CPD Team

I am delighted to be able to join you here today at the 2nd Scottish Government International Summer School on School Leadership.  The excellent turn out during the summer holidays is a clear indication of the significance that this event has for educational leaders.  I am pleased to see that we have wide representations from within schools (headteachers, deputy headteachers, principal teachers, chartered teachers and classroom teachers) and from local authorities and other stakeholders.  I am also glad that the summer school has again been able to attract interest from abroad.  I am sure you are all enjoying your week – it certainly looks an interesting, varied and challenging programme. I want to do two things as I speak to you this afternoon. 

Firstly, I want to outline my vision for the education of Scotland’s young people in reference to Curriculum for Excellence the programme of transformational reform.  Secondly, I want to focus on the vital importance of leadership in delivering that vision.

Strategic Objectives

My ambitions for Scotland are sky high – we should be a world leader in education of our young people.  Our tradition of education and the consensus across Scotland about its continuing importance means we are ideally placed to get all the main players working together towards this Government’s strategic objectives which are to build:

• a wealthier and fairer Scotland
• a healthier Scotland
• a safer and stronger Scotland
• a greener Scotland; and
• a smarter Scotland.

These strategic objectives all underpin our overarching purpose, which is to increase sustainable economic growth, and so create a more successful country, with opportunities for all of Scotland to flourish. My remit, my commitment is to create the framework for a Smarter Scotland and I will challenge everyone in Scotland – in national government, local government and education establishments of all types at all stages – to meet that expectation. I have done so – and will continue to – by demanding a focus on early years and early intervention, on individualised learning and on the creation of a Scotland where every young person is given the support to gain the knowledge and the skills for learning, skills for life and skills for work that they need to play their full part in a modern, vibrant society and economy.  And I mean every young person.  And to develop a single cohesive life-long system in Scotland that can be the envy of the world.

OECD

Most of you will know that The recent Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Review on the “Quality and Equity of Schooling in Scotland” was impressed by the breadth and vision of our new curriculum.     The main findings of the OECD report highlight the strengths of the Scottish system: a strong commitment to comprehensive education, a world class approach to teacher induction, near universal and high quality pre-school education, and what is described in the report as “the greatest strength of Scottish schooling”  – our primary schools. However, as you will know, the report included some tough messages and outlined some important challenges. It highlighted the achievement gap that opens up about Primary 5 and continues to widen throughout the early secondary years.  Children from poorer communities and low socio-economic status homes are more likely than others to under-achieve.  Socio-economic status is the most important difference between individuals.  The differences between schools contribute relatively little variation in student achievement.  The report states baldly that ‘who you are in Scotland is far more important than what school you attend’. That is a position that I am not prepared to tolerate any longer. 

Concordat

I’m very glad to say though that I am not alone in that determination.  The Concordat signed with COSLA has established a new relationship between local and Scottish Government setting out our shared objectives and the National Outcomes we want to achieve. The Concordat marks a crucial new stage in the governance of Scotland, describing a new relationship with local government based on mutual respect and partnership – on parity of esteem.  It represents a fundamental and important shift in Scottish politics.  One away from the old system of central government at loggerheads with local government to one where we work together for common aims. The Concordat places improving education in Scotland’s schools front and centre.  For the first time ever, national government and local government have signed up for a joint platform of educational improvement.Early Years. We started starting in the early years.  We published a few months ago our long term early years strategy that comprehensively articulates our ambitions for early years policy over the coming years. In March, the Scottish Government and COSLA published a joint policy statement on early years and early intervention that  set out our intention to give all children the best possible start in life. We want to improve outcomes for all but need to pay particular attention to those at greater risk of poor outcomes and move from intervening in a crisis to becoming much more effective at prevention, early intervention and taking effective action to stop risk becoming harm. This reflects our commitment to the important bearing that early years experiences have on later life. More specifically, we need to develop more effective approaches to supporting parenting and improving the home learning environment if we are to have an impact on the achievement gap highlighted by the OECD, and that is why the early years framework will place a strong focus on these elements when it is published in the autumn.The Scottish Government has also made a number of more specific commitments in early years. We are making substantial progress towards a 50% increase in pre-school entitlement for 3 and 4 year olds delivering 570 hours a year for each child – by August 2010 around 10 million more hours will be delivered than were delivered in 2006-07. The full commitment will be delivered in 2011.There is a new Standard for Childhood Practice, which will give professional recognition to nursery and childcare workers and the concordat includes a commitment to move as quickly as possible to having access to a teacher for every pre-school child. These initiatives are the platform that will better prepare children for formal school education, give children a better start in life and which will reduce the inequalities that appear before children even start formal schooling.  As educational leaders you should be considering how best to exploit this significant investment in pre-school and early years.

