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Contents
Covering letter (pdf
format)
Introduction
Theme 1: Coping with Change and Uncertainty
Theme 2: Engaging with Ideas
Theme 3: Keeping Everyone Involved with Learning
Theme 4: Promoting a Sense of Identity
Theme 5: Developing Necessary Skills
Theme 6: Fitting Structure to Purpose
INTRODUCTION
The Education, Culture and Sport Committee of the Scottish
Parliament is encouraging a debate about the purposes of Scottish
education. The Scottish Executive is encouraging a parallel
debate. The Executive is responsible for education policy and
will be encouraging people to discuss a wide range of issues
which are important to a long-term strategy for education. The
Committee wants to build on that by provoking debate in more
depth on key issues about the future of education. The Committee
wants to develop its practical vision for Scottish education,
to inform its scrutiny of all education issues in future and
to bring into the public domain the wide range of positive thinking
about education that exists in Scotland. The Committee and the
Executive will be working in parallel to stimulate debate on
education in all groups with an interest, locally and nationally.
This paper is intended to provoke discussion and comment. It
outlines six themes which are important in debates about what
education is for, not just in Scotland but in many other places.
Under each theme, there is a key question, a short description
of the context of that question, and a list of some current
issues raised by the question. Comments are invited on these
six questions, or on any other themes which people would like
to raise with the Committee. The six themes are:
Theme 1: Coping with Change and Uncertainty
Theme 2: Engaging with Ideas
Theme 3: Keeping Everyone Involved with Learning
Theme 4: Promoting a Sense of Identity
Theme 5: Developing Necessary Skills
Theme 6: Fitting Structure to Purpose
Overall key question
Is there a need in a rapidly changing world for radical change
in the education system?
Context
The context for this debate is the sense that the world is
changing rapidly, and a belief that education has to prepare
people for this while also going through profound change itself.
Scottish education has many significant successes to its credit,
and has made a great deal of progress in the last few decades.
It has become more flexible and more inclusive while remaining
true to its strongest traditions. These successes reflect the
enormous amount of hard work put in by students, teachers and
parents. But Scottish education, like all education systems
at present, needs to change. Globalisation of the economy and
of culture may make old ways of looking at the curriculum out
of date. New understandings of how people learn raise questions
about how teaching is organised. The ideas of children's rights
and parents' rights pose serious challenges to how schools are
organized and a growing emphasis on leadership is evident in
the debate about management systems. There has been a new concern
with quality measurement in the last two decades, which has
made education more transparent, but has also led to a growth
in the bureaucracy which surrounds schools and narrowed the
focus of the curriculum towards those achievements that are
most easily measured. At the same time, education is increasingly
being seen as part of a broader strategy for helping people
develop to their fullest potential. Supporting families in
helping their children thrive and learn during their earliest
years is part of that effort. The coming of the Scottish Parliament
is raising important issues about how policy is made for education.
These and many other topics require a wide public discussion
before their implications for policy and practice can be decided.
Scottish education is able to think well about next steps but
less well about developing a vision for the longer-term. The
Committee hopes that the debate which it is encouraging will
be about the 'middle distance'. The intention is not to ask
for comments on immediate issues of current concern: the aim
is to think in a more visionary way. This is not to say that
the debate should be about abstract matters; it should feed
into real policy development over the next decade.
In summary, the debate is about developing a practical vision
for Scottish education.
Theme 1: Coping with Change and
Uncertainty
Key question
How can the education system help children and young people
to cope with high levels of uncertainty and the rapid pace of
change?
Context
Many important ideas on educational purpose have been largely
constant over centuries but need to be reinterpreted from time
to time and place to place in the light of circumstances. Continuous
rapid change is the defining circumstance of the moment. Its
speed, profound impact and global application are critical factors.
Enabling people to cope with such change must be a major purpose
of the education system. Coping with continuous change requires
new learning strategies.
Some current issues
• People must be able to deal with problems which do not
have definite answers and live with diversity without becoming
unsettled. Coping with change is as much a cultural and psychological
phenomenon as a matter of acquiring new skills to meet the needs
of changing circumstances at work and in other aspects of life.
How can education ensure that people have the cultural and personal
resources to deal with change?
• Change affects education itself. It could be argued
that education has not yet been much affected by the knowledge
age, and yet is expected to prepare its students for living
with change and uncertainty. For example, although ICT has had
some impact, education has not been transformed by it in the
same way as, say, banking and financial services. Should and
can education undergo large scale change, whether in response
to ICT or for other reasons?
• There are possibilities for new means of funding, managing
and governing education. What should the roles of parents, teachers
and the local community be in governing schools? How should
their roles relate to the role of the elected local authority
and to the national level?
