Grilling the MSPs

Tonight I will be attending the TESS (Times Educational Supplement Scotland) pre-election debate at the National Gallery in Scotland. With the Scottish elections approaching this is an opportunity to quiz Michael Russell, Education Secretary and his counterparts in Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrats and the Greens.

I haven’t had a chance to put any questions together but here’s a few topics I hope turn up:

-          the education budget is no longer ringfenced meaning there is a constant fight for funds

-          since the SNP announced that all three and four year olds should have ‘access to a nursery teacher’ local authorities saw this as the green light for getting rid of full time nursery teachers and instead making them floating positions with one nursery teacher covering several nurseries. This is despite evidence that children who have regular access to a nursery teacher do better in school.

-          the fact that the maximum class size promise has been abandoned

-          what is to be done about the low levels of literacy in Scottish schools. Children reaching secondary who can barely read and write

I shall report back tomorrow.

Class sizes

I don’t think it was a surprise to many when the TESS reported on January 7^th that 13 out of 32 councils have scraped the maximum 20-pupil class size target for early secondary English and maths. Despite the SNP's pre-election pledge to reduce class sizes in primary schools, it has never materialised with the goal posts having been moved.

We would all like smaller classes. It’s a nice idea, but in my opinion there is much more to worry about. Good quality teaching and children who can be disciplined are much more important factors. Speaking to teachers who have been in the job for a long time, I am told that things are much worse nowadays and that discipline is a huge problem.

Now I have read the argument that in high achieving countries such as South Korea and Japan class sizes are large but that is hardly comparing like for like. The culture is different there and education is deemed more important by the vast majority of families. They also don’t have our behaviour problems.

There may be research which proves that class size does not impact on educational attainment, but we all know that research is not always accurate. What about common sense – the more chance a child has of receiving one to one, the higher the chance he will do well.