The SSTA supports the Government’s determination to bring about improvements in Education by ‘closing the attainment gap’ and giving all young people the opportunity to fulfil their potential. However, the SSTA has argued for a process of review followed by improvements rather than major structural change.

The Government has chosen to use its ‘Governance Review’ as the vehicle to look at the agencies and structures involved in education, but not the structures inside the school that support teaching and learning. Structure is only important insofar as it supports and nurtures teaching and learning in the pupil/teacher relationship.

Seamus Searson, SSTA General Secretary said “The SSTA expected the review to identify the following:

• A national body to develop teaching materials, resources and strategies to support teachers develop learning in secondary schools. This would prevent the duplication that takes place in every secondary school in Scotland.
• A review of school management structures that recognises and values the importance of subject specialism and focuses management on teaching and learning.
• Support systems provided by the Local Authority to remove tasks that do not require the skills and expertise of leaders of teaching and learning.
• Address the deepening crisis in retaining and recruiting teachers and headteachers in its schools. The Scottish Government needs to acknowledge that teachers working conditions and remuneration have failed to keep pace with the rapidly changing education environment. An urgent need for investment.
• Reject further delegation of responsibilities and funding to headteachers in schools as this will only worsen the headteacher recruitment crisis. Headteachers want to focus on leading learning and do not need to be forced into spending more time on bureaucracy and administration.
• The importance of Local Authority in managing the education system. The Local Authorities have the ability to bring together all local services to support pupils and their families in their journey through school. The Local Authority should play an important part in removing burdens and obstacles from teachers and headteachers and allow them to exert all their energies on learning.
• The need for Local Authorities to collaborate across Authority boundaries to ensure there are a sufficient number of teachers, headteachers and supply teachers in our schools. Good examples of collaboration would be a national supply teacher register, a joint recruitment strategy, developing leadership programmes, and a national professional development network for all education staff.
• The Inspectorate to focus its efforts upon Local Authorities. The Local Authorities should be the driving force for excellence in schools for all young people. The Inspectorate should seek naturally occurring evidence in the schools to support the work of the Local Authorities”.

“The SSTA accepts that ‘Education Governance: Next Steps’ has addressed many of these expectations but there are a number of areas that may have unintended consequences. Initial concerns are

• Further delegation to schools and headteachers may lead to a worsening of the headteacher recruitment crisis.
• The devolving of powers to schools should lead to a different dynamic in the running of the schools. The involvement of the school staff in the direction and decision making of the school will need to be developed.
• The measures to reduce the leadership role of local authorities in delivering education could remove the schools safety blanket and vital support systems.
• The introduction of regional bodies will assist some strategic issues but underestimates the difficulty in bringing together very different schools and local authorities. This may lead to another layer of bureaucracy and potential conflict.
• The proposals to involve parents in the managing of the schools assumes that this is a role to which they aspire. It is currently difficult to get parents involved in schools whereas the focus must be on parents being in partnership with the school to support their children’s learning.

Seamus Searson added “The SSTA will be looking thoroughly at the document in the coming months to ensure the proposals meet the test of improving education. But one important ingredient missing from the proposals is the large Government investment needed to bring about this change. This next step will fall on hard ground as this cannot be delivered by moving the existing education resource around.”

Further Information from

Seamus Searson
General Secretary

0131 313 7300

16 June 2017

The SSTA is disappointed to note that since 2012 Scotland’s scores for 15 year olds in the PISA assessments have dropped from ‘above average’ in reading and science to average, and have remained average in Maths.  While recognising that the ‘average’ standard is high among the large number of OECD countries assessed, Scotland has a long tradition of educational excellence and needs to realise its potential as a front-runner.

Behind the bare figures were a number of interesting responses from Scottish students relating to behaviour, relations with teachers and teacher feedback.  These made it clear that teachers in Scotland are well ahead of their OECD peers in the way that they maintain good order so that learning takes place.  Nearly 45% of students reported that their teacher ‘shows an interest in every student’s learning’ in ‘every lesson’ (compared with about 34% elsewhere), and reported much higher figures of receiving teachers feedback than other students across the OECD.  Reaching learning goals is also a strong feature of Scottish education, again with most pupils agreeing that they receive advice from their teachers more regularly than other OECD students.

Euan Duncan, SSTA President, said, “What we are looking for now is a period of stability.  All the changes that have taken place in recent years have added tremendously to the pressure on teachers and youngsters.  Furthermore, reductions in support staff and shortages of supply teachers have taken teachers away from their core function.  From students’ responses it is clear that there is no shortage of passion or commitment from teachers, and that they are working hard to develop the kind of positive ethos required for good learning to take place. There is no magic solution to improving the downward PISA performance trend, but good starting points will be to provide teachers with very clear aims and sufficient resources with which to achieve them.”

SSTA General Secretary, Seamus Searson, said, “These figures come as no surprise.  SSTA members have been concerned about the effect workload and assessment pressure are having on teachers and youngsters for a while which is why we are now engaged in industrial action.  We need to put pupils first and give teachers time to teach!”

Further information from:

Seamus Searson
General Secretary