Douglas Hutchison, Glasgow’s new education director, left school at the age of 18 and went “from a council house in Kilmarnock to a seminary” in Spain. But over a decade later, he decided the priesthood was not for him, that he had made a mistake and it was “time to move on”.

“I went straight from school to seminary; I went to seminary when I was 18,” he says. “And you think you’re ready to make all these big grown-up decisions when you’re eighteen but the reality is you are not.”

Hutchison spent six years in Spain and says “it was great”, and he loved it, but ultimately joining the priesthood was “the wrong decision” - although he says he learned much from that time.

“It gives you a certain perspective - you’re there celebrating births, marriages and then funerals. You are a part of people’s life journey and so I would hope that would give me an empathy - but, quite often, people say I’m the least priestly person they’ve ever met when I’m ranting about something.”

After 13 years, however, “it came time to call it a halt”, he says.

Working in the Galloway diocese, Hutchison had been a school chaplain and diocese RE advisor so it was a “natural progression” to become an RE teacher. After that, he worked in a school for young people with social, emotional and behavioural problems and then he became a principal education psychologist, and later a school inspector. He then joined South Ayrshire Council, originally as a quality improvement officer, and eventually becoming the authority’s director of people and depute chief executive.

Fast forward to mid-January 2022 and he has just taken the helm in Glasgow - Scotland’s biggest local authority - as its new director of education, where he has responsibility for roughly four times as many schools as in South Ayrshire.

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However, in South Ayrshire his remit was vast - he had responsibility not only for education but also internal audit; housing policy and strategy; community planning; sport; libraries, culture and museums; tourism and events; employability and skills; organisational development; and communications.

The list went “on and on and on” and he says he was like the wizard in The Wizard of Oz - “a wee man with a big megaphone”.

The Glasgow job appealed, therefore, because it allowed him to focus on education, which he says is what he is most passionate about.

“It’s about enhancing the life chances of our children and young people,” Hutchison says. “The attraction of Glasgow is the opportunity to improve and enhance the life chances of some of the poorest children and young people, in some of the most deprived communities in Scotland, on such a scale.”

Hutchison, who is also the president of education directors’ association ADES, talks to Tes Scotland about why he believes the exam system in Scotland is “ripe for reform”; why we need an independent inspectorate “strong enough to challenge government policy”; and why he believes that if you remove young people with challenging behaviour from mainstream schools, you are effectively flushing their life chances down the toilet.

Exams system in Scotland ‘ripe for reform’

There is an extract from a novel that Hutchison has carried around with him since he was a school inspector that is now pinned up in his new office in Glasgow. It comes from a Christopher Brookmyre novel and he believes - unflattering at it is - it sums up Scottish education.

The extract is from the novel One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night and it’s about one character, Annette Strachan, and her experience of school. It reads: “She found the curriculum frustratingly restrictive...with everything so geared towards exam syllabuses and exam technique that learning for its own sake seemed a decadent luxury.”

Hutchison believes, with this description, Brookmyre “absolutely nailed the Scottish education system in one”.

He says: “I just thought that summed up the Scottish exam system - that learning for its own sake was seen as a decadent luxury.”

Hutchison says the exams system in Scotland is “ripe for reform” but it is not just the Scottish Qualifications Authority that needs to change - the whole system requires an overhaul.

He says: “This is also about our behaviour as educators, as secondary teachers. You know, the day you get kids into school and you say to them, ‘Remember, you need this for the exam.’ It’s partly about us, too, and it’s about parents and their view of ‘what really matters is your five Highers’.”

Hutchison adds: “We need to consider what are the best ways of accrediting the actual learning that young people do. And for some, in some instances, that is an exam, but for others, it’s about demonstrating what they have learned in other ways - what they can produce in practical mental work or practical woodwork or in cake decorating or a performance in drama or music or PE, or taking part in a debate or producing a portfolio.

“There are multiple ways - as happens in higher and further education - there are multiple ways that you can cash in your learning, demonstrate what you’ve learned, other than an exam for two hours on a wet Wednesday morning.”

For those destined for higher education - which in Glasgow is around 43 per cent of school leavers - exams are appropriate, he says. But the other 57 per cent of school leavers should be able to “demonstrate their learning in other ways”.

“At the moment I’m not convinced they can, although I’m sure the SQA would disagree with me,” he says.

Hutchison adds that it was “a scandal” when an exam was introduced for practical woodwork and metalwork.

The importance of inclusion for ASN pupils

There is never enough money to meet pupils’ additional support needs, says Hutchison. But he argues that success when it comes to inclusion is as much about having the right mindset as it is about resources.

“Look at Glasgow - the extent to which Glasgow has reduced exclusions. That’s about values and the right mindset.

“I don’t doubt for a second it’s challenging. Now, I’m like one of those generals a million miles from the front line, so I know it is challenging but it’s the right thing for our children, for our young people.”

The alternative for children with “distressed and challenging behaviour” is that they are excluded or moved into specialist provision where the only role models they have are each other. Go down that road and, Hutchison says, “The next step for them is young offenders’, then it’s a short life and very poor life outcomes. I think when you put kids into places like that you flush their life chances down the toilet.”

Inclusion in the mainstream for children with other kinds of additional support needs is about ensuring that they are part of the community, he says.

He gives the example of a girl with complex needs who started to attend her local school one day a week.

“Once she had spent a day a week in her mainstream school, the kids would come up and talk to her [in the street]. Even though she wasn’t able to talk back, they would because they knew who she was,” Hutchison says.

