Daring to think otherwise? Educational policymaking in the Scottish Parliament

Abstract

This paper examines the process of policy-making within the Scottish Parliament, focusing in particular on the activities of the All Party Committee of Sport, Education, and Culture. I report on the Inquiry process from an insider/outsider position as advisor to the Committee in its Inquiry into special educational needs provision in Scotland and explore the contrasts between the ‘Inquiry’ and more conventional forms of policymaking. It is argued that the Scottish politicians have attempted to understand problems in their complexity, displaced party politics, and avoided the closure of the simple ‘solution’ or ‘standard’ by articulating the challenge of inclusion as a series of aporias. Perhaps most importantly, it is suggested, the Inquiry format has provided a new space in which the politicians could hold their Scottish Executive officials to account, and they did so tenaciously, by requiring accountability in terms of action and responsibility rather than retrospective transparency. The paper concludes with a discussion of the possibilities opened up within the Parliamentary Inquiry space. It is argued that the Inquiry format has created a long awaited opportunity for resituating the debates on inclusion within an ethical framework. More generally, it is argued that academics need to find ways of bringing politics back to policymaking by exploiting the new spaces they find themselves in.