Social justice and Scottish education: political priorities, conceptualisations, challenges and tensions

Social justice is prominent across Scottish education, underscored by its inclusion as the first professional value of the 2021 General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) Professional Standards. In this paper we question the extent to which conceptual understandings of social justice align with political and professional domains in Scottish education. We explore inherent tensions between the aims for education in Scotland, and the measures-driven context in which it operates. We present an analysis of Official Reports from the Education and Skills Committee (2016 to 2021) to consider what this might tell us about the balance between economic, social and political concerns within social justice Discourse in Scotland and how this relates to the GTCS-stated social justice values for the education profession. We conclude the paper by offering thoughts as to how the profession might further engage with social justice to challenge the significant economic imperatives inherent in Scottish education.