Shaping the Future: Strengthening Scotland's education system through empowered schools

1. Foreword

I am grateful to the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills for the opportunity to write this report on the changes I believe are needed to reform education governance, school funding and support for school improvement. It is unusual for a school leader to be tasked with capturing an overview of the system in which they have invested many years of their lives. Still more unusual is the potential to substantially influence that same system’s direction of travel. Retaining my deep commitment to learners and their frontline educators while considering the bigger picture has enabled me to respond to this opportunity from a unique perspective.

Remit

My remit, set out in full at Annex F, asked me to consider these three fundamental themes from an empowered school leader’s perspective and importantly, to ensure that proposed changes were deliverable on the frontline.

In undertaking this work I have sought to provide an evidence base and justification for the changes I am proposing and have sought and considered feedback from a wide range of relevant stakeholders including learners and young people, parents, practitioners, professional organisations and associations, and local and national policy makers.

The illusion of full objectivity

In the process of writing this report I have aspired to take as balanced a stance as possible while acknowledging the impossibility of true objectivity when drawing conclusions that include a moral dimension. I am not the first Scot to acknowledge this.^[1]

In this report my personal experiences as an educator are woven together with the considered views of key stakeholders. I have sought to understand their perspectives based on the information they have shared through engagements and written submissions. I have also done my best to be empathetic to their roles and points of view. I hope both understanding and empathy permeate this report.

What you will read henceforth is a combination of knowledge and compassion, recognising that everyone in our system is doing their best to bring the best to our children and young people. It also recognises that deep-rooted custom and practice can constrain change. We, each of us, carry assumptions and innate cognitive biases which manifest when we explore complex ideas or consider fundamental change. This is part of our shared human nature which, as flawed as it is, also enables us to find solutions to apparently intractable problems. Also uniquely human is the ability to see beyond orthodoxy, and I urge readers to deploy that ability as we consider what’s next for our Scottish education.

We can be pioneers. Previous generations of leaders and educators never had access to the range of knowledge and perspectives that we do now. We have both an opportunity and an obligation to put that to good use for the benefit of our children and young people.

Scotland

It requires great love of it deeply to read The configuration of a land, Gradually grow conscious of fine shadings, Of great meanings in slight symbols, Hear at last the great voice that speaks softly, See the swell and fall upon the flank Of a statue carved out in a whole country’s marble, Be like Spring, like a hand in a window Moving New and Old things carefully to and fro, Moving a fraction of flower here, Placing an inch of air there, And without breaking anything. So I have gathered unto myself All the loose ends of Scotland, And by naming them and accepting them, Loving them and identifying myself with them, Attempt to express the whole.

Hugh MacDiarmid^[2]