Bruce Adamson has been the children’s commissioner in Scotland since 2017. 

He has been a prominent figure during Covid, speaking up for young people on issues such as the Scottish Qualifications Authority results debacle. And even before Covid, he had become a well-known face as he talked up the importance of children’s rights and campaigned for landmark changes such as raising the age of criminal responsibility - which finally becomes law today.

Speaking to Tes Scotland, Adamson, who grew up on the North Island of New Zealand, recalls the punitive regime of his old school and talks about his hopes for education reform in Scotland, why the full value of schools has never been clearer than during the pandemic and how letting children design your office can change the way you work.

1. Who was your most memorable teacher and why?

Mr Miller, who was my social studies, history and form teacher. My school was very conformist with a lot of rote learning, but he was really big on critical thinking - which was very countercultural within the school. I really liked his ability to get the best out of people by using Socratic method and challenging us to think really differently. That kind of critical thinking is something that I’ve really valued throughout my career and my life.

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

The best was the friends I made throughout school that have lasted a lifetime - I’m still close friends with some people from primary school. It was important to me that I could find a community and friends. Another positive was the practical skills and the love of the outdoors - there was a strong focus at my school on building skills.

The worst thing was that my school was very conformist and had quite a narrow view of education; it was very focused on academic and sporting results. 

The school probably lacked some of that broader understanding about the purpose of education to be developing children to their fullest potential. And, certainly, it didn’t take the participatory approach that I would like to see in schools, in terms of involving children and young people in decision making.

We were very much there to be the subject of learning rather than participating in its design. That manifested strongly in the fact that we still had the cane in New Zealand. My all-boys school was one of the last schools to want to keep the cane, and argued against legal reform in the late 1980s - it argued very strongly that caning was an essential part of education. I managed to avoid the cane, but a lot of my friends caught it. The names got called out on a Friday morning at school assembly, and then the canings were done publicly in the school quads - you would get hundreds watching, people would crowd around. It was a very public shaming spectacle. 

Even so, I enjoyed school. But one of my brothers has a physical disability, and the school was awful dealing with that - there was a lot of bullying. I have another brother who has a learning disability, and they both had real trouble. The school did very little to support them. 

I also saw that particularly with children from Maori-specific backgrounds. I wanted to learn Maori language and the school actively discouraged us from doing that - it was pushing those of us who they thought had more academic ability into subjects such as economics.

3. Why do you work with children? 

I think that it’s the best job in the world, working with children and young people. They are so inspiring and engaging and so good at coming up with different approaches and ideas - I think that really helps you get the best out of yourself. Children are so willing to ask “why?” in a way that I find incredibly energising. When you work with children, you’re constantly improving and challenging yourself.

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

I’m most proud of working with young people - particularly young human-rights defenders - over the past few years. In my role you get the opportunity to amplify the voices of children and young people, and give them opportunities. I’m proud that on things like incorporation of the [UN] Convention on the Rights of the Child, children’s voices were so strong and really pushed the government to go further and faster. Also, with the abolition of physical punishment, again, children and young people are really playing a key role. We’ve also been able to support their leadership on issues like climate justice - we’ve seen that at COP26 - and in the Black Lives Matter and anti-misogyny movements.

My biggest regrets would be on criminal justice issues: the age of criminal responsibility and that we still imprison children. The age of criminal responsibility is changing to 12 [up from 8 - this becomes law today] but that is two years below the [UN] international minimum, and I really regret that I wasn’t able to shift that further. We criminalise children very early and then push them down a route that ends up in the criminal justice system. Criminal laws are a really bad way of addressing harmful behaviour. Why are we so stuck on this idea that we need to use criminal law to punish children?

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

One thing that I’m really proud of in the commissioner’s office is that we got children to design it as a space that they would feel comfortable in, and that really encouraged different ways of thinking in adults.

We’ve got a kind of boat in the middle of it, bright colours, strong links to nature. There are lots of spaces where you can do creative things, such as painting, and use technology as well. There are also lots of quiet spaces - I’ve got a tipi in my office. It’s really important to bring children and young people into decision making in adult spaces - and it also encourages innovation and challenge among staff. 

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

There’s some amazing, innovative stuff happening in the early years and primary schools in getting children to talk about and understand their rights. And the incredible teachers and school leadership that we have got in Scotland - Scotland has some amazing innovations and a really highly skilled workforce, which is a huge strength.

The worst thing is that there are some real challenges in terms of the resourcing, and in the physical condition of some school estates. I also think that we’ve still got a long way to go in terms of children’s participation. Children often say to me they feel that they’ve got quite a high level of participation within their schools, but when it comes to actually making decisions at a local authority or national level, their voices are really absent - and I think that the education system really suffers from that. There have been real issues during Covid around exams and assessments, but we’ve now got an opportunity to look at reforming that - the purpose of education needs to be developing children to their fullest potential, not just passing exams.

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

The young people and the children that I work with have definitely been the biggest influence. I grew up in a farming community and my family influenced me in terms of being very practical and direct about things. My mum was really influential. She was a nurse and then became a nurse educator, and a lot of her work was in community education, particularly in Maori mental health. As a teenager, it was really powerful seeing how she was constantly trying to adapt to really get the best out of people.

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

I’d do the same as when I became children’s commissioner: I spent a few months travelling around Scotland talking to children and young people, asking, “What do you want from me, your commissioner?”

They told me: “We want you to come to our communities, to be friendly, engaging and nice, use child-friendly language, put on the hoodie, get the paints out and play and all that stuff.” But then they wanted me to do something with all this: take it away, put the suit on, use the big legal words, go to Parliament, go to the UN and use that power on their behalf. The quote I love from Shetland was they wanted me to be “savage” in holding government to account.

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

The key thing for me would be the cultural change around incorporation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and building on everything we’ve learned from the pandemic. I would like to see a rights-respecting approach to education, which really gives value to developing children to their fullest potential, to proper participation, to using technology to allow children and young people to be much more part of planning their own learning. If we stick to core human-rights principles about children’s participation in decision making around their own education, and their education being much more holistic, that’s really, really exciting.

10. What one person do you think has made the biggest difference to schools and to education more generally during the pandemic?

It’s young people but also their whole-school communities. Children and young people have sacrificed so much in terms of public health and keeping others safe. And also those that have been part of the campaigns around education, like the SQA - Where’s Our Say campaign, members of the Scottish Youth Parliament and others, who have campaigned so powerfully around assessment issues during the pandemic. And, more broadly than that, young human-rights defenders have played such an important role in bringing attention to various issues.

Children and young people have reminded us that schools are also communities and places of support and safety. If we didn’t have the commitment, enthusiasm and willingness from education staff to provide support to children and young people during the pandemic, there would have been a huge crisis.

Bruce Adamson was talking to Henry Hepburn, news editor at Tes Scotland 

This article originally appeared in the 17 December 2021 issue