At last week’s SNP national conference, education secretary Jenny Gilruth announced the creation of a new national Centre of Teaching Excellence. From what I have read online so far, the reaction from the teaching profession appears lukewarm at best.
While some have praised the announcement, citing the positive role that such a centre could play in supporting CPD, others have been more critical for a variety of reasons.
These have included:
- Vagueness and a lack of detail.
- The lack of any engagement with key professional bodies (such as the General Teaching Council for Scotland, unions and initial teacher education institutions) before the announcement. To many, it seems to have been a bolt from the blue.
- The concern that such a centre will focus on a “top-down” approach (which I take to mean concerns that it won’t offer teachers the sort of professional development opportunities they want or would find useful).
- The worry that geographical factors will cause inequity of access, with some teachers able to benefit from the centre because of where they live and work, and others who won’t.
- Concerns about where the time will come from for teachers to engage with such a centre.
I think all these concerns are entirely legitimate.
In my experience, when announcements are vague (as this one was), and when they catch key stakeholders off guard (as this did), it tends to be because they have been rushed or are poorly thought through.
Urgency gets in the way of clarity, and a lack of clarity can lead to scepticism. As we have seen here, the announcement and the audience got off on the wrong foot, which makes it unnecessarily difficult to get people on board. First impressions matter.
The potential of the Centre of Teaching Excellence
Cards on the table, I agree with those who have voiced support for the potential such a centre has to support the professional development of teachers and school leaders.
In my experience, most teachers and school leaders are crying out for a high-quality CPD offer. Make this available to them - and ring-fence time for it - and very few are going to say, “No thank you - there’s nothing in my practice that I think needs to get better.” Quite the opposite, in fact.
Most teachers and school leaders want to learn about researched-informed first principles that underpin pedagogy so that they are genuinely empowered to make decisions about what to do - or not to do - in the classroom, or what to get even better at. What they also want are practical examples of these first principles in action.
However, relatively few currently have access to such an offer. Yes, they get training and professional development opportunities, but the extent to which these focus on pedagogy in a useful way is debatable at best. I hear this time and again when I have the privilege of working with teachers and school leaders across Scotland.
Patches of high-quality CPD
Really, what we are currently seeing at a national level are patches of high-quality professional development opportunities.
However, the patch that teachers and school leaders have access to tends to be at the mercy of the school, local authority or regional improvement collaborative (RIC) they happen to be a part of. You might get lucky, but you might not.
After ITE, I don’t think it is good enough that the professional development offer available to teachers is a lottery. If we genuinely believe that teaching is as important a profession as most people say it is (and which I think it definitely is), we need to start getting serious about offering all teachers, school leaders and support staff access to high-quality professional development opportunities (and giving them the time to access these).
This requires a coordinated approach on a national scale and is, potentially, something that a new national centre could do.
A logical next step?
So, yes, I think that the creation of a centre along the lines of the one announced by the education secretary is a good idea. But then I would say that, because I pitched a very similar idea to Ms Gilruth by letter in August.
In this, I proposed the creation of a national “Centre of Teacher Professional Development” in Scotland. I said that, to me, this would be the logical next step to ITE and could, potentially, address the issue of teachers being able to access a high-quality professional development offer once qualified.
I suggested that it had the potential to put Scotland on the map as a country for excellence and innovation in this area. I also offered to meet the education secretary to talk about its potential.
I don’t know to what extent - if any - my letter influenced the education secretary’s announcement last week, but there were many similarities between the two.
I am perfectly prepared to accept that Ms Gilruth may have had the idea already and had been preparing to announce it for some time. The similar proposal outlined in my letter may simply have been a coincidence.
From potential to reality
In the reply I received from a member of her team, I was told that Ms Gilruth thanked me for my offer to discuss the idea with her, but that she did not have time to do this.
That was a shame because I think talking the idea through might have helped put some flesh on the bones and highlighted potential pitfalls, such as the risk of vagueness and some concerns that others have now raised.
All this said, the purpose of this article is not to claim ownership of an idea; that’s not what’s important. What is important is that an idea with great potential gets translated into a practical reality that is genuinely useful to teachers and school leaders.
If the new centre can achieve that, any hang-ups that anyone has in the early stages of its development will quickly be forgiven and forgotten. I hope it proves to be a success.
Bruce Robertson is the headteacher of Berwickshire High School and author of The Teaching Delusion trilogy and Power Up Your Pedagogy: the illustrated handbook of teaching
