Scottish Education (3rd edition): Beyond devolution

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This is a significant work which charts key trends, changes and developments in Scottish education since devolution. The first edition appeared in 1999 and rapidly  became an indispensable addition to the bookshelf of anyone needing an instant briefing on any aspect of education in Scotland.  This third edition is subtitled, with some prescience perhaps 'Beyond devolution'.

Since the first edition appeared, changes in the Scottish education system have been profound and far-reaching. Indeed, the index to the three editions provides a useful snapshot of changing concerns. The index to the first edition doesn't even list 'inclusion'. Since the second edition this topic has merited a whole chapter by Julie Allan (Inclusion for all?), updated for this third edition to examine what has happened to inclusion in practice in the intervening years. A chapter on Multi-agency working by Graham Connelly appears for the first time in this new edition, reflecting current concerns. Among other notable changes, Education for citizenship (Ross Deuchar and Henry Maitles)  is in, having ousted Values education from the second edition. The chapter on Classics is out - but Mandarin makes it into the index for the first time.

Disaffection with schooling (Jeannie Mackenzie) it seems is always with us, and Ethos and Discipline by Pamela Munn provides a reassuring continuity throughout the three editions as we are asked once again, to imagine an English teacher meeting her class of 30 fourteen-year olds for the first time (surely flagging by now). In her revised chapter, Munn raises the interesting question of the language of indiscipline and the increasing reference to 'school violence' - even pointing out a whole journal devoted to this topic.

Interestingly, the section devoted to assessment has been cut from 10 to five chapters. 'School effectiveness, improvement and self-evaluation' has gone, so has 'Diagnostic and formative assessment in the Scottish Classroom', though the near ubiquitous 'Assessment is for learning' (AiFL) makes an appearance in Tom Bryce's chapter Assessment in Scottish Schools and elsewhere in this volume.

The final section, called simply Future, is expanded from two to eight chapters, reflecting perhaps a preoccupation in our current age with uncertainty.

This great big book reads like a who's who of Scottish Education - so much so that it must be difficult to find people who haven't contributed to it in order to review it (fortunately I was available). The editors, Tom Bryce and Walter Humes, are to be congratulated once again on bringing order out of - if not chaos exactly - then at least a recalcitrant mass, to produce a compendium which provides a compleat overview of the Scottish Education system. In all, this is a book even bigger than the sum of its parts.