What are the possibilities for children in Scotland over the next five years? A glance through the political parties’ manifestos gives us a snapshot of their policies.
Scotland’s current overarching education plan, drawn up by the SNP, is the Curriculum for Excellence. It is a progressive approach to education that gives teachers broad guidelines and a significant amount of freedom to plan independently at the classroom level. This differs greatly to England’s National Curriculum, which contains specific subject by subject guidelines with their own programmes of study. These represent quite different philosophical orientations to teaching and learning.
From the years of SNP governance from 2007 to the present, attitudes to schools, families, and social care in Scotland are rooted in a progressive philosophy. England’s education and care culture under Tory dominance was informed by a traditional philosophy from 2010-2015 under the Coalition government, moving much further down the traditional path from 2015-2024 under a Conservative government.
Manifesto headlines
All parties apart from Reform refer to an expansion of breakfast clubs and more free hours of pre-school childcare.
There is a focus on post-compulsory education from all parties, with a leaning towards more apprenticeships and practical routes into work. Labour, Conservatives, and SNP pledge to retain free higher education (HE) tuition; Reform and the Greens do not explicitly refer to HE funding at all.
All parties apart from the Greens outline an emphasis upon guiding a greater number of young people into Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths (STEM) careers, pledging a sharper focus upon ‘employability’.
Labour and the Greens put an emphasis on the availability of mental health support in schools,while Labour and the SNP mention the advisability ofonline learning expansion, implied for the later years of schooling onwards.
All parties except SNP suggest alterations to the Curriculum for Excellence, with a clear left-right/liberal-authoritarian pattern emerging.
Party by party
The Scottish Labour manifesto sets out the following:
- An emphasis upon supporting families within the Labour manifesto. This includes reducing the costs and flexibility of childcare, including holiday clubs for older children, introducing breakfast clubs in all primary schools and extending eligibility for free school dinners.
- Improvements in pastoral services in schools, increasing mental health support in schools, and the differentiation of mental health problems and neurodivergence. Family Network hubs focusing on parent support will be set up in primary schools.
- A promise to review the ‘fragmented and often confusing curriculum’, to introduce national targets for numeracy and literacy, to introduce a National Behaviour Charter, and to invest in the advancement of e-learning.
- The provision of funding for 2000 more ‘education recovery’ teachers, 1500 more classroom assistants and, in tertiary education, the provision of funding for 9000 new Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths (STEM) apprenticeships.
The Scottish Greens’ manifesto sets out the following:
- Universal free childcare will be guaranteed from six months to starting school, including onsite childcare in colleges and large employers.
- A promise to ensure play-based early years education, and to raise the school starting age.
- Free school meal provision will be extended.
- The cost of secondary school uniforms will be capped.
- There will be extra investment in e-learning, and national qualifications will be ‘broadened’.
- There will be more focus on general training for Additional Support Needs (ASN). Additional ASN teachers and mental health counselling will be made available in all schools.
- The National Youth Work Strategy will be updated and improved.
The SNP manifesto sets out the following:
- The provision of 52 weeks of free childcare from nine months to the end of primary school.
- A ‘school bag’ with a range of stationery will be provided to children starting school.
- There will be funding for more ASN teachers and teaching assistants, and an improvement in inclusivity in schools.
- A focus on introducing positive learning behaviour policies in schools.
- A school building/building improvements policy.
- Funding for the expansion of online learning.
- A single National Skills plan for Scotland, including the introduction of an apprenticeship ‘accelerator’ grant.
The Scottish Conservative’s manifesto sets out the following:
- 1140 hours a year of funded childcare for children of nine months and over.
- Breakfast clubs for primary school children.
- ‘Raising school standards’ with more autonomy for head teachers to exclude children whose behaviour impacts on other children’s learning.
- A major focus on education for business and training for work in general.
- Funding for 1000 new classroom assistants and extra pay for teachers to host after-school clubs.
- Replacing the SNP’s Curriculum for Excellence with a ‘Curriculum for Aspiration’ that puts an emphasis on using Systematic Synthetic Phonics to teach reading, and the introduction of ‘Check-in’ tests at P1, P4, and S1; exams to become the ‘primary method of assessment’.
- Encouragement for the initiation of grant-aided schools.
- A National Youth Work strategy.
- The creation of a “future framework for sustainability and success of Scotland’s universities”, but will continue to offer free tuition in the next parliament.
- Boosting college funding through a ‘skills bill’ and encouragement for the formation of relationships between employers and FE/HE.
The Reform Scotland manifesto sets out the following:
- A significant pay rise for senior teachers.
- Education Scotland to be abolished and responsibility for education to be returned to the Scottish Government.
- Special needs provision to be reformed (no details).
- Head teachers to manage their school budgets and school staffing, and to take on the responsibility of maintaining discipline in the classroom “by using exclusion as an essential tool”.
- Reboot the Curriculum for Excellence “by giving it a knowledge-based curriculum at its core” – an emphasis upon literacy, numeracy, and exam-based assessment.
- Allow all secondary schools to apply for self-governance.
- Further education to be based on apprenticeships, adult reskilling, and “youth entrepreneurship”; fewer young people to enter university and more to be directed “into trades via technical colleges”.
Reflection
As a retired academic and educator with many years of experience in all sectors, and as a heritage Scot who was educated and taught in England, my view of the above is naturally tempered by what I know about my parents’ and grandparents’ education and my own experience.
While I can see that the current Curriculum for Excellence was a great leap forward, I also understand that young teachers, in particular, may find the lack of direction within it somewhat challenging. Much rests on the support and guidance they can call upon from more senior teachers and the head teacher within the relevant school.
Frequently, what is not said in a manifesto is a useful pointer to the holistic view of children and education of the party concerned.
Many of the Greens’ ideas would add a new and positive perspective to Scottish education, such as play-based learning in the early years and the rise in school starting age. I have written about this in the Scottish education document ‘Play is the Way’.
Their drive for inclusion and mental health support for young people is also very welcome. I would, however, be further reassured by more detail on specifics on the ethos of daily practice within schools, and funding intentions for further and higher education.
Labour and the Conservatives in many ways reproduce the ideas they took into England’s state education system – Labour from 1997-2010 and Conservatives from 2010-2024 – so voters wanting to know more about this could productively consider the history of education south of the border between these periods. Broadly, both would introduce a more exacting curriculum and national testing regime, and the Conservatives would look to privatise school management in the manner in which they imposed it upon England.
With Reform, the same applies as is the case with the Greens – more details needed about ethos, practice, and funding. They, like the Conservatives, would clearly look to privatise school management. There is also a hint that they would not consider study of the arts and humanities beyond a very basic level to be a worthwhile pursuit in state funded/subsidised tertiary education.
Of course, having considered the content of the manifestos, how people choose to vote depends upon their own personal political and educational philosophies.
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