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Have you heard about the Centre for Teaching Excellence?

Probably not, but that’s ok.

The idea was announced at the SNP party conference back in October 2023, with the education secretary saying that it would “support research and innovation in teaching practice for all children and young people, with the aim of making Scotland a world-leader in teaching practice”.

At the time, Jenny Gilruth used phrases like “co-design” and “work together”, which was ironic because, as I revealed, she hadn’t bothered to discuss this with the sorts of organisations that were supposed to be involved.

The country’s biggest teaching union only found out during the speech. Academics running the various initial teacher education (teacher training) programmes across the country had no idea the announcement was coming. The General Teaching Council for Scotland, which regulates the profession, only found out through their media monitoring work the next day.

It turned out that the education secretary didn’t even bother to inform the Scottish Parliament about this major policy decision. At the time a spokesperson for the parliament said: “The Presiding Officer has made clear on previous occasions that all significant government announcements should first be made to the Parliament.”

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