International Council of Education Advisers minutes: 5-6 June 2024

Attendees and apologies

• Professor Carol Campbell
• Professor Chris Chapman
• Professor Graham Donaldson 
• Dr Avis Glaze
• Professor Andy Hargreaves 
• Dr Pak Tee Ng 
• Professor Pasi Sahlberg
• Liz White, Headteacher of Calderglen High School
• Professor Alma Harris (joined virtually for sessions 3, 4 and the final feedback and conclusions session)

Apologies

• Professor Allison Skerrett
• Professor Edward Melhuish

Also present

• Jenny Gilruth MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills 
• Neil Rennick, Director General Education and Justice 
• Graeme Logan, Director of Learning, Scottish Government
• Clare Hicks, Director for Education Reform, Scottish Government 
• Gillian Hamilton, Chief Executive and Accountable Officer, Education Scotland 
• Janie McManus, Interim HM Chief Inspector, Education Scotland
• Alison Taylor, Deputy Director, Improvement, Attainment and Wellbeing, Scottish Government
• Sean Stronach, Unit Head of Education Reform Policy and Delivery, Education Reform (session 2 only)

ICEA Secretariat

•  Judith Tracey, National Improvement Framework Unit, Scottish Government
• Katie Brydon, National Improvement Framework Unit, Scottish Government
• Michelle Kim, National Improvement Framework Unit, Scottish Government

Items and actions

Purpose

This note provides an overview of the discussion and key points from the eleventh meeting of the International Council of Education Advisers (ICEA). The meeting took place in various venues across Edinburgh on 5 and 6 June 2024 and focussed on the following areas:

• the ICEA’s recommendations from their third report which was published in November 2023
• the Centre for Teaching Excellence
• educational improvement

5 June 2024 

The eleventh meeting began with thanks from the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills for the Council’s valued advice and support to date. The meeting’s focus was on the Centre for Teaching Excellence and educational improvement. 

Session 1: Meeting with senior officials (Victoria Quay, Edinburgh) 

The first session was chaired by Graeme Logan, Director of Learning, who welcomed everyone to the eleventh formal meeting of the ICEA. A presentation was given by Graeme Logan and Clare Hicks, Director for Education Reform, which included an overview of the First Minister’s current priorities, the Scottish Government’s priorities and overarching strategy for education, strengths of the system, key challenges, the Curriculum Improvement (Review) Cycle and updates regarding education reform and the new qualifications body.

The following points were made during discussion:

• there needs to be a greater focus on what we are delivering for our children and young people in the political debate
• we need to focus on a culture where children and teachers feel valued and excited about school
• we must continue to focus on recovery from the pandemic. Recovery should be more than simply improving on previous practice. More radical change to some aspects is also needed