There has been a changing of the guard in Scottish education this week. On Wednesday, first minister Nicola Sturgeon announced her imminent resignation after eight years, leaving Scottish educators to ponder whether her “defining mission” for education had, in any way, been a success.
Then, yesterday, it emerged that chief inspector and Education Scotland chief executive, Gayle Gorman, is to leave, in advance of whatever the ongoing education reform process ultimately means for her organisation.
Now, the new leader of School Leaders Scotland (SLS) has been confirmed as Graham Hutton, headteacher at Grove Academy in Dundee, and he has given his first interview to Tes Scotland.
Hutton is Glasgow born and bred and qualified in Scotland before starting his career as a French and German teacher in London in 1982.
He soon returned to Scotland and worked his way through various leadership positions, becoming headteacher at Dumbarton Academy in 2008. After three years he moved to Grove Academy in Dundee, the city that had long been his home, where he has been head ever since.
He will see the school year through at Grove Academy before taking over from Jim Thewliss as SLS general secretary in August, and this week reflected on some of the big issues facing Scottish education.
Nicola Sturgeon
Hutton spoke to Tes Scotland less than 24 hours after Nicola Sturgeon had made her shock announcement.
For all the shortcomings in the Scottish government’s education record in recent years, he thinks it is positive that Sturgeon has “always been a backer of education” and that her ambition to close the attainment gap significantly was “definitely laudable”.
However, one downside to the policy focus on education, he fears, is that the onus has been on teachers to drive change to social problems whose roots lie well beyond the school gates.
“There is a feeling with some [SLS] members that we’ve been asked to do too much,” says Hutton.
Measuring the attainment gap
One of the problems with attempting to close the attainment gap is that the very notion of an attainment gap is a slippery concept, which poses questions about what should be measured and what should be valued in education.
Hutton believes there is still too much of an emphasis on five Highers as the “gold standard” - a phrase that Sturgeon was known to use.
He wants to see “a far broader approach” in which “academic” and “professional” qualifications are on par.
His school has worked with students as early as S3 who had already decided that they “really hate school, no matter what we do in school”. But they have been engaged by training with companies such as Alexander Decorators, combining classroom-based and off-site education, which Hutton says has transformed their view of what school can offer.
Behaviour and attendance
The experience of Covid has been “horrendous, in many ways, for a lot of young people”, says Hutton, adding to already “really difficult mental health issues” and fuelling behaviour problems seen right across the country.
The detachment from school for prolonged periods of lockdown resulted in many pupils who “became disengaged and didn’t see the point of education or coming to school”. Attendance, he says, has on average gone down markedly right across Scotland.
Hutton, then, challenges staff to make sure they can justify to students why it’s worth teaching what they’re teaching. There is also an emphasis on “trauma-informed practice” and understanding the underlying factors causing behaviour problems.
Yet, he stresses that there must also be consequences when students overstep the mark and “clear expectations” about the behaviour that is acceptable in school.
That has, he concedes, been undermined by what he sees as an understandably more “laissez-faire approach” in schools during Covid.
Hutton is not entirely opposed to excluding a student but “I just don’t think exclusion is worth it unless it’s a situation where you’ve got a danger and someone’s got to separate [students]”.
There are, he adds, “some really vulnerable young people” and he worries that, if they are removed, “I don’t know where they are [and] that’s more dangerous”.
Outside influences on social media concern Hutton, who says that Andrew Tate “sends a shiver down my spine”.
Pay and strike action
“If you really value school leadership and accountability...then you need to pay [school leaders] accordingly,” says Hutton, who underlines that headteacher pay in Scotland does not compare favourably with the rest of the UK.
A pay rise would help attract more applications to headteacher jobs, but improved conditions are also a must in his view.
SLS did not reach the threshold for strike action when it balloted members in November, but Hutton says he has been supportive of colleagues who have been taking industrial action.
While he says there has been some disruption, he stresses that schools have only been closed for a few days and that there was “far more disruption under Covid”. Some disruption to exam preparation is possible, he says, but he is wary of some of the more drastic predictions about the possible impact of strikes on this year’s exam diet starting at the end of April.
He adds that, with the reversion to something more like pre-Covid assessment and less onus on schools to gather evidence of learning, there is less potential for a strike to be disruptive.
Hayward review
Hutton says his initial priorities will include “getting to know the members and understanding what their issues are” in different parts of Scotland, adding: “I think it’d be quite useful to get members more involved and give their views together...kind of a roadshow”.
He is also keenly anticipating the imminent Hayward review of qualifications and assessment, in the hope that Scotland will see a “move away from high-stakes exams”. He is scathing about the Scottish system’s internationally anomalous insistence that students face three years of tough exams in a row from S4-6.
Hutton is confident that report author Professor Louise Hayward will produce a “well-thought-out plan”. He is “excited” about what could be a seminal moment for Scottish qualifications - and the continuation of a period of reform when he is likely to bear witness to a host of changes in Scottish education.