“It made such a difference to that wee girl’s family; the fact that the other kids, her community, knew who she was. They knew her name and she was part of it. So that’s why it’s important.”

He adds: “I don’t underestimate for a second the challenges in terms of being the person on the front line trying to sustain that placement. But I think with the right values, attitude and willingness, it’s possible.”

Tackling the disadvantage gap

The government’s investment in the Scottish Attainment Challenge is “hugely impressive”, says Hutchison - although he believes that it should have happened in the wake of the 2007 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report that looked at the quality and equity of schooling in Scotland.

The Attainment Challenge was launched by first minister Nicola Sturgeon eight years later, in 2015.

“The 2007 OECD report said that in Scotland it matters more who you are than what school you go to, and who you are is largely defined by socioeconomic markers. So the poverty-related attainment gap had been identified in 2007,” says Hutchison.

“It was a shame [the Attainment Challenge] didn’t happen in 2007 when the OECD report came out, but it’s here now and you cannot question that.”

When Hutchison became head of education in South Ayrshire in 2013, the disadvantage-related attainment gap was his focus, he says, and particularly finding out “who was getting a good deal out of education”.

“My kids lived in Troon - [I wanted to know] is it my kids who are getting a good deal out of education or is it the kids in Dalmilling Crescent?

“Dalmilling Crescent is where the cathedral is and it was a nightmare. I was constantly getting windows broken and one summer I had 400 tiles on the church roof broken.

“It was just hard, hard going. It was an area of significant deprivation.”

Hutchison discovered that “largely it was the kids in Troon who were doing well and getting good results”, so he raised the issue with headteachers and, he says, they embraced his ideas.

According to Hutchison, headteachers are the “key group” who will “take things forward and bring up the whole system”. In South Ayrshire, headteachers began to see themselves as not just responsible for the children in their schools but children across the authority, he says.

That sense of collective responsibility is important, Hutchison argues, because “you don’t get people running away and doing a great job and others who are just stationary and going nowhere”.

He adds: “There is strength in working together. You bring the strugglers and stragglers along with you - the stronger headteachers will bring them along.”

The role of the local authority, he says, is to work in “genuine collaboration” with headteachers and to bring about “that strategic alignment between all the parts”.

Tracking pupil performance

Scotland should “ditch” its national literacy and numeracy tests and reintroduce the sample survey, the Scottish Survey of Literacy and Numeracy, says Hutchinson.

Hutchison says that if he was education secretary, he would not be able to sleep at night knowing there was a lack of “reliable [attainment] data until you get to S4, 5 and 6” when students start doing exams.

Back in 2016, Tes Scotland revealed that the Scottish government planned to scrap the SSLN, an annual survey that looked at pupil performance in literacy and numeracy in alternate years. The survey ran for the last time in 2017 and was replaced with the Scottish National Standardised Assessments.

The results of the SNSAs are not collected but they are used by teachers to inform their judgements about whether their pupils are performing at the expected level for their age and stage, and this data - known as the Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) Levels data - is collected and published.

“I want to know, is the system improving as it’s going along, not just at the exit point, not just when kids have got exam results in S4, 5 and 6 or school leaver destinations?” says Hutchison.

“How do I know that the system generally is improving or declining? Or that this school is doing as well as that school? Something like the SSLN was better at giving you that sense of ‘how is the whole system improving or declining?’ in a probably slightly more objective way.”

He adds: “If I was the cabinet secretary, I wouldn’t sleep at night not knowing that there was reliable data until you get to S4, 5 and 6.”

The impact of funding cuts

“I’ve had a responsibility for education now for nine years, and every single year I’ve had to make savings. That has an impact,” says Hutchison.

Hutchison highlights the breadth of his remit in his previous role in South Ayrshire, where he was responsible for everything from education to housing policy and strategy.

“It just went on and on and on, and that’s the nature of small local authorities. There were fewer and fewer people.

“I used to think it was like a wee man with a megaphone. It was like The Wizard of Oz. There really aren’t huge numbers of people at the centre anymore.”

Hutchison believes the situation is better in a larger authority, such as Glasgow. Education has not been as badly hit as in other areas, although he acknowledges that schools are still feeling the impact of cuts.

“You feel that in terms of youth work and all of the community supports that would have been there - they are not there to the same extent, and that makes life a bit more challenging for everybody.”

Inspectorate ‘needs to challenge government’

Scotland needs an independent inspectorate that is strong enough to challenge government policy, says Hutchison.

There is “loads the government is getting right”, he says, and the focus on poverty and closing the gap is the right one. But he adds that the politicisation of education has led to shortsighted decisions, such as bringing together curriculum development and inspection into one body with the creation of Education Scotland in 2011.  

That was a decade ago but then last year, in the wake of the 2021 OECD review, the government said it planned to take the inspection function back out of Education Scotland and that inspection would once again be run by an independent body.

Ken Muir’s report on how that reform - and the replacement of the SQA - should be taken forward is expected imminently.

“We should have an independent inspectorate that should be strong enough to challenge government policy,” says Hutchison. “Nobody’s deluded into thinking that they’re not civil servants, at the end of the day, but they should have the ability, like Audit Scotland, to challenge and to be able to say, ‘Look, actually, this isn’t in the best interests of the children and young people of Scotland.’”

One thing is very clear from talking at length with Hutchison: like his predecessor, he will not be afraid to speak openly about where he thinks Scottish education needs to change.