‘We won’t be aloof - we’ll be by your side, sleeves rolled up’

14th December 2018, 12:00am
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‘We won’t be aloof - we’ll be by your side, sleeves rolled up’

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archived/we-wont-be-aloof-well-be-your-side-sleeves-rolled

It’s all change at Education Scotland, insists chief executive Gayle Gorman, who says that the organisation is getting its “sleeves rolled up” to work more closely with teachers than ever before.

The national inspection and curriculum development body, formed from the merger of those two services in 2011, has long been criticised for being aloof and bureaucratic: those concerns came to a head in 2016 when it emerged in the Scottish Parliament that it had amassed 20,000 web pages of advice on Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence.

In an exclusive interview with Tes Scotland, Ms Gorman - who is also Scotland’s chief inspector - said teachers would see big changes as the organisation gradually moves to a “regional delivery model”. This will lead to many new posts for Education Scotland staff “who aren’t aloof because they’re based in the local area, they’re working alongside you in school, you see them at twilights, you’re working together on developing some resources, you’re looking [together] at a difficulty or a challenge that you have”.

In short, said Ms Gorman, these staff - including around 100 new jobs covering posts such as “development officer” and “education officer” - “won’t be aloof, kind of distant people - they’ll physically be alongside you, with their sleeves rolled up”.

They will “know and understand your communities” and perform “very different” roles, depending on local needs, as well as providing a conduit into Scottish and international educational research so that there is less of a burden on teachers to keep abreast of new findings.

“We’re wanting to develop a much stronger research and evidence base,” said Ms Gorman. “It’s about really focusing on our craft of education, our craft of teaching, getting back to what teaching’s all about.”

She rejected the suggestion that Scottish education is in decline, arguing that “some of the narrative that’s around at the moment is not reflecting the practice we see through inspection, not reflecting the practice that I experience when I go out, when we talk to parents about the experiences of their young people, and I talk to young people”.

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