Landmark education reform in Scotland will only work if headteachers show “love” to schools other than their own, according to an internationally renowned educationalist.

Steve Munby, formerly the CEO of education charity the Education Development Trust, says that he backs the idea of devolving more responsibility to headteachers - but warns of “pitfalls” if schools become too inward-looking as a result.

Munby, who will address the Scottish Learning Festival on 20 September (see box, right), says that he is a “big fan” of much of what is happening in Scottish education, but that success will ultimately rest on getting the right balance between “power and love”.

If schools were to be given more autonomy, as envisaged by June’s Education Governance Review, he says, “That’s going to require not just a power approach where you just look after your own school and do the best for your own school - it’s going to require a love approach where you collaborate with other schools to make the system better.”

He adds: “If you don’t do that, you’ll have some of the problems you have in England where schools are so focused on competition that individual children in individual schools lose out.”

Scottish education has a good track record of collaboration, says Munby, and it is essential to maintain a sense of responsibility and empathy that stretches beyond one’s own school - headteachers should be “caring almost as much for the other schools in the area as they do for their own school”.

Remaining responsible

Munby warns that one “pitfall” is if “you end up with schools that are competing rather than collaborating [and] that with autonomy you focus [exclusively] on improving your own school”, which will inevitably lead to greater variability in the standards of schools.

He adds: “If there’s too much power and not enough love, you’ll get competition, you’ll get people playing games to let their own school do well, to do down the school down the road and to pinch their staff.”

In this worst-case scenario, he says, the schools that need help the most will be left floundering on their own because school leaders and teachers elsewhere “are busy looking after their own school”.

But Munby cautions that just as the education system could be imbalanced by too much selfish power and not enough love, “love without power” - where power entails the setting of boundaries and insisting that students are challenged - would be equally dysfunctional. “You end up with everyone being nice to each other, everyone caring for each other, but not enough improvement, focus and pace”.

‘Positive’ direction

Munby says he is “not afraid” to talk about love in leadership, echoing Scotland’s new children’s commissioner Bruce Adamson, who said last month that “love” should be in teachers’ job descriptions. And, says Munby, that applies as much to national government as to school leaders.

“There are a lot of examples in national governments of leadership that are good on the power side - passing laws and changing things - but not so good on the love side, which is taking the profession with them and making sure that they’re listening to what the profession is saying,” he says.

Munby is “really positive about the direction of travel” in Scottish education and says he believes it is “criticised unfairly sometimes”, as with the fallout over last year’s results in the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa).

“I like very much the proposals in the governance recommendations,” he says. “The idea of creating regional collaboration across local authorities makes huge sense to me; the idea of giving schools more autonomy to make a difference makes huge sense to me.”

But those ideas have encountered stiff opposition in Scotland, with many expressing fears that a regional approach will undermine local authorities and that more autonomy for schools will also mean more power and control for national government.

Despite this, Munby compares Scotland favourably with England, where collaboration with other schools is not a top priority because “the accountability system is so strong, the fear factor is so great” and “your career’s on the line based on every cohort’s results”.

He adds: “As a result, in some cases, in some parts of England, you get a wider variation in quality between schools, schools where no one wants to teach, schools where it’s difficult to attract leaders…because everyone’s just looking after their own school.”