The president of the Scottish education directors’ body ADES today warned that “social isolation and loneliness are going to be the next pandemic”.
This was no longer an issue mostly affecting older people, Sheena Devlin told delegates at the ADES annual conference in Cumbernauld.
“We see young people who are socially isolated because of digitisation and living in a digital world, and so there is a huge piece of work for us to continue to do,” she said.
Echoing findings from the Scottish government’s International Council of Education Advisers, Ms Devlin stressed the “primacy” of in-person education.
She also suggested that the situation might improve in the future as the focus in society shifted from “digital by default or digital first” to “rehumanisation” and “humans with digital”.
The theme of this year’s ADES conference, which also takes place tomorrow, is “Towards a world-class learning system”.
Education directors were working in a “complex landscape”, said Ms Devlin, who is also director of education and children’s services at Perth and Kinross Council.
In 2023, the outgoing ADES president Douglas Hutchison, Glasgow City Council’s director of education, had spoken of difficulties around budgets, reform and multiple big reports about Scottish education. Ms Devlin said that complexity was unlikely to dissipate and “at best” things would remain “as complex as they are”.
She urged council education leaders to remain focused on what was important and advised them not to get “embroiled” in “urgent and immediate” matters while losing sight of the big picture in education.
This resonated with Laurence Findlay - the ADES vice-president and director of education and children’s services in Aberdeenshire Council - who said he had spent much of the previous day discussing “budget and budget and budget”, with little time left to focus on other matters.
In Glasgow, meanwhile, teacher numbers - the government’s edict that they should be maintained, and the council’s plans to cut them - have been dominating education in the city for most of 2024.
Today, more headlines will be generated after a legal challenge from a parents’ group focused on the cuts was refused permission to proceed by a Court of Session judge.
The council said the court’s decision to refuse permission for the challenge to proceed was made “on the basis that it had no prospects of success”.
Education directors also concerned by assessment reform
On qualifications and assessment reform, Ms Devlin said today that there was “little detail”.
Headteachers felt like they were “in a bit of a holding position”, she said, referencing her own observation at the ADES annual conference last year when she said education directors felt like they were “in limbo”.
“It was interesting for me to hear a year on from the headteachers that that was how they feel,” she said.
She suggested there was sometimes an attempt to couple together systems from different eras “because we’re so scared to let go”.
She questioned if something built in the 19th century could respond to the needs and expectations of 21st-century users.
There was a reluctance to “throw the baby out with the bathwater”, she said, but there might at times be a case for “more of a clean-sheet approach”.
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