When HM Inspectors descended on Craigroyston community high school in Edinburgh a year ago they found much room for improvement. Leadership was barely “adequate”, levels of attainment were “unsatisfactory” and pupils’ learning experiences were “weak”.
Even with the use of euphemisms their diagnosis looked grim. In fact the school, in a deprived area of the city, has long been regarded as troubled with poor attendance, discipline problems and permanent residence at the bottom of exam league tables.
There have been years when no pupils at Craigroyston have gained the minimum requirement for university admission.
A year, though, is a long time in education. Since that report was published the school appears to have grabbed itself by the scruff of the neck: a new head teacher has been appointed, a new building is to replace the old accommodation and facilities (described as “weak”) and in November Craigroyston, along with two other failing schools, won a share of a £750,000 handout from Tom Hunter, the businessman philanthropist, in the latest government-run education initiative.
To cap it all the pupils voted last term to reintroduce school uniforms. They now wear the name Craigroyston with pride and talk confidently about feeling smarter.
Back in the 1970s, Craigroyston was one of the first schools in the country to abandon the conventions of Scottish education — including the wearing of uniform. Now it is among the last, certainly in Edinburgh, to reinstate such conventions.
Thirty years of experimentation have taken a heavy toll on the school but hopefully the future is brighter. The whole community has reason to be optimistic.
With uniforms come quite dramatic changes. Teachers claim they make truants easier to spot, stop bullies singling out children not clad in designer gear, create a purposeful work ethic in the classroom and reduce disruption. Head teachers say they develop a sense of belonging and even left-wing firebrands, such as Ewan Aitken, the Edinburgh council leader, admit uniforms make the general public feel less intimidated by schoolchildren.
There is no doubt about it, Craigroyston has made the right decision. Another city school with bad results, Castlebrae community high in Niddrie, changed its dress code more than a year ago and the number of pupils gaining five or more Standard grades at level four jumped from 33% to 46%. Only 3% of students gained Highers, compared with none in previous years, but surely that is enough evidence to silence the most conscientious objectors to school reform?
But no. Just as the new head of Craigroyston dared to rejoice the abandonment of casual wear in her school corridors, the educational experts were on her case. Sheila Riddell, of the Moray House faculty of education at Edinburgh University, has likened the wearing of school uniforms in Scotland to Nazi youth culture.
“I don’t think we would want to go back to the kind of old-fashioned uniforms that are associated with a kind of militarism,” was the astonishing comment from the professor, who is responsible for shaping the minds of tomorrow’s teachers.
Her chair is Inclusion and Diversity and her research interests, according to her CV, are in equality and social inclusion, with particular reference to gender, social class and disability in education, training, employment and social care. Her recent (Scottish executive-funded) projects include evaluation of the discipline task group recommendations: the deployment of additional staff to promote positive school discipline.
If she had had a quick word with the fifth formers of Craigroyston community high, she probably would have come away with better notions on promoting positive school discipline (and saved the taxpayer some money). But it is not the job of a professor of inclusion and diversity to promote discipline in schools and so enhance learning and improve results. If it were, schools such as Craigroyston would not have got into the mess they are now trying to get out of.
It was so-called educational experts who decreed back in the 1970s that pupils should address teachers by their first names and the most able children should be taught alongside the least able, benefiting neither and damaging both.
HM Inspectors said in their report of Craigroyston: “The grouping of pupils in non-practical subjects, according to their prior attainment, was helping teachers to meet pupils’ needs more effectively in some subjects. However, in a significant proportion of lessons, some pupils needed a greater degree of challenge while others needed more support.”
Is this not an argument in favour of streaming children by ability, a convention thrown out with uniforms, rules and so on by those theoreticians who thought they knew best how to run a school? Craigroyston community high is not a one-off, but a metaphor for the education system in Scotland and how the educational establishment betrayed generations of children with their mixed-up ideas about inclusion and social class. Now the consequences of these ideas have become too embarrassing to ignore. Although the Scottish executive refuses to publish academic results, regarding them as “unhelpful”, figures obtained last year by The Sunday Times revealed that literacy and numeracy have fallen in two-thirds of local authorities.
In a quarter of schools in East Ayrshire and Dumfries and Galloway, fewer than half of pupils left P7 without the minimum grades in writing. In 43% of schools in Midlothian, more than half of children failed to reach basic standards. But one of those schools most let down by the system now seems to have a head teacher who is willing to reject the discredited dogma still espoused by people such as Riddell.
Margaret Russell speaks like a traditional head of bringing Craigroyston together, of setting a tone for her school and producing children who will be employable when they leave. She does not dismiss her young charges as doomed to fail because of their backgrounds, but treats them as if they have full lives ahead of them.
She is yet further proof that school policy should be left to schools and not to ivory tower academics with left-wing leanings looking for their next study grant — or to politicians seeking short-term fixes to secure their re-election.
