A report from the recent meeting of the First Minister’s International Council of Educational Advisors (ICEA) has highlighted the need to focus on cultural change and capacity building as well as structural reform. ICEA also recommended that further investment to enhance the quality of teaching and learning in the classroom and unleashing untapped leadership potential within schools was required. To achieve this ICEA believes the system needs to focus on building stronger collaboration and partnerships.
Professor Christopher Chapman, a member of ICEA and Founding Director of The Robert Owen Centre for Educational Change within the School of Education said: “For Scottish education to fulfill its ambition of leveling the playing field so all our young people achieve their full potential we need to create system that ensures every child has access to the very best learning and teaching. We also need to build leadership capacity by investing in professional learning that impacts on what teachers and leaders day-to-day practices. To achieve this it is important to build a collaborative culture that celebrates success and moves knowledge and expertise around the system. The Education Governance Review provides a significant opportunity for the system to rise to this challenge by rethinking and reculturing ways of working within Scottish education.”
The report also highlights the strengths of Curriculum for Excellence and the National Improvement Framework noting that they provide a clear and positive narrative which have the potential to close the poverty-related attainment gap. Scottish Government said: “We value the council’s expertise, robust challenge and input into our policy thinking, and our decision to further empower schools and teachers took their advice into account alongside other evidence.”
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The Advisors report and its claim for cultural change in Scottish education has been generally better received than Scottish Government’s proposal of structural reform. The cultural change that is necessary has to be focused in the classroom. In 2007 the OECD flagged up the need for cultural change in these terms “Who you are in Scotland is far more important than what school you attend, so far as achievement differences on international tests are concerned. Socio-economic status is the most important difference between individuals. Family cultural capital, life-style, and aspirations influence student outcomes through the nature of the cognitive and cultural demands of the curriculum, teacher values, the programme emphasis in schools, and peer effects.”
Ten years on, cultural change needs to be understood and respond to “who you are” and how to reorganise classroom support to meet diverse needs.
We additionally want to construct management capacity via investing in expert gaining knowledge of that influences on what teachers and leaders everyday practices. To obtain this it’s miles important to construct a collaborative lifestyle that celebrates fulfillment and moves information and knowledge across the machine.
Professor Alma Harris of our Department of Education was in Edinburgh this week for the second meeting of the International Council of Education Advisers (ICEA) – a group set up to advise the Scottish government on achieving excellence and equity in the Scottish education system.