WHAT does the much vaunted “change in culture” imply for the rights and responsibilities of Scotland’s teachers and their unions? They cannot be passive followers of change but must be active participants, within the classroom, within the school, at education authority level and at national level. This will not be easy, and it will not be cost-free.

Teachers have welcomed the recognition of their professional rights through the negotiating role accorded teacher unions at school and education authority levels, through the increasing curricular flexibility which is being afforded to schools and through the recognition of the central role of teachers in contributing to development planning. But we cannot do other than recognise that enhanced rights bring new responsibilities.

The greatly expanded agenda of negotiation at school and education authority level requires unions to review the sorts of practical support that should be afforded to local negotiators. More fundamentally, these negotiations will involve tackling new issues distinct from those which in the past have formed the core of local discussion.

Agreements on issues directly linked to educational provision may well look very different from agreements on traditional union issues: in particular, if we are committed to recognising professionalism then agreements must allow space for individuals and schools to take their own decisions within the framework of such agreements. Apart from the formal challenges this may pose to both union and management negotiators we must acknowledge that there will be cultural challenges after the line management systems imposed on schools throughout the eighties and nineties.

However oppressive these systems were, they have been quite successful in attaining one of their targets: reducing the confidence of teachers to make their own decisions within the classroom and school without feeling the need to look over their shoulders. It can become comfortable to accept others’ thinking and avoid the risks of taking our own decisions.

At the school level the right to active participation in school planning carries a responsibility to do so effectively; this requires us to recognise that enhanced autonomy is not simply a matter of increased rights to take decisions within our own classrooms but also requires each of us to devote time and thought to collegiate work. Within local agreements we have to make time available for such responsibilities, however pressing the need for preparation and correction for “our own” pupils.

Enhanced autonomy, whether for schools or for individual teachers, poses another challenge. How do we ensure equity while recognising difference? The narrow focus in the original target-setting exercise on examination attainment has risked leading to a culture of labelling and limiting pupils. We cannot turn our backs on concepts such as performance indicators and simply demand the right to do what we believe to be best. Rather we have to contribute to the creation of new indicators which will include a fundamental commitment to equity while also permitting accountability to be maintained.

Performance indicators must also foster creativity. An evident feature of the past decade has been the reduction of risk taken by teachers and by pupils. Creativity cannot be enhanced within such an ethos. Staff need real freedom to take their own decisions about the ways in which they will work most effectively to promote the learning of the pupils they are responsible for.

Sometimes we will get things wrong. If we are mistaken then we have to learn from this; this is not possible within a culture which operates on a crude blame model. Rather we have to replace this with a culture which recognises the importance of mutual respect among all members of the education community.

new culture requires the participation of all those with an interest in the community of the school. This is not an easy task, whatever the simplistic rhetoric sometimes employed. Teachers have developed genuine partnership at school and classroom level and talk with parents and children about learning and how to support it. But there will be occasions of tension: there will be disagreements in individual cases; there will be different points of view about practice.

The development of independent learning, of negotiated targets, of choice within the curriculum context; all of these call into question the old expectation that teachers can simply take decisions for others. And this may not always be easy.

Instead of being expected to focus on reproducing the culture and social structures of the past schools and teachers must recognise the need to promote and support change. The social inclusion agenda is one aspect; the recognition of accelerating technological change is another.

Both of these developments make it clear that we cannot continue to base our model of schooling, especially secondary education, on 19th-century models in which content is defined in terms of a hierarchy of discrete subjects.

The role of continuing professional development will be central to this. Unions must contribute to staff development through promoting the equality agenda, collegiate working and the self-confidence of members. This will be another means by which we will contribute to effecting a cultural change which will make our professional lives more fulfilling through ensuring that challenge is balanced by support.

George MacBride is education convener of the Educational Institute of Scotland.