Schools

We have also taken action in school education.  On a number of fronts but in support of our common goal. Our commitment to class sizes reduction is an important part of that agenda.  I am glad to say that the reduction of class sizes to 18 in P1-P3 is a key objective of both the Scottish Government and Scottish local government – set out in the Concordat between us.  Reducing class sizes is part of our determination that all of our young people get the best start in life.  Evidence shows that lower class sizes in the early years brings significant benefits.  I don’t underestimate the scale of the challenge here.  I know that at present only 12% of P1-P3 classes across Scotland are at 18 or under.  And I recognise that the scale and pace of change will vary across Scotland taking into account local conditions.  However, I am determined to see year on year progress across Scotland as a whole and real progress across each authority in the lifetime of the current settlement.We have done our part to support this.  We ensured that despite falling school rolls funding was kept in the settlement to maintain teacher numbers at 2007 levels of approximately 53,000.  We are also training 20,000 new teachers over the next few years.  We have also provided record levels of funding to local government, dispensed with ring fencing and – for the first time ever – allowed councils to re-invest all of the efficiency savings they make and into education. We have appointed a National Co-ordinator of Youth Work and Schools, to improve links and communication between the youth work sector and schools.  This is another strand of our determination to ensure a better connected support system for Scotland’s young people.  A system that reflects the realities of young peoples lives and is not hidebound by structure and tradition.  I know you heard from pupils earlier this week from Wester Hailes Education Centre – which I visited in recent months and that they issued some strong challenges to you in the context of their Learning Manifesto.  I believe that the National Co-ordinator will help raise the pupil voice within Scottish education.  

Curriculum for Excellence

Curriculum for Excellence goes to the heart of what we want to achieve when we talk about improving educational outcomes for young people. It means:

• a coherent, more flexible and enriched curriculum from 3 – 18, firmly focused on the needs of the child and young person
• a better quality of learning and teaching and increased attainment and achievement for all children and young people in Scotland.

This is a highly ambitious programme of reform – and rightly so. The Scottish Government has high ambitions for Scotland, and Curriculum for Excellence has a vital role to play in preparing our young people to take their place in a modern society and economy. It provides a framework for all young people in Scotland to gain the knowledge and skills for learning, skills for life and skills for work that they need to flourish. We owe it to our young people to develop their enthusiasm and motivation for learning. They need to be able to use their literacy and numeracy skills, thinking creatively and using technology for learning. They need to be equipped to evaluate environmental, scientific and technical issues. They need to develop their knowledge and understanding of Scotland and its place in the world. They need to develop an enterprising attitude, using resilience and self-reliance to take the initiative and lead. The classroom experience for young people must encompass this not just in what they do but in what they see their teachers do. It is the creativity, ingenuity and confidence of teachers across Scotland that can make Curriculum for Excellence happen.This is different to any kind of educational development we have undertaken before. It depends on reflective professionals developing their own thinking and teaching and working collaboratively.   Key to its success is educational leadership and the need to engage with all teachers so they are confident in taking this forward.  That is a huge task and needs to start with Directors of Education taking responsibility for spreading the message of Curriculum for Excellence, Headteachers actively engaging in ensuring their staff are motivated and focused on its delivery, and for our teacher unions and associations to recognise the rewards as well as the challenges involved.   Schooling in Scotland starts from a strong position, which makes us well placed to drive forward educational reform and improvement.  We are building on the curriculum which is already in place and ensuring that education professionals have professional autonomy and responsibility.  We have it in us, together, to make a real, positive difference for Scotland’s young people. Educational reform is vital, now, in order to equip the next generation for the challenges they will face – different challenges to ones we may have faced.  We all need to invest in our young people and in the future success of Scotland. We need to invest in Curriculum for Excellence, as a nation, as authorities, as schools or colleges and as individuals. My consultation on the next generation of qualifications for Scotland’s young people is a key part of this agenda, and I would like to share with you briefly now an outline of what I am proposing.  We need to look at how our qualifications system can best meet the needs of Scotland in the 21st century.  And at how it can support the transformational change that Curriculum for Excellence will bring.  With that in mind, the consultation is focusing on proposals to

• introduce new awards in literacy and numeracy
• introduce a new qualification to be offered at SCQF levels 4 and 5, which will replace Standard Grade and Intermediate 1 and 2 whilst reflecting the best features of the current arrangements
• review the content of National Qualifications at all levels to ensure that qualifications reinforce the values, purposes and principles of Curriculum for Excellence
• investigate ways to increase flexibility and meet the needs of young people more effectively.

The consultation will run until the end of October.  This is your chance to help ensure that our qualifications system develops the skills and raises the ambitions of Scotland’s young people.   I hope that you will discuss our proposals widely and respond to the consultation.