• Education is itself a force for change in society. So
the debate has to be as much about the kind of society we want
as the changes we would like to see in education. What are the
goals which Scottish society is now setting for itself, and
how should education help to achieve these goals? Are the current
links among education, industry and commerce appropriate?
Theme 2: Engaging with Ideas
Key question
How far should education encourage children and young people
to be capable of engaging with existing knowledge and developing
innovative ideas as the basis for questioning authority and
social conventions?
Context
Education is normally held to have a socialising role. This
is most often stated in terms of promoting a strong, homogeneous
society. It has also frequently been given an economic dimension:
education is seen as critical to national prosperity in the
knowledge age.
But education is also about promoting citizenship. This has
to do with sustaining democratic society, and involves both
challenge and dissent. It is essentially about promoting a critical
dialogue between the individual good citizen and a listening
society.
Some current issues
• The individual can contribute only on the basis of well-informed
thoughts. Therefore education has to engage with ideas and values
and has to develop intellectual capacity. Does Scottish education
do this adequately? Are these objectives consistent with the
current emphasis on assessment?
• Developing well-informed thinking requires depth of
study as well as breadth. How can both of these be achieved?
• Should education be seen as an end in itself? Another
way of putting this is to ask whether living the life of an
educated person could be itself a key purpose in life.
• These views could challenge traditional institutions.
Can and should our schools be more "democratic"? What
are the implications for school management and curriculum?
• Equally, however, the idea of education for citizenship
challenges extreme child-centredness because it links the right
to be heard to the possession of appropriate knowledge, understandings
and personal qualities. In other words, this view tends to portray
the period of initial education as a kind of apprenticeship
to society. Is this an appropriate view of the role of education?
Theme 3: Keeping Everyone Involved
with Learning
Key question
Is what we are currently doing in schools an adequate proxy
for what we think education ought to do?
Context
Many individuals and groups feel alienated from society, including
from the democratic process itself. Large minorities of young
people are alienated specifically from learning and education
and children from poor families and deprived communities continue
to face greater obstacles to educational success. Such obstacles
and alienation exist alongside the successes of Scottish education:
while a majority now makes significant progress through education,
the minority which does not make that progress feels increasingly
isolated. Even for the successful students, an unstimulating
curriculum, the pressure of competition and the need to concentrate
on gaining qualifications that may lead to worthwhile employment
can leave little time for less structured or less academic types
of learning or, indeed, for those intellectual pursuits that
are not formally assessed.
Some current issues
• Despite some attempts to match resources to needs, poverty
and disadvantage remain strongly correlated with educational
failure. Is this a problem that education can tackle on its
own? What other measures should society take to try and ensure
comparability of outcome for young people from all backgrounds?
• Scotland shares a common problem that some adolescent
males are deeply alienated from school. This has sometimes been
called the culture of 'laddism'. How can this be challenged?
• Despite the great advances which female students have
made in Scottish education in recent decades, a minority of
young women is still not well served by existing provision.
How can the disadvantages that continue to be faced by some
women be overcome?
• Some of this alienation underpins the pervasive drug
culture. How can the promotion of well-being - including health
- be incorporated into formal education?
• The full variety of Scotland's multicultural society
is not yet being addressed, and thus many schools alienate young
people who are not part of the majority cultures. The extreme
form of this is racism, which Scottish education is only now
beginning to address fully in practice. How can education help
Scotland to appreciate and live with diversity?
• The reasons for these many different kinds of alienation
perhaps lie in a failure of attitudes to keep pace with social
change (which is obviously an instance of failure to cope with
change in general) and - in the case of adolescence - the failure
of an ever-extending period of education to inspire and engage.
How can education be made appealing to young people in worthwhile
ways?
• Confidence and autonomy provide part of the motivation
to learn, and are promoted best by a system which is responsive
to individual needs. How can learners be encouraged to develop
self-confidence and to exercise choice in a mature way?
Theme 4: Promoting a Sense of
Identity
Key question
Is there something distinctive and special about the way that
Scotland should respond to change?
Context
Acceptance of an identity is a beginning point for personal
development, and so promoting a sense of identity is an important
role for education. A strong sense of community identity is
also essential to building cultural capital - the reservoir
of knowledge and capacities which can be passed on between the
generations. In a multi-cultural society, the notion of 'coherent
variety', or managing diversity in a respectful and inclusive
manner, is crucial. In Scottish terms, this involves regional,
Scottish, British, European and global dimensions, but the exact
balance among all of these is not easy to find.
Some current issues
• Culture is partly about shared heritage. What is that
heritage? Does education have a responsibility for passing it
on? How is the heritage changed by the inclusion of new cultures
from outside Scotland, and by the adaptation of old Scottish
cultures to a changing world?
• How should the education system relate to Scotland's
British inheritance? Is Britishness weakening, is it taking
on new forms, and what should the role of education be in any
changes in the relationship between Scottish and British identities?
