Heads told to help pupils in other schools as much as their own

Schools must collaborate as a priority – headteachers have also been told they should think about going running with other heads and organising joint school trips

16th March 2023, 11:45am

Henry Hepburn

Headteachers should be as driven to support pupils in other schools as much as those in their own school, delegates at a school leadership conference have been told.

Collaboration between schools rather than competition was essential to improving the Scottish school system, said Education Scotland strategic director and former secondary headteacher, Ollie Bray.

He made that call in his opening address to the Into Headship national conference in Glasgow yesterday.

Mr Bray, who was interviewed while head at Kingussie High for a 2018 Tes Scotland feature on the broad curriculum at the school, added: “I believe the very premise of systems leadership in Scotland is when you have a headteacher that says: ‘The children in this school over there are as important as the children in my school here, so I’m going to help that school to improve in the same way that I would expect them to help [us to] improve as well.’”

He said “that of course is how you lift the system, that is how you encourage a culture of collaboration and improvement”, rather than competition between “islands of excellence”.

Background: Into Headship praised - but more time needed to do it, evaluation finds
Interview: Why the job of a head is hugely demanding - and uniquely fulfilling
Leadership: Scottish secondary heads lay out top priorities for 2023
Related: Weighing up 2023 priorities for heads in Scotland’s primary schools
Feature: The end of the primary head? A warning from Scotland

There was a similar message from another speaker, Professor Alma Harris, who is one of the Scottish government’s international education advisers and, in November, published an evaluation of the Into Headship programme.

Good leaders “recognise their leadership is really limited without the connections and the collaboration with others”, she said.

She told delegates: “One big message: if you don’t take anything else away today, take away this quote - and I wish I’d said this, but I didn’t - that says ‘isolation is the enemy of improvement’.”

She added that collaboration beyond one’s own immediate surroundings is “probably the most powerful lever we have to change organisations”.

The importance of collaboration and of headteachers looking beyond the immediate to-do list in their office was underlined by two headteachers who closed yesterday’s event.

“You can’t do it all on your own” is the credo of Kevin Boyd, headteacher at Belmont Academy in Ayr, South Ayrshire, who talked up the benefits of being part of school leaders’ organisations such as the BOCSH Group.

He also extolled the idea of organising leavers’ trips with another school and said that, after a bad week, other heads were the best people to share that experience with, as they understood better than anyone else the difficulties a fellow head might face.

Mr Boyd and Simone McCredie, headteacher at Kilmacolm Primary in Inverclyde, shared tips for fellow and aspiring headteachers.

Kevin Boyd’s tips to make the most of ‘the best job in the world’

Leave early at least once a week.
Put family and friends first.
“Heidie therapy”: if you need to moan, do it with other heads and not necessarily from afar - perhaps go running with another head.
Exercise: “you will be physically and mentally challenged” by the job, and he has found yoga, golf and running beneficial.
“Turn Sundays into Saturdays” - don’t leave everything on your weekend to-do list for the Sunday, perhaps think about cooking a big meal on a Saturday to free up time to watch TV or go to the cinema with your family on Sunday.