24 January 2025

Are Scotland and England swapping places on education?

As Labour rolls back academy freedoms, Scottish parties are showing interest in a different approach.

Photo shows Education Secretary Jenny Gilruth during a visit to Stonelaw High School in Rutherglen, Scotland. — Photo by PA/ Alamy

For some years now, education reformers in Scotland have looked towards the English state school system with something like envy.

The academy model introduced by Tony Blair and further developed by Michael Gove has had a significantly positive impact on performance. The combination of school autonomy, supportive clusters and the focus on a knowledge-based curriculum have all helped England climb the international charts – it now comfortably outperforms the other nations of the UK.

There is, therefore, puzzlement at the Labour government’s plan to rein in aspects of academy freedoms in its Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, specifically around pay and conditions, the curriculum and teacher qualification status. Tory critics of the bill may be overstating its likely impact, but Kemi Badenoch has a point when she says it will wreck “a cross-party consensus that lasted for decades”. There are also those on the Labour side of the aisle publicly voicing their concerns (such as Blairite MP Siobhain McDonagh).

The Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson appears to have been taken by surprise by the scale of the backlash, and No 10 is said to be unhappy with how the politics are playing out. Phillipson has already been forced to agree to an amendment that would water down proposed restrictions on what schools can pay teachers (setting a “floor” rather than a “ceiling”).

It’s hard to disagree with Dan Moynihan, CEO of the education charity Harris Federation, who told MPs: “It’s not clear what problem this is solving. I’ve seen no evidence that academy freedoms are creating an issue anywhere – why are we doing this?” The bill feels like an ideological attempt to centralise control, when it is schools’ very autonomy that has been the engine of their success.

In Scotland, ambitious headteachers look at the freedoms afforded by the academy model and drool. They must instead operate within a system that gives them precious little scope to innovate and that remains firmly in the grip of local authority, central government and trade union control. No governing politician has been brave enough to face down the McBlob – in fact, the SNP abandoned an attempt in 2018 to give heads more autonomy in the face of opposition from the usual vested interests.

This cowardly approach leaves victims in its wake. For decades, Scottish children have passed through a system that simply fails too many of them. The 2023 Pisa study found pupil performance in maths and science continuing to decline, a trend that has gone unaddressed for far too long.

One of the major problems has been the national curriculum that all schools are expected to follow, known as the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE). Most teachers of my acquaintance find that CfE manages to be vague, confusing and limiting, and that the emphasis it places on “pupil-centred learning” and the acquiring of “skills” does not amount to a successful template for effectively educating the nation’s young.

The braver heads have often had to go against the grain in order to achieve success. One such example is Bruce Robertson, the rector of Berwickshire High School. In a paper published this week by Reform Scotland, the think tank I run, Robertson explains how, by instituting a knowledge-based curriculum, he took his school from “weak” and “unsatisfactory” in his school’s inspection to one recognised as sector-leading in just four years.

The paper notes the important role played by a commitment to rote learning and the committing of facts and theoretical ideas to memory – it stresses “the importance of structured knowledge and the ways in which that knowledge is retained, retrieved, and applied as skills”.

This is what Robertson put into practice in his school. On taking over, he had found that “learning was often disjointed and fragmented. Sometimes, there was unnecessary repetition of content; other times, things that people might assume would be taught in a school weren’t being taught at all. Because teachers felt they were being left in the dark with regards to what they should be teaching, lesson time was often being filled with tasks that were good for keeping students busy… but which weren’t particularly good for learning.”

His measures included focusing on the specific content that should be taught in each lesson. Very quickly, exam results soared.

Robertson doesn’t argue that his approach should be mirrored exactly by every other school in Scotland, but the broad principles are surely transferrable. There are certainly lessons for those politicians charged with deciding educational policy, and those currently in opposition who wish to be in charge. As the paper states, the experience of Berwickshire High School shows how the general ideas underpinning a “knowledge-based and content-rich” curriculum can be implemented.

Where does that leave us? As England seems to be moving backwards, there are signs, perhaps, that Scotland might be ready to take a step forward. The SNP Education Secretary Jenny Gilruth, a former teacher, has a hint of the radical about her and is known to be unhappy with what might be called the “progressive” approach taken towards schooling north of the border, given its undeniably poor outcomes. Scottish Labour seems keen to develop a robust approach to improving performance, although, as with so much else, the details have yet to be provided. Both the Tories and Lib Dems are showing interest in a change of direction.

As the 2026 Holyrood election draws ever closer, the underperformance of Scottish education will be one of the hot-button issues. It has to be. And it is a test political leaders cannot afford to fail.