Test's for Teacher's

The Scottish government plans to introduce literacy and numeracy tests for people planning to become teachers.

So let's see if I've got this right: if I wanted to be a teacher now, I'd arrive at teacher training with my 5 Highers and 2 Advanced Highers, a 4 year honours degree, a compulsory year living and working in France and a postgraduate diploma in Russian behind me - and I would then have to do a test in maths and English language to prove I was fit to teach.

What exactly are these to be tests of? Do I know my times tables? Can I punctuate a sentence? Do I have a good enough command of grammar to be able to communicate with kids? Can I spell?

I can only see these patronising and pretty insulting tests as a vote of no confidence in school education in Scotland. What we're really saying is that intelligent, apparently well-educated and well-qualified people leave our schools without the basic skills needed to go on to higher education. And that universities, having discovered their students are incompetent in maths and language, don't take steps to correct the situation before they let them graduate. 

If there is a problem with our education system, we need to go back and study what's happening in our schools ab initio. That will mean, of course, agreeing what we think are the basic competencies all learners need and how to achieve them. We might also have to agree that understanding maths and mastering spelling have nothing at all to do with the ability to learn - or to teach.

I write as one with an O Grade arithmetic (33% in O Grade Maths - refused entry to the Higher Maths class - not that I wanted in) who often gets handed the bill in restaurants because I can work out in my head how to add a 10% tip and then divide by 13 or however many are at the table. I have a friend who worked successfully as a Home Economist for 40 years (and is still in demand as a supply teacher) who was only diagnosed as severely dyslexic at the age of 50. No test known to mankind will make me a better mathematician or my friend a better speller.

But that doesn't seem to be what these tests for teachers are about: failure to pass the tests won't mean people like us will be kept out - or kicked out - of teaching. It'll just be brought to our attention that we are deficient in these areas and we'll 'get support' during training.

So what is this all about? IMHO, as we say on Facebook, there's a wee panic going on: Scotland has slipped badly in the international rankings - see the OECD reports - and this is our way of sooking up to the morons in government and business who want to turn the clock back to a time when education was perfect. Whenever that was.

For years, her majesty's inspectors ranted on about the need for 'rigour' in our education system. So what happened? Pressure, that's what. Education became a race: if you're a pupil in a school where the headteacher is under pressure to deliver good results, you'll find there's damn all time for your education: it's all about a rush to get you through 'levels' - onwards and upwards. Your education will be superficial. There will be gey little time to pursue areas you find interesting before you are pushed on to the next test. You will not specialise in secondary school - you'll do 5 Highers, because the school needs you to contribute to the statistics that appeal to the local authority and the inspectorate.

Does this begin to sound like a circle - or a cycle? Or a spiral - a downward one?

Scotland's got a terrible record in social engineering. Maybe we need to stop worrying about OECD tests and look to what our near neighbours are doing. I mean the Danes, Swedes and Norwegians. They live on our latitude, they share a lot of our history, they often face the same social problems as us. Can we learn from them, instead of jumping on any passing - preferably English or US - educational bandwagon?