At the advent of devolution, the school curriculum was somewhat fragmented with the 5-14 arrangements guiding primary and lower secondary years; Standard Grade for S3 and S4; and a range of courses governing the upper secondary: Access, Inter-mediate, Higher, Advanced Higher. In the private sector, A levels and the International Baccalaureate featured highly. Prior to 1999, provision for early education and childcare was not subject to national curriculum guidelines, a situation that was to change markedly in the decades since.

A number of factors combined which led to the creation of proposals for a 3-18 curriculum. There was dissatisfaction from various groups, including parents, at the lack of cohesion and consistency across the different ages and stages: at 5-14, grading was from A to E (Level F was a later addition); at Standard Grade it was from Level 7 to Level 1; while in the upper school the grading was ranked from D to A. In addition to the lack of structural coherence, there was concern about the 'cluttered' nature of the primary curriculum, the lack of connections across learning, about the role and power of assessment and certification within the system, at problematic variations introduced by secondary schools and local authorities where courses for older students were adapted for earlier use, and at the perennial issue of giving due place to vocational courses. In 2002, the then Scottish Executive launched a National Debate on education which had a wide range of public engagement opportunities and, in its wake, created a review group to identify the purposes of education 3 to 18 and principles for the design of the curriculum (Scottish Executive, 2004, p.7).

The somewhat chequered progress of Curriculum for Excellence has been catalogued in previous editions of Scottish Edu-cation. However, from a current perspective it is possible to identify three principal factors which contributed to its uneven and contested implementation or enactment. The first, and most damaging, factor was that the original proposals were never subject to professional consultation: the Scottish Executive of the day approved the proposals immediately in their entirety without there being any further public or professional engage-ment. Thus, teachers, upon whose commitment and expertise the success of the development depended, were never involved until such time as expected to bring it to life in the classroom.

Secondly, it seems clear now that there was insufficient professional advice, development and support for practitioners as they grappled with what was a significant shift in curriculum philosophy and design. The recent dips in performance identified in the Scottish Survey of Literacy and Numeracy (SSLN) may well be linked to problems at the outset of implementation such as those around the interpretation of 'active learning' and related uneven practice (Drew and Mackie, 2011). The fact that the curriculum was implemented piecemeal from the early years onward, also meant that secondary teachers were relatively detached for some years, and the teacher workforce as a whole never fully engaged collectively with the development. The third damaging factor was that the original review group was only tasked with identifying principles and purposes of the curricu-lum: curriculum content and assessment were not considered at this point. Instead, the eight 'curriculum areas' emerged unheralded in the months following, while the assessment ar-rangements, certainly for secondary schools, took years to be outlined. This created a fractured and unsatisfactory model (Priestley and Humes, 2010).

Some revision of the detail of Curriculum for Excellence took place in the light of teacher unrest over workload. In the summer of 2016, the Cabinet Secretary, John Swinney, brought forward with Education Scotland and Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) proposals to streamline the use of experiences and outcomes documentation - notoriously extensive - and to reduce internal assessment at the senior phase of the secondary school.

In the light of concern about SSLN results, however, the government had already produced proposals for national assessment to be introduced at P1, P4, P7 and S3 stages. As these form part of the National Improvement Framework, these issues will be considered in more detail below.

Given the traditional gestation period for curriculum development in Scotland and the truncated lifespan of policy once eventually implemented, one can assume that within the next five years another major revision will be forthcoming.

A further feature of curriculum since devolution has been its ever-expanding nature. Schools have increasingly been seen as sites where all issues of social welfare can be addressed and so, in addition to the curricular areas of CfE, have also come a whole number of other issues requiring teacher attention. This can be seen at the most strategic level with the importance given to health and wellbeing within the curriculum itself, but also have come expectations that schools will address such issues as healthy eating, physical activity, two extra languages, bullying, drug and alcohol abuse, racism, social cohesion, cyber safety and personal hygiene. All of these can be seen as worthy and important but, as it is rare for the inspectorate or local authorities to tell schools to drop anything from the curriculum, it is becoming increasingly difficult for schools to find the time to cover all that is required of them. While imaginative approaches to interdisciplinary activity can assist, it still remains a challenge for schools to give due attention to all that is expected of them.

LEGISLATION