In a think piece published today, Where Next for Scottish Education: learning is Scotland’s future?, professors Christopher Chapman and Graham Donaldson at the University of Glasgow’s Robert Owen Centre for Educational Change argue the case for educational reform. What follows is a summary of their argument for “bold thinking and risk taking”.
Scotland is one of the most educated societies in the world, with an education system that has served children and young people well. However, a series of recent reviews have questioned recent progress and recommended fundamental reform.
Furthermore, increasing rates of poverty within society present major challenges to learning and wellbeing. The severe and wide-ranging impacts of the pandemic are also becoming clearer. Climate and geopolitical uncertainties, a related cost-of-living crisis and the prospect of medium- to long-term financial austerity all compound the situation.
At the same time, technological innovation is moving at an unprecedented pace, posing fresh challenges and new opportunities for educators, learners and wider society. Artificial intelligence is beginning to create new ways of learning and poses huge challenges to established assumptions and practices.
Put simply, in 2023 the Scottish educational system finds itself at a crossroads. It could choose to batten down the hatches and continue broadly on its current path, ignoring the rapidly changing context, commentaries and evidence from both outsiders and practitioners.
We are convinced that there is an urgent need for radical thinking that can stimulate new ways of working and a readjustment of roles and relationships within the system to support all of Scotland’s learners to flourish in an increasingly challenging environment.
Our analysis suggests that establishing a common sense of purpose, building a coherent strategic direction, investing in teachers, harnessing technology and creating supportive structures are crucial for success.
International evidence also suggests that centrally managed, top-down approaches to change often limit, and tend to inhibit progress. Furthermore, the distance between central policy and action in the field has been exacerbated by uncertainty and lockdowns during the pandemic.
There are strengths in the system, but we need to be creative and up our game if today’s young people are to thrive in an increasingly complex and challenging world. How do we do this and create something that works now and will sustain for future generations?
We need to learn from the lessons of the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE), which reimagined the purpose of schooling, was much less prescriptive and envisaged a more creative role for teachers. It was widely supported when it was developed and introduced over a decade ago. And yet, as is often the case with educational reform, the period following CfE’s original design has seen incremental dilution of the original intent.
It is equally important to understand the main barriers to progress, such as national policies that unintentionally encourage schools to narrow educational experiences, administrative structures that limit the freedom of practitioners to take risks, and cultures and structures that discourage the sharing of innovation and expertise.
If we are to embrace change rather than react to events, we need to establish mechanisms that can anticipate and harness such developments. This means putting those closest to the action in the position to make decisions in real time. National policy should set a common direction, but should include the education professions, parents/carers and the learners themselves much more directly in the decision-making process.
Universities can and should play a major role as part of an “innovation hub” that researches the efficacy and impact of developments, while also translating opportunities into practical ways of improving access to - and experience of - high-quality learning across the system.
In our full think piece today, we argue that Scottish education must rise to the challenge and establish a long-term strategic vision for our young people’s learning and wellbeing. Educators will need to be given the support to own, lead and realise that vision. Parents, carers and the learners themselves will also need to believe that change is both necessary and achievable.
Bold thinking and calculated risk taking can create a culture that will build on Scotland’s achievements, disrupting orthodoxies rooted in the past to create an education system that all of Scotland’s learners deserve. It remains to be seen whether government and the profession can seize this opportunity.
Professor Christopher Chapman is chair in educational policy and practice (educational leadership and policy) at the University of Glasgow. Graham Donaldson is honorary professor at the University of Glasgow’s school of education. His previous roles include head of the Scottish schools inspectorate HMIE (2002-10) and author of the 2010 review of teacher education in Scotland, Teaching Scotland’s Future. More recently, he has been leading curriculum reform in Wales
