Scotland’s new Centre for Teaching Excellence will be about teachers “first and foremost”, says its director Professor Margery McMahon.
“It’s very much about professional learning and development at scale,” she adds, speaking exclusively to Tes Scotland before the centre’s official launch in late-May, and helping teachers to “access, use and generate research to improve learning and teaching in classrooms”.
The plans for the Centre for Teaching Excellence were first announced at the SNP conference in October 2023. Education secretary Jenny Gilruth said the centre would make Scotland “a world leader in new approaches to learning and teaching” and ensure all teachers were “supported and empowered” in their classrooms.
The response, however, was somewhat muted, with teaching unions, education directors and headteachers all complaining of a lack of consultation.
Life after RICs
The plans for the centre - and its almost £4 million budget for 2025-26 - also led to the phasing out of government funding for Regional Improvement Collaboratives (RICs).
The RICs brought together Scotland’s 32 councils in six partnerships, with the goal of sharing good practice and ironing out differences in outcomes between authorities.
Nevertheless, despite the lukewarm response - and a call to rename the centre because “excellence” is a “tarnished word” in Scottish education - some hope was later expressed that the centre could be ”an engine for change” and a tender process followed.
In total, five bids to host the centre were received from Scottish universities, according to a Tes Scotland freedom of information response, with the University of Glasgow’s proposal winning out.
Integral to the Glasgow bid, says McMahon, who is a former head of the university’s school of education, is the partnership with Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, the Gaelic college on the Isle of Skye, which will be the centre’s “Gaelic hub”.
As the centre beds in, a “network of thematic hubs” will spring up in other parts of the country, based on the areas of their practice that teachers say they want to develop.
“Although we are the host for the Centre for Teaching Excellence, this will be a centre that is developed very much in collaboration and in partnership with all the other teacher education providers,” says McMahon.
Where these hubs are and the support they provide will depend on teacher feedback.
McMahon says the centre will engage with teachers to identify what they see as priorities, first through focus groups in English and Gaelic to establish “broadbrush themes and priorities”, then a national survey that will go out to all teachers.
Centre to be ‘shaped by what teachers need’
“This is a centre for teachers and has got to be shaped by what teachers need,” she says.
Three core hubs are already confirmed. Sabhal Mòr Ostaig will take the lead on Gaelic education; Glasgow will support teacher-led research; and there will also be a hub dedicated to rural and remote education and learning for sustainability, hosted by the university’s school of social and environmental sustainability in Dumfries.
The centre will also have a strong digital offer, says McMahon, and ultimately a team of 40 “expert teachers” will be seconded to the centre on a part-time basis.
These expert teachers will largely be responsible for supporting the “collaborative research practice partnerships” that will form a key part of the centre’s work.
The goal, McMahon explains, is to move away from course-based professional learning towards an approach where teachers identify an issue that is challenging to them, investigate how to solve it through gathering data, then engage with research and collaborate with colleagues, pupils and parents, as appropriate.
Teachers might question how they are to have time to do this, given unmanageable workload is already an issue; McMahon says the starting point will be making best use of the annual 35 hours of CPD teachers are entitled to.
However, there will be other elements to the centre’s offer. It will also:
- Disseminate national and international research evidence, as well as allow teachers to share their own research.
- Establish “communities of practice”.
- Deliver a national online practitioner inquiry module.
- Offer online expert sessions and live and pre-recorded courses.
‘Go-to destination’ for education research
McMahon says teachers should see the centre as the “go-to destination” for information on the latest research, as well as becoming involved in research.
The centre should “energise the system and energise teachers as well”.
She adds: “It’s a national centre and we want to reach all teachers wherever they are in Scotland. But teachers will engage with this in multiple ways, and for some, it will just be wanting to access and use a synthesis of research or listen to an online seminar.
“Others might want to become integrated into research practice communities, so that level of engagement will vary, but the ultimate goal would be that the centre offers a whole different range of professional learning for teachers, with research at its core.”
However, McMahon also acknowledges that “impactful professional learning doesn’t occur overnight” and “takes time”.
It remains uncertain how long the centre will be around for, with funding only secured up to April 2026, and the next Scottish Parliament election due in May 2026.
There is, therefore, no guaranteed future, but McMahon says she and her team - which includes depute head of centre Dr Angela Jaap, who is leading on digital innovation - are operating on the assumption that funding will continue.
The prize, she says, is worth it: “An opportunity for step-change in teacher professional learning in Scotland.”
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