School Leadership - A Scottish Perspective

Obviously, I made the title of this post deliberately provocative, but there is a truth that I feel lies behind it. For too long we have seen Continuous Professional Development (CPD) as a matter of going on various courses and doing lots of 'things' to enhance our understandings and our expertise as teachers. Sometimes, we would identify these activities ourselves and, if you are in Scotland, use our CPD allowance to be able to attend them. Other times, they would be identified by senior management or the local authority as activities we needed to engage in. I personally hate the term 'manadtory', and I would only apply this to Child Protection training, and some Health and Safety training.  All such CPD activities usually had to be signed off by the headteacher before you went, but not often were you required to explain, or show evidence, how they impacted on your practice, or on your learners, when you had completed them. I went on lots of such courses and events, an...

I took part in Twitter chat on Friday evening with colleagues from across Scotland and beyond. This was #scotedchat, and has become a regular engagement on a Thursday evening, when I have nothing else on. I really enjoy these opportunites to engage with other educators as we explore some common issues and themes. This week's chat was focused on how and why we use social media and blogging to develop our thinking and our practice, and to promote collaboration. As usual, it was an interesting and thought provoking chat as contributors spoke of, and shared, their own views and experiences of using Twitter, other social media, and Blogs to enhance their own professional development. An issue I raised, and which other contributors expressed as a common feeling for themselves, was the reluctance of many teachers and school leaders to either think their views had validity, or to be prepared to put them out there on public forums like Twitter or express them through Blogs. This set me thin...

There is much talk across international education systems about the need to raise attainment and to close gaps, especially for those at risk because of deprivation factors. Everybody has an opinion on this. Some of this opinion is informed and some of it is not, based instead on personal views and political ideology. In Scotland we are seeing a pretty typical response to these two conundrums. I give you the National Improvement Framework, the NIF as it is now know as we rush headlong into using yet another acronym in education. The NIF is the First Minister's top down response to what she sees as the issue and her own take on the solution. This is a route followed by many other countries and systems around the world, including USA, Australia, England and Sweden. This route is high on accountability and testing, and low on research or evidence to show it actually works. In fact the evidence would seem to show that in the countries mentioned attainment has gone down and gaps have wid...

For a long time I have tweeted and written about the importance of culture and ethos in schools. 'Everything stands and falls on culture and ethos' sort of thing. I am now beginning to think I may have been underselling culture and ethos. For the last couple of months one of the schools I lead has been host to most of a neighbouring school following the destruction of part of their school by storm Desmond in December. This has given me the perfect opportunity to consider differences and similarities in schools. What I have observed in that time is that, though their pupils and their staff look  like any of the pupils and staff from our own school, they are different. Not just individually different, which you might expect, but collectively different. I am not saying that either is better by the way, I am just noting that they are different. The biggest reason why I think the collective body of pupils and staff are different is to do with the culture and ethos of both settings, ...

Late in 2015 the OECD released its report on the review of Scottish education, 'Improving Schools in Scotland: An OECD Perspective'. This report, commissioned by the Scottish Government and after they had drafted their National Improvement Framework (NIF), described Scottish Education as facing a 'watershed moment.' The authors praised many aspects of the direction of travel over the last ten years and more of the Scottish system. Surprisingly they seemed to also endorse the NIF. I say surprisingly for two reasons. One was that two of the four man team who visited Scotland were Andy Hargreaves and Helen Timperley, two researchers and writers on education and educational systems that I have much respect for. The second was because the NIF seems to myself and others within the Scottish system to be flying in the face of everything that Curriulum for Excellence stands for and represents, and with which they were so obviously impressed by. It could be that they didn't w...

Last night I had the pleasure of attending a seminar by professor Stephen Ball at Glasgow University. He was talking to an audience of educators, academics and others, and was there to share some of his reflections on education systems that might be tempted to be driven by assessment, and some concerns he had for the current direction of travel in the Scottish system. As he laid out the aspects he wished to consider he was keen for us to understand that assessment in itself was not a problem. He did caution though that assessment in Scotland, whilst 'not a bad thing may be a dangerous thing.' He explained why this might be so. He firstly thought it was right that Scotland, and First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, should look to other countries and their education systems in order to learn. He did have some concern however in where she had been looking, and what she had been seeing and hearing. He had detected in the recently introduced National Improvement Framework (NIF) a move...

In the last twelve months I have been asked by various people to justify our focus on practitioner enquiry as the main vehicle on our professional and school development journey. The questions usually go along the lines of: 'What has been the impact of practitioner enquiry for your learners?' 'How does practitioner enquiry help your school improvement plan?' 'Why do let teachers all do different things when they carry out an enquiry?' 'What will I see when I go in a classroom to show practitioner enquiry is happening?' And, the worst of all, 'can you give me six easy steps so I can get others to take part?' At first, these questions didn't bother me, as I understood people were interested, didn't understand what practitioner enquiry was, and I quite liked explaining what we were doing and why. Nowadays, they tend to just pee me off! It could be my age. The reason they raise my ire is mainly to do with the fact that the people who keep ask...