• This inclusion of new cultures might be done in a different
way in each country, and so Scotland's form of multi-culturalism
might be different from that elsewhere. What - if any - should
these differences be?
• Culture is also about accommodating initiative. How
can dissent and critical thinking be built into a shared heritage?
What does education have to do to encourage the valuing of critical
thinking throughout society?
• The global questions about educational purpose need
to be expressed in contemporary and local terms. What difference
does the Scottish context make? What are the key traditions
in Scotland that allow us to respond to global change?
• On the other hand, how does contemporary Scotland need
to change to support an appropriate education system? What Scottish
traditions impede our responding adequately? Are some of these
traditions difficult for us to give up?
Theme 5: Developing Necessary
Skills
Key question
What skills are needed to make sense of large amounts of information,
and to bring them together into a coherent response to change?
Context
Despite different views on the overall purposes of education,
there is a large measure of consensus on necessary skills and
the importance of establishing the highest of standards. What
is often lacking is a coherent explanation of how these skills
relate to educational purposes.
Some current issues
• Basic skills are usually seen as literacy, numeracy
and ICT, but some consideration of the nature of these skills
is necessary. Do the demands of new technology require advanced
information handling and critical thinking skills as much as
practical technological skills? Are there other skills which
should be recognized as being of comparable importance?
• Information handling is a necessary basis for critical
thinking, but that does not mean that developing the skills
of critical thinking can or should be postponed until after
basic skills are acquired. Is there a risk that the current
strong emphasis on the acquisition of basic literacy and numeracy
skills may be demotivating, particularly for low achievers?
• Critical thinking requires a range of higher order skills.
These include problem solving skills, communication skills and
a range of inter-personal and cooperation skills. Some of these
take the form of the full development of numeracy and literacy
- for example, the ability to use language effectively to understand
complex statistical ideas. Understanding and discussing statistics
is an example of basic skills being inseparable from higher
order skills. How can the higher order skills be developed without
displacing the necessary attention to basic skills?
• The extent to which the higher order skills are genuinely
transferable between contexts is open to debate. Learning has
to be about something. How far should learning be about gaining
factual knowledge? How far should it be about developing the
skills needed to interpret that knowledge?
• In a changing world the skills of managing one's own
further learning are obviously significant. How important is
learning how to learn? How can these learning skills best be
developed?
• There is always a risk that education is seen in terms
that are too narrowly drawn. Is there a danger that in the pursuit
of skills we pay insufficient attention to the artistic, emotional
and imaginative aspects of individual development?
Theme 6: Fitting Structure to
Purpose
Key question
Are schools the right places for all young people?
Context
Part of the process of change involves challenges to deeply
ingrained assumptions within the education service. Education
is still largely undertaken in the period before working life
and it is undertaken in three largely separate age-segregated
types of institution (primary, secondary, tertiary). It is also
managed in ways that are founded, perhaps unconsciously, on
so-called "principles" culled from outmoded, industrial
models. There is a need to articulate our management thought
more clearly, comparing it critically with cutting-edge thought
and practice at an international level.
Some current issues
• In the Scottish context, challenging these assumptions
involves a constructive reappraisal of the concept of the comprehensive
school. What kind of reappraisal of the structure of comprehensive
schooling should Scotland undertake?
• Can this reappraisal be undertaken while maintaining
the principles of equity and social justice which underlie Scotland's
strong and persistent support for comprehensive schooling?
• In structural terms, we are seeing in Scotland a blurring
of the divide between secondary school and further education,
encouraged by Higher Still. Is this desirable? What are its
long-term implications? Should there be other kinds of provision
for students at ages 16-18?
• There is also a questioning of the lack of continuity
between primary and secondary, with particular attention to
the dip in progress which pupils experience in the first couple
of years of secondary. Problems at this stage of schooling have
been identified in Scotland for many decades. What can be done
to overcome them?
• In some parts of the UK, the development of specialist
schools and an increase in the number of faith schools have
been proposed as ways of tackling the perceived inadequacies
of the comprehensive system. How should Scotland react to these
ideas?
• More dramatically - and in the slightly longer term
- structures may be revolutionised by the impact of on-line
learning. Does this challenge the traditional concept of school?
• Are the purposes of education constant at all stages
of education, or should they alter with the age of the learners?
Does this suggest that education up to puberty needs to be age-segregated
even if the subsequent structural boundaries might be outmoded?
• Should pre-school provision be seen as a preparation
for primary in terms of social mixing and developing life skills
rather than mainly a preparation for reading and number work?
Conclusion
This debate must not just be about what to do next. Scotland
needs to look into the future and think about the kind of education
system it will need ten, twenty or more years from now. What
changes should we be making now to help us meet those future
needs?
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