This article appears as part of the Lessons to Learn newsletter.

By the time you read this, Scotland’s largest teaching union will have launched its manifesto for the forthcoming Holyrood election.

The document, entitled ‘Stand Up with Us For Quality Education’, includes a number of policies to which the EIS wants political parties to commit, with the goal of improving the experiences of teachers and pupils all over the country.

There are, as you might expect, a few obvious headlines to focus on, but if you take the time to read the manifesto and IPRR analysis properly, and know enough about how the system works at present, you start to realise that this isn’t just a scattergun wish-list, or an attempt to nudge politicians a little closer to one or other preferred outcome: this is an argument for what would be a major rewiring of Scotland’s schools.

Why might such a fundamental transformation be needed? Well, how long have you got?

Speak to teachers these days and there’s a very good chance they’ll tell you of unmanageable workload, intolerable pressure, and the near impossibility of ‘getting it right for every child’. The term ‘pressure cooker’ is used to describe classrooms with concerning regularity, and the overall environment is becoming increasingly corrosive.

Similar concerns are raised by parents every single day, especially if their children have additional........

© Herald Scotland