Importance of leadership

I want to turn now to the theme of this summer school – school leadership.  If we are to see improvements in education then one of the central challenges is the absolute necessity of improving leadership.  Indeed for Curriculum for Excellence to be implemented to a way that engages all of the teaching profession and impacts successfully on pupils, improvements in leadership in Scottish education will be vital. I undertook some time ago to publish a paper on leadership in Scottish schools.  Let me assure you that it is still my intention to do so.  Because fundamentally great leadership is essential to the delivery of the programme of transformational change I have just outlined.  We reached a crucial stage in that process last month with the publication of Building the Curriculum 3 -  which offers guidance on planning the curriculum in line with the values, purposes and principles of Curriculum for Excellence – and of the consultation on qualification reform.  We now move into a key period of implementation and delivery.  A period when effective leadership will be most needed.  For that reason I have held back my paper on leadership to incorporate what is required as part of Scotland’s education and reform agenda.  SQH and its benefits to the system. One of the issues that paper will consider is how we prepare and support our most key leaders – those leading our schools.  Of course, there are many challenges in being a school leader and that is why the Scottish Qualification for Headship (SQH) was introduced.  The SQH is the development opportunity that aspirant headteachers can undertake to demonstrate that they have reached the Standard for Headship.  I know that the SQH is a tool that local authorities as employers greatly value.The SQH has brought positive impacts not just to the development of the participants but also more widely in schools through the use of work-based action learning models.  This means that the participants’ headteachers and colleagues are benefiting too as the participant involves them in their learning.  Ultimately, and most importantly, pupils benefit from the SQH.  I am confident that the SQH will have a crucial place in the development of our future headteachers for many years to come.

Flexible Routes to Headship

But my view is that SQH should not be the only route to developing the school leaders we need to lead transformational change.  It seems clear that the current model of SQH does not suit all aspiring headteachers.  The SQH was never intended to be the only route open to those seeking to achieve the Standard for Headship.  We need to develop other ways of demonstrating achievement of the Standard for Headship.   The over-riding objective must be to ensure that we have a sufficient pool of suitably qualified teachers interested and capable of successfully leading our schools.  At present the SQH is not giving us sufficient numbers and that is why we are piloting different routes.  We know there is demand for them within the educational community.  The flexible routes pilot held its first final assessment panel in May and I am delighted to note that all 15 participants were successful.  This has allowed the evaluation team from Cambridge and Glasgow Universities to complete their evaluation of all areas of the pilot including the assessment process.  I have now received a draft of their findings which are, in general, very supportive of this pilot.  The evaluation team talks of us moving towards a mixed economy model of provision that will complement rather than compete with SQH.  I will need to consider in more detail the suggested changes to the pilot so that we can be in the best possible position to run a successful national roll out.  I hope to do that over the coming months and I will aim to produce a flexible routes programme that meets the needs of both employers and aspirant headteachers.  In the meantime my officials have contacted a few additional local authorities to come on to the pilot so that we continue to build expertise and share knowledge of the pilot across the country. I should also say that to inform our knowledge and thinking in the area of headteacher recruitment and retention we have engaged the Universities of Cambridge, Glasgow and Edinburgh to carry out a joint research project.   Amongst other objectives it will look to explore what prompts teachers to seek to become headteachers and what barriers they face and also to understand why some teachers do not have such aspirations and if there is anything that could change their minds.  I expect to receive this report towards the end of the year and I know that it links in well with a lot of international research that is going on, as this is an issue for most parts of the world.

Opportunities and challenges in building leadership capacity

This brings me onto some opportunities and challenges for us in the wider area of teacher development.  One particularly important aspect of the leadership agenda is to build capacity right through the system.  Leadership should apply to all staff in a school.  Such an approach will be crucial to the success of Curriculum for Excellence. Improving the leadership capacity in Scotland’s education system for me means working with the Deans of Faculty in Scotland’s Universities, to integrate them more in the Curriculum for Excellence agenda and CPD issues and I am doing that currently. A classroom teacher needs to be able to lead a class effectively.  We need teachers to develop leadership skills in pupils too if they are to flourish in the wider world.  I believe the time is right for further partnership working between universities and local authorities so that we have development programmes aimed at each stage of a teacher’s career pathway.  This should develop and strengthen the succession planning that local authorities have in place. I know that these developments are now taking place in some areas.  It is important that development opportunities are creative and innovative.  They need to be if we are to engage all teachers in professional development.  We are beginning to see this creative thinking coming through with more opportunities for work-based learning, coaching, developing communities of practice and collaborative strategies for shared learning. I know that universities do remarkable work in the field of research.  However, one of the challenges is to get more teachers involved in research projects so they can better understand the findings and put them into practice.  Dissemination of research findings at present is not translating itself into classroom practice.  I believe we need to think hard about how we remedy that.  Again, something we need to get better at if we are to fully embrace Curriculum for Excellence.

What the Scottish Government is doing

Our leadership agenda covers a wide range of initiatives in other areas of leadership development too. One strand we are developing is coaching and mentoring.  There is much good work being done in Scotland on this front.  We know that coaching develops school leaders and contributes to increased personal effectiveness in the role; becoming a coach or mentor has a positive impact on the coach or mentor’s own practice as a leader; and coaching contributes to creating learning cultures and building learning communities in schools and local authorities.  True learning communities will be the fulcrum of Curriculum for Excellence. The recent Report of the Chartered Teacher Review Report made several recommendations, that I accepted, that should help strengthen the leadership role that headteachers have in this important development avenue for teachers.  Perhaps the most important amongst these is that headteachers should ensure that Chartered Teachers have duties that reflect their newly gained knowledge and experience.  That they take up the leadership roles – particularly on Curriculum for Excellence – for which they are equipped.

I also want to mention CPDScotland.  This is the online CPD portal that is situated within Glow.  This is a valuable leadership tool.  It can greatly assist in the professional development of staff.  At present it has the CPDFind facility that allows a search of a large national database of CPD opportunities.  We are also working on CPDReflect which will allow teachers to gauge where they are against the different teaching Standards and, therefore, identify their strengths and weaknesses.  CPDScotland also links with local authorities own online portals and we will continue to develop this in line with teachers needs. Another area is the sharing of best practice from Scotland, the UK and abroad.  As some of you are no doubt aware, we have an ongoing International Thought Leader programme. We have welcomed some distinguished and experienced educators from North America and Australia to Scotland to hear their views on leadership, continuing professional development and coaching and mentoring of teachers.  Their visits have included seminars and workshops where we have debated with them how their ideas and experiences could be tailored to work within the Scottish context.   In particular, Professor Richard Elmore, Anrig Professor of Educational Leadership at Harvard, visited Scotland last year to work with school and local authority staff on a number of issues around school improvement.  Throughout his visit Professor Elmore focused on the strategies leaders in schools and local authorities can use to improve their schools.  To build on this learning we have established 3 pilot areas of work that we are referring to as “learning rounds”.

These are:

• A group of 6 Directors of Education participating as a learning community that is exploring the process of getting Directors directly involved in a hands-on enquiry
• Angus Council developing a joint enquiry with teachers from a local primary and secondary school around identified aspects of learning and teaching; and
• North Ayrshire Council working with senior management across their 9 secondary schools to investigate area-wide school improvement.

These pilots are action research projects.  We will learn and evaluate as the pilots proceed and share these findings with all stakeholders as they proceed.  We know that many local authorities are already doing work along these lines by using classroom observation and professional dialogue in their quality improvement strategies.  Too often pilots are only of benefit to those involved but, in this instance, I am determined that the work of these pilots will be valuable to all and available to all. These international visits have delivered a wide array of new thinking and development activity.  I was very pleased, for example, to meet Avis Glaze from Canada in June following a successful LTS conference. But, importantly, they have also confirmed that much of what we are doing in Scotland compares very favourably with international best practice. This summer school also presents us with a valuable opportunity to shape and push forward our shared leadership agenda.  We have a wealth of experience in this hall that must have witnessed nearly all possible scenarios that a teacher can encounter on their professional development journey.  We need to use this week not only to hear about best practice but also to see how we can translate that into professional practice in our own schools and classrooms.  The programme itself, although exhausting, certainly looks as though it will inspire you.  I will be very interested to hear of the creative and innovative ideas that I know will come from your learning, discussion and reflection during this week.  I know that many local authorities and individual schools are taking forward their own leadership initiatives based on some of the work they have heard about at last year’s summer school.  I know that we have the National CPD Team here this week and I hope that you can take the opportunity to make them aware of the excellent work that is happening out there so we at the centre can start making more connections and build on this work.  So what do I expect from you?There is a great deal of excellent practice in Scotland and the OECD were eager to stress this.   However, effective curriculum reform must come from local authorities taking ownership and working with schools, teachers and other partners. Teachers and others working directly with young people are best placed to meet the needs of individual learners but they need time to reflect and to share new ideas and practice.  Headteachers and local authorities have a responsibility to provide that support, to ensure strategic leadership and to build collegiate environments.   National bodies need to provide stimulus and catalysts for change, high quality exemplification and support strong networks to share and promote good practice and discussion across Scotland. So whether you are from an early years centre, a school, a local authority, a college or any of the key stakeholder groups, I am now challenging each of you individually, as well as together in communities, to become fully engaged champions of Curriculum for Excellence and continue to work with us on how to best implement these changes.

Categories: CPD Scotland, CPDFind, CPDReflect, Coachmentor, Glow, Leadership, Learning rounds, PRD, SummerSchool08, flexibleroutes, international, online CPD