09/08/2012 Newsnight Scotland

will be in the same boat. Tonight on Newsnight Scotland, we

have had the annual ritual, exam results are the best ever, critics

say it is because they have become easier. Supporters say it is

because of the hard work of students and teachers. Are we

asking the wrong questions? Is the examination system wholly

misconceived, and how should it change? They are perennials that

flourish in August. The exam results are out, yet again, pass

rates are up. Are the exams too easy, or our students getting

better? Have we lost sight of what the system is supposed to be

testing? Of the losing something that was once the essence of

education in Scotland? It might feel like we have barely

had a summer, but some of the schools go back next week. With

staff continuing to get to grips with the curriculum for excellence,

and people's having to assume that the Scottish government's lifelong

learning strategy will equip them for life at work. So, what is new?

Have we changed direction, orally continuing along the same road?

The phrase is jargon, but it is like when you go into a supermarket

and they put in a self-service desk, and suddenly you have been doing

your shopping very well for the last 40 years and suddenly you

cannot do it anymore, and you have got to learn a new process. That

will become more frequent, and the curriculum has to enable young

people to be able to deal with these issues in a much more

sophisticated way, obviously. They need to know how they learn, they

need to know where they go for help at what happens when they do not

understand things, and we need teachers who are able to show them

what the barriers are to learning, and then to help them overcome them.

The purpose of the curriculum is encapsulated in four capacity is,

to enable each person to be able to be a successful learner, a court

that individual, are a responsible citizen and an effective

contributor. The Fergus no longer exclusively is on passing exams. --

the focus. Teachers say they have always adopted this approach.

Schools are not the problem. We are solving problems on a daily basis.

What we need is everybody, industry, commerce --, us, colleges,

universities, local authorities, government, working together to do

their very best for all youngsters, and that means that we should be

able to stretch and move people on, into school and university, and it

means those that have struggled, for a lot of reasons, most of them

societal, actually, getting the help and support they need to go

further. As pupils get ready to launch

themselves into the next academic year, can they be confident that

they will emerge from school equipped with the ride on it --

qualifications? To employers think they will have the work ethic and

life skills that will make taking them on a viable prospect?

From an employer's perspective, it appears that concentrating on

qualifications means some skills are being unaddressed. Too many

school leavers do not know how to communicate, present themselves or

manage their lives. Schools need to be better engaged with businesses

and the community. There is a number of businesses out

there in Scotland in different sectors who are not experiencing

school leavers having the attitude at the attitude for work. So, there

does need to be a focus on this and a deliberate focus on this, it

cannot just be something that happens by the bike at they hope

that by teaching the rest of the curriculum, pupils will pick this

up. There has to be a deliberate focus on making sure that pupils

and students are going to be ready to go out there and get a job and

fulfil their potential after they have left.

And there is an owner's -- an onus on schools to forge relationships

with businesses and employers, and for a more joined-up approach from

families, commerce and the whole of society.

The recession makes it more crucial that school pupils are as well

prepared as possible to go out there and get a job once they have

finished in their education. What the curriculum for excellence is

designed to do is create a more learned that centred approach, so

that the people is doing their own learning, so they are able to

direct what they are doing themselves, and that kind of

autonomy and taking responsibility for your own work is something that

we hope is going to bear fruit in terms of the attitudes and the

skills that pupils are displaying coming out of school.

So, more focus on individual responsibility, on schools, on each

and every one of us. Not forgetting the the need for qualifications.

The relative merits and shortcomings of Scotland's

education system have been the subject of debate for generations.

It is bound to go on. But what head teachers, school staff back,

academics at people's know is that with limited resources at a

saturated jobs market, there has never been more pressure to get it

right. I enjoyed by Edinburgh University's

professor, Lindsay Paterson, and here in Glasgow by Murray Pittock.

Lindsay Paterson, I am curious turn up at this in a fairly

philosophical way. You wrote earlier on this week that he

believed that what we test in exam systems has changed from 30 years

ago. What did you mean by that? As illustrated in your film, we

need a better focus on skills and processes. It is a process of

change that has been going on for some time. In they pass, there was

a focus on knowledge and understanding. Understanding a

whole culture, relationships. That was an ideal, and was only obtained

by outstanding students, and it was gradually being extended to a wider

part of the age group. We have abandoned that in the last 30 years.

Give me examples, because you clearly have been looking through

old exam papers. For example, in English literature,

we now focus much what skills analysis at the skills of using

language, very important skills at things that are crucial -- crucial.

They are not trivial, but on the same hand, we no longer expect even

the best students have a wide grasp of the history of English

literature at the relationship between it and society. Some of the

best students do it, but his is not at the core of learning any more.

Do you agree with that, Murray Pittock?

This is a very long debate, the debate between knowledge and skills,

but if you listen to what you have said, you said that in the old,

knowledge-based economy, that only some people managed to do what they

were supposed to have fulfilled their potential. Now you are saying

only some people do that now. The key element being put forward in

the film is that it is an attempt for more people to fulfil their

potential, that must be the goal of educational excellence, however you

define it. Also, although there is a balance to be found, added

argument over where the balance falls, equally, if you say there is

a completely knowledge-based curriculum, there would be a great

debate over what should be in that. If you look back to the golden age,

if you like, what we think of as the golden age of Scotland, the

hero of the enlightened front -- enlightenment and student focused

learning. The idea that learning should be useful, the principle of

useful knowledge is at the core of the Royal Society of Edinburgh's

mission statement in the 18th century. That is an instrumental

bass to learning. I think this debate has been going on for a very

long time, and I think at different But do you think we have the

balance right at the moment? opinion would only be an opinion.

The balance seems to be perpetually looked at an adjusted because

things change. Society is changing very rapidly. Looking at society,

we are increasingly looking at a range of problems that need to be

solved and addressed, not by it looking at a body of inherited

knowledge but by applying understanding to rapidly-changing

context. Obvious criticism of what you were saying is that you in the

past have been very critical of Curriculum for Excellence. Its

defenders would say they are trying to cater for some of the points

that you have been making, that part of the whole idea is to make

students more autonomous and to take more responsibility for

themselves in a broader sense than perhaps would be the case with a

very narrow exam system. Do they not have a point? They have tried

to move and they have indeed recovered some things but the key

thing of course is that, two things, actually, one at that the

curriculum was being extended. They range of people in the 1970s and

1980s that were getting access to the best is far greater than it was

100 years ago. It was not just for an elite. It was for a widening

grin. The second point is that it is a complete caricature or of the

old way of looking at Norwich, that it was not about skills. The idea

was that through knowledge you gained skills. All of that is now

being completely wiped out of history and there is this character

sure of what was thought of as a exam based system of knowledge in

the past. It is nonsense. The fact is it is not as clear-cut as that.

There is the greater emphasis in the skills -- on skills in the new

curriculum. But it is not a question of 100 % knowledge to 100

% skills. It is where you draw the boundary between the two and that

is an ever-changing issue. But the thing that I think you have to

confront is that technology, the situations that employers require

people... The world that teenagers are familiar with has changed very

rapidly in the last five to ten years and it changes to an

operational skills best method. Social media, Twitter, is less than

five years old. Social media has changed things enormously. I am not

suggesting that social media is the basis for education but that if

education is completely divorced from the rapidly changing skills

base of learning to function in society, you need to be careful

about that, because that has the capacity to alienate people. The

world of the 1970s and 1980s is a world...

I am not sure that is not a separate point. I did not think

anyone would argue against making youngsters able to use new

technology. The argument is more about teaching things, each subject,

as if it was a narrow, said... Let me tackle another comment. You said

that no longer is it assumed you can become a better person by

studying Shakespeare, or the minutiae of genetics. You have

tried to connect Airfix with the way things should be taught. What

did you mean by saying that assumption has gone? The dominant

tradition in Scottish intellectual life was that through the internet

we can become better people. The best way of addressing ethical

questions is through at an intellectual, rational approach.

There are other ways of looking at ethics, of course. But that is a

change. Some people regret the change. You clearly regretted?

because I think that the best approach, the best way of becoming

a better person, is by understanding through our

intellects had to become a better person and that is what, in the

past, Scottish education has aspired to do. I think what is

important is that contend, disciplinary content, is it sport -

- important, extremely valuable, part of a thoroughgoing education

and education is also about bringing out what the word means,

the Latin root of the word is bringing out what is there in the

learner, and the environment in which the learner is functioning is

a rapidly changing environment and all knowledge based education, I am

a great support of knowledge-based education, but it is weighted for

the balance. All knowledge based education needs to be conscious of

what it is to get the learner to respond... Do you think it is just

a prejudiced that sometimes you come across young people who, for

example, Shakespeare is a module rather than, oh my God, literature

could change my life. Is that just a prejudice? Because I think that

is... You were probably disagree but that is kind of what Lindsay

Paterson is trying to get to. study of literature and the arts

and social sciences, the sciences, and medicine and veterinary

medicine and so on, they are changing people's lives all the

time. In different ways. And if you listen to debates about education

or read about education in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, what employers

want and the needs of society, there is a debate going on the

whole time. Nobody who educates thinks they are living in a golden

age. All right. Lindsay Paterson, I am just trying to make this little

more practical. If there were a change to the examinations that you

would like to see, in order to bring out what you have been

talking about, briefly, what would it be? Let's make the education

system more innovative. What has been proposed is reviving the

traditional exam system. If we do believe in linking different

subjects together, let's do that properly, because it is not being

proposed at the moment. Classes. Tomorrow's front pages. The

Scotsman, long waits for Accident and Emergency. And there is a

picture of the opening of the Edinburgh festival. Scottish Daily

Mail, BBC boss, do not be patriotic about Team GB. This is about a