Pauline Walker is headteacher of the Royal High School in Edinburgh and chair of the BOCSH group of heads - a body for secondary leaders that is increasingly gaining traction in Scottish education.

Walker says the group’s growing prominence comes down to the fact that the 20 heads involved share one goal:
“to influence change for positive results”. 

She tells Tes Scotland about the reasons why she “didn’t love school” as a child, and reveals her desire to see assessment in secondary “reviewed and revamped and turned upside down”.

1. Who was your most memorable teacher and why?

I didn’t love school, but Mr McGuigan is the guy that always comes up [when thinking back]. He was a physics teacher and he inspired me to think techie subjects - maths, physics, computing - were for girls and you didn’t have to follow the crowd.

At that time - in the late 1980s and early 1990s - girls were encouraged down a different path. I asked to go on a computing placement for work experience and although some boys got to go there, I [instead] ended up in a library for two weeks and it was hellish.

I was very shy at school and didn’t want to stick my head above the parapet. I didn’t do computing because it was male-dominated and I was put off, but Mr McGuigan kind of empowered me and brought out a feminism that was probably in me, but had never poked its head out. He lit that fire and made me think I could do something different.
As a result, I went and studied computer science at university.

2. What were the best and worst things about your time at school?

The best thing about school was the teachers that were concerned and cared and inspired you to think outside the box, and the amazing friends who were there for better or worse. They ultimately gave you the boost to do what you did. I was the first person in my family to go to university - it wasn’t the done thing because university was expensive and you got a job [instead]. My teachers inspired me to do that.
They wanted us to do well and were really passionate about everything we did.

At the start of second year, we moved house, so I moved school and that was the worst year of my life. It was quite a tough school and there was bullying. I was alone and I found it really hard. I can remember walking into the dining hall and thinking, “What am I going to do? How can I disappear? Is it possible to sit behind the bin?” I had gone to my other [secondary] school with my lovely friends from primary. It was a bit like Malory Towers and if I had stayed there I would have had a different experience, but ultimately I don’t think it did me any harm.

At the end of second year we chose our subjects, which saved me. It was almost a fresh start into third year and there was setting at that point as well, and I was academic so I was in with the other geeks. At that point I thought, “OK, I can do this.”

Now, every time a new kid starts in those middle years, I go out of my way to make sure they are OK and they have got a friend.

3. Why do you work in education?

It’s a funny one because I said I would never become a teacher. I went to university and did computer science, which I really enjoyed, and I assumed I was going to do that. I had mapped out a project management-style career, but at that time Heriot-Watt [University, in Edinburgh] did super work-experience placements that allowed you to try a lot of different careers. You got hooked up with placements and for one of them I was sent to the local school, which happened to be Currie High.

I had two weeks there and loved it. That’s when I discovered that teaching folk how to do things is really satisfying and that kids don’t eat you alive. After that, I did some more placements and decided that was what I wanted to do so I did my PGDE [professional graduate diploma in education] instead of going into industry.

4. What are you most proud of in your career and what is your biggest regret?

I’m proud of my involvement in digital learning - I’ve been involved at a national level and have always made sure in the schools I have led that the infrastructure is in place, that staff are trained - and I have spent a lot of time trying to persuade people this is the right thing to do.

I’m also proud of my involvement with BOCSH because that has allowed access to people I never thought I would have access to, and we have been able to influence change in a big way. For instance, the education secretary [John Swinney] has listened to us - it doesn’t mean he will
do what we say, but he has been willing to engage with us, and we have a good relationship with Education Scotland and the SQA [Scottish Qualifications Authority].

My biggest regret is for the few young people I know we did not get it right for. There are some kids whom you think back
on and you think, “that was the wrong thing we did”. Any young person whom it doesn’t work out for, it is just an absolute travesty, but it happens. Almost always it’s to do
with inclusion, which is always the biggest challenge. In the past, we worked with quite old-fashioned curricula or support structures and policy changed nationally as a result of these young people because many got lost in the system - particularly young people with additional support needs. That’s changed significantly over the past 10 years, but the recent review [of ASN by Angela Morgan] shows we have got to keep looking at this.

Something I’m proud of at Royal High is that we now have two enhanced support bases for children with autism spectrum disorder and social, emotional and behavioural difficulties, who in the past would probably have just disappeared off the planet in terms of their education, but whom we are now trying to find more suitable pathways for.

5. Who would be your colleagues in the perfect staffroom?

It would be my BOCSH colleagues - all of them. Because they are so inspiring but also really challenging (and I would be heckled at every Friday meeting). They never agree to anything without a good argument, but those are the best colleagues to have in the staffroom. Also, they can’t half party.

6. What are the best and worst aspects
of our schools system today?

The worst aspect is the fragmentation across 32 local authorities, but in some ways the worst bit leads to the best bit - which is the flexibility you have to get it right for your own community. That’s why it becomes so difficult to know what to do because if there was more direction from the Scottish government we would all just move in lockstep.

There should be equitable provision, though, across the 32 authorities. Just now, you have got different funding models; different curricular models; different assessment structures; different provision for inclusion. And that’s not great because Scottish children shouldn’t be shortchanged based on which authority they live in.

7. Your own teachers aside, who in education has influenced you the most?

There are so many. [Educationalist] Sir John Jones greatly influenced my leadership, as has “The Real David Cameron” [the tongue-in-cheek moniker of the former education director who has been a key player in the ACEs - adverse childhood experiences - movement in Scotland]. And more recently Mark Priestley [professor of education at
the University of Stirling and author of the review into the 2020 qualifications crisis]. But I would have to say Chris Kilkenny.

I have heard Chris speak now a few times, talking about his journey through school as a care-experienced young person living in poverty and what went wrong. It gave me the push to know what I had to do - which was I had to change everything. There could be no more nonsense: education had to be the best it could be for every single child.

It’s often little things like whether subject choices have a tariff attached that can make a difference: do pupils have to buy equipment or do they need a computer to work on [the subject] at home? If they do, some kids just won’t choose it.

One of the things Chris talked about was having to ask for a pen every single day, so we introduced equipment boxes on every desk stuffed with paper and pens and glue. A lot of staff were worried the kids would steal them - but if they steal them, they need them.

8. If you became education secretary tomorrow, what’s the first thing you’d do?

I would review assessment - it needs to be reviewed and revamped and turned upside down. We can’t really do the broad general education differently if we are still working towards this antiquated system
in the senior phase.

It’s the fact that we still have this big-bang formative-assessment exam at the end that’s not taking any account of the development of skills and different ways of showing what young people have been learning. The impact of that could not have been clearer than last year when the pass rate went up - that wasn’t because teachers were cheating, it was because pupils did not have to shuffle into an exam hall. We set them up to fail because of the [current exam] system.

We know universities are doing their assessments online - students are doing vivas online - and that’s a really successful way of assessing young people: just asking them what they know.

9. What will our schools be like in 30 years?

I think schools will be community hubs with all the services from birth onwards in the one place - you’ll have social work, housing, medical, libraries, all in the same place. It would be very cost-effective and you could have excellent facilities.

There has been an attempt to deliver 3-18 campuses, but it hasn’t quite worked for me because not all the services have come in. I would love to be able to walk down a corridor and speak to different services and say, “This person is homeless, do something.” Hopefully in 30 years it will have happened.

10. Which one person do you think made the biggest difference to schools and education more generally in 2020?

Again, Mark Priestley. He helped ensure there was a reasonable approach to this year’s SQA qualifications. I think otherwise we would be in a bit of a mire. But I think as long as we get that face-to-face time with senior pupils from Easter to summer, it will be fine. Beyond the exams, he has also influenced us to start thinking differently about how we assess pupils. 

Interview by Tes Scotland reporter Emma Seith

This article originally appeared in the 26 February 2021 issue of Tes Scotland