Years ago I went to a conference in a tired-looking hotel near Edinburgh Airport, where around 20 teachers and educators from the four home nations had gathered to discuss and compare issues across the UK.
Time and again, the delegates remarked upon how rare an event like this was, how seldom the four distinct education systems talked to each other. They wondered aloud why the UK systems invested so much time and effort scrutinising the latest Nordic or Asian example of educational excellence while remaining apparently oblivious to innovation closer to home.
One of the organisers, Sir Tim Brighouse, put it simply: “We don’t take enough notice of each other.”
A piece by Tes Scotland reporter Emma Seith last weekend showed the value of comparing notes. While some schools in England have been toying with the idea of restructuring the week by finishing early on a Friday, it seemed that there was little awareness in England that this had been a reality in many parts of Scotland for decades.
That piece showed what is to be gained when different systems learn from each other (changes to the school week in the Middle East also featured) and how lived experience in one place can help refine plans in another.
We have also recently reported the political tensions that can arise when attempts are made to interlink the four UK systems, but that is no reason to prevent educators from looking beyond national boundaries.
At that modest four-nation event, back in 2017, another of the organisers, David Cameron (no, not the former prime minister), argued that the UK’s education systems were actually talking even less to each other than in the past, because of the emergence of “more significant political differences” across the UK.
This made no sense to him, because - contrary to popular belief - he saw “a huge amount of commonality” between the four UK nations. Unlike some other parts of the world, he argued, teachers typically strive for the best for every child, rather than focusing on those who will excel in exams. One headteacher from England, who had previously worked in Scotland, said at the event that, looking around the UK, he saw “very little dissent around the fundamentals”.
One of the great advantages of working for Tes is that we can draw on a deep well of expertise about education systems in Scotland, England and elsewhere: we have a scope that goes beyond borders. We report on issues that have resonance for teachers wherever they are, but also show how issues that may seem specific to a certain country actually have relevance elsewhere, too. A recent piece looking at Scottish teachers’ changing pay and conditions over two decades, for example, could fuel debate in countries where there are many clear parallels, and there was certainly a lot of interest from our readers in England.
The four UK nations’ education systems, in some ways, seem very different but they also share a lot of common ground. There is much that they can learn from each other - and there will be no better place to see that than in Tes’ continuing coverage of education in all corners of the UK, and far beyond.
