Education is facing any array of challenges like it has never seen before, according to the president of Scottish education directors’ body ADES.
And there is a danger of responding to these with “a myopic, school-focused lens” when a far more wide-ranging approach is essential, Laurence Findlay said.
Addressing the ADES annual conference in Cumbernauld today, Mr Findlay said we have reached “yet another pivotal moment for Scottish education”, with another independent report due - this time from recently appointed Scottish government adviser and former secondary headteacher John Wilson.
‘Really complex terrain’
Mr Findlay, who is also director of education and children’s services at Aberdeenshire Council, observed that “the landscape around us is shifting...at a pace we have never experienced before”.
He said: “We are navigating really complex terrain: persistent inequalities; recruitment and retention pressures; rising numbers of additional support and mental health needs; a rapidly ageing population; the evolving and increasing expectations of learners, their parents and communities; rising levels of intolerance and a distrust of public bodies; an increasingly negative media (both traditional and social); and, of course, the most challenging of financial contexts.
“Equally, we are about to move into two years where politics will again dominate, with Scottish parliamentary elections next year and local government elections the following year.”
Mr Findlay warned against “a very narrow, overly school-focused worldview of education, which runs the risk of a real siloed, one-dimensional approach to reform”. He called for ADES to be a “strong voice that seeks to bring coherence and genuine systems leadership where we feel it is lacking”.
He added: “Despite the challenges we all face at present, I would argue that we are also seeing and demonstrating remarkable resilience right across our system.
“Across Scotland in all of our local authority areas, educators, leaders, and partners are innovating, adapting and responding with care and compassion whilst having to make really challenging decisions around service provision due to budgetary factors.”
Mr Findlay, a former secondary head, said it was becoming more common to “see the power of community-led solutions, the strength of integrated services and the impact of placing children and young people at the heart of decision-making through our work on incorporating [the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child]”.
Connections beyond education
He said that systems leadership was “about leading beyond our own organisations” and “connecting across boundaries - between education, between local authorities, health, social care and communities - to create coherent, compassionate systems that serve the whole child or young person and the whole system”.
This could include “multi-agency working to support vulnerable families” or “empowered headteachers leading change through local partnerships with business relevant to their own unique contexts”.
Mr Findlay added that “the message is clear: leadership is most powerful and can have the greatest impact when it’s shared”.
He also described how ADES had changed markedly in the 13 years since he had become a member.
“I no longer recognise the ADES I joined 13 years ago - and that’s a good thing,” he said. “We have come a long way as a professional association - 13 years ago, almost everyone in the room was male and of a certain age. That has shifted.
“The culture was often one of competition and combativeness. That, too, thankfully, has shifted and we now see collegiality, professional challenge and cooperation across our networks.”
Mr Findlay also stressed to his fellow education directors, however, that leadership must involve “tough conversations, speaking truth to power, giving difficult feedback and hard messages where that is needed - and sometimes that will be to ourselves as an organisation”.
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