In Nicola Sturgeon’s new memoir Frankly, out this week, Scotland’s former first minister admits she did not succeed in all she set out to do in education, adding “that is on me”.
However, Ms Sturgeon - who early in her tenure as first minister asked to be judged on whether Scotland eliminated the attainment gap - also defends her record on education.
She says it “has been much traduced” and that - while “I didn’t achieve nearly as much as I wanted to” - “programmes like the [Scottish] Attainment Challenge made a difference” and “the Scottish education system is not the failure that many claim”.
She also hits out at opposition politicians, as well as taking a swipe at councils, saying “many in the opposition ranks wanted me to fail and were prepared to do everything possible to ensure I did”.
Rationale for SNSAs
On opposition parties stymying her plans, she cites the example of the government’s plan to introduce what became known as SNSAs (Scottish National Standardised Assessments) in literacy and numeracy in primary schools, which were first announced in 2015, not long after Ms Sturgeon became first minister in November 2014.
The intention, she says, was to “monitor the progress of children” and “inject more rigour into the curriculum” in a bid to address Scotland’s declining performance in international education rankings.
There were, she writes, differing views about the reasons for the decline, with some arguing “international assessments were ill-suited” to the Scottish approach to education ushered in by Curriculum for Excellence - and others arguing that CfE, as well as the move away from “a rote approach to literacy and numeracy”, was behind the fall in the international league tables.
Ms Sturgeon (pictured at the Edinburgh International Book Festival yesterday) admits to having “some sympathy with the latter view, hence my introduction of standardised assessments”. But “the policy was undermined and frustrated at every turn”, she says.
She also references the shelving of the education bill in 2018, saying this was done to deliver on its main aim - more power for schools - more quickly but also to “deny the opposition the chance to frustrate the legislation”.
Ms Sturgeon, who was first minister from 2014 to 2023, writes: “For all the criticism I got on education, the other parties invariably sought to block our attempts at reform.
“The introduction of standardised assessments to monitor the progress of children at primaries 1, 4 and 7, intended to inject more rigour into the curriculum, was a case in point. The policy was undermined and frustrated at every turn. Many in the opposition ranks wanted me to fail and were prepared to do everything possible to ensure I did.”
Another blocker, according to Ms Sturgeon, was councils. She adds: “Moreover, while I could set education policy, delivery was in the hands of local authorities, who didn’t always want to play ball. Of course, none of this alters the fact that I did not succeed in all that I set out to do on school education - and that is on me.”
Identifying the right interventions was far from straightforward.
Setting aside the impact of the CfE - which she points out was “devised before the SNP entered government” - there were “more fundamental questions”, she says, including whether a “complacent” teaching profession was part of the problem.
She writes: “Was the comprehensive system itself the enemy of excellence? And, if so, how should that be addressed without compromising the principle of inclusion that it is based on? Did we have a teaching profession that had become too complacent and, therefore, resistant to challenge and innovation?”
‘Grasping at solutions’
Even after setting up the International Council of Education Advisers, Ms Sturgeon says she still often felt she was “grasping at ‘solutions’ that I hoped, rather than knew, would make a difference”.
Now, she says, she believes it is anti-poverty policies such as the Scottish Child Payment and the that “will have the biggest long-term impact on educational attainment” - as well as the expansion of early learning and childcare.
She says that over time she “came to understand that closing the poverty-related attainment gap is only possible if we do more to tackle poverty itself” and that the focus could not just be “on what happens in the classroom, but on improving children’s lives outside of school, and long before they get there”.
Ms Sturgeon writes: “So much of what a child achieves in school is influenced by the quality of the life they lead outside the classroom. Good education should be and often is life’s great leveller. But no school can ever completely eradicate the impact on a child’s life of growing up in material poverty. Tackling the underlying causes of educational under-attainment is therefore as vital as anything done inside the classroom.”
She also highlighted that efforts to help young people from “poorer backgrounds” to have “just as much chance of going to university as their wealthier peers” are .
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