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

Appendix D - Government Policies And Academic Studies

• 2008 Curriculum for Excellence: Building the Curriculum 3–18^[92]

Emphasised flexibility for schools to design local curricula and assessment approaches, embedding subsidiarity at the heart of Scotland’s new national curriculum framework.

'[This enabled].. ‘increased empowerment and autonomy to schools and practitioners to provide a curriculum that best suits their local context and the needs of all their learners.' From Prof K Muir, Putting Learners at the Centre^[93]

• 2015 Improving Schools in Scotland: An OECD Perspective^[94]

International review advocating that devolved decision-making - empowerment and subsidiarity for Headteachers and learning communities - was essential to realise the aims of Curriculum for Excellence

• 2016 Review of Education Governance in Scotland: Empowerment Agenda Consultation^[95]

A series of discussion papers and stakeholder events proposing a re-balancing of authority from central government and local authorities to schools, explicitly framing subsidiarity as a guiding principle.

• Including Headteachers Charter – multiple references to the advantages to moving decision-making to those closest to the learner
• Associated DSM Guidance to ensure schools have defined autonomy over a proportion of their budget

• 2018 Education Reform Joint Agreement between Scottish Government and COSLA^[96]

Formalised the Empowerment Agenda, delegating budget, staffing and curriculum choices to Headteachers and school clusters under a mutual-trust model

• 2019 Creating an Empowered System: An Evaluation Strategy^[97]

Outlined key performance indicators and data collection methods to assess the impact of school-level empowerment and subsidiarity across Scotland’s education system. “An empowered system is one that grows stronger and more confident, working in partnership to lead learning and teaching that achieves excellence and equity for all learners. Empowerment and collaboration for improvement happen at all levels in an empowered system.”

• 2020 ICEA Report: ‘Curriculum, assessment and resource decisions are best made at the point of delivery.’^[98]
• 2020 Putting Learners at the Centre, Prof K Muir^[99]

Under 'Principles'

• 'A redistribution of power, influence, and resource within Scottish education to one that reflects the principles of subsidiarity, genuinely empowers teachers and practitioners and where learners’ voices, experiences, perspectives and rights are central to decision making.'

Under 'Local Government Perspectives'

• 'A strong and consistent message that emerged from engagements and discussions with me was a desire to see the principle of subsidiarity be enacted in practice.'

• 2022 EIS Response to Prof Muir's Report

“We wholeheartedly agree with Ken Muir’s declaration of the need for:

• Redistribution of power, influence, and resource within Scottish education to reflect the principles of de-centralisation and local decision-making, to genuinely empower teachers and practitioners and put learners’ voices at the heart of decision making. The EIS has argued consistently for greater empowerment of teachers and democratic decision-making since the last Governance Review of Education in 2017
• Governance arrangements for national and local bodies that are designed to include teacher voice, alongside that of learners and other stakeholders. The EIS has led the calls for teacher empowerment to extend to national education bodies which should function wholly in support of learners, their teachers and wider school communities.”

• 2023 ICEA Report: 'Move responsibility for key decisions to schools and teachers.'

Subsidiarity and cultural change were central arguments made by Chapman and Donaldson (2023) in their paper Learning is Scotland’s Future. We are strongly supportive of this approach but believe that there remains some way to go to achieve the full benefits of local decision making and realise the potential that exists within schools and their communities.

• Specific Recommendation 3

Pursue the principle of subsidiarity through reporting and financial arrangements that allow effective decision making at the local level.

• 2025 Creating tomorrow’s education for today – Chapman and Donaldson 2025^[100]

Within 'seven steps that could create a more dynamic approach to policymaking that can bridge the gap with the classroom and thus the learning and wellbeing of young people.'

• “The principle of subsidiarity that we explored in Leading from the Classroom should be more entrenched in our educational culture. The closer decision-making is to the realities of the classroom, the more the focus will be on the needs of young people and the specifics of learning and teaching
• “The challenge for policy is to secure ownership of and commitment to overall, national purposes and to create the conditions that will facilitate, animate and inform their realisation in practice. Mechanisms that create easy access to innovative thinking in ways that can translate into classroom reality lie at the heart of embedding impactful reform. Not outside in but through collaboration and interaction. Reform becomes authoritative and persuasive when it is purpose- driven, co-owned and relates directly to the specifics of the daily lives of teachers and pupils
• “Meeting the challenges facing our schools today and going forward will require sure-footed leadership at all levels. That means getting the right leadership in the right places. Change does not happen solely through policy mandates or robust accountability. We need to invest in building leadership capacity that is rooted in shared values and knows how to build support for agreed purposes across different types of boundaries, contexts and professions to create a Networked Learning System

“We also need to apply the subsidiarity principle in ways that respect differing levels of decision making, placing trust in the professionalism and capability of those in key leadership positions at all levels of the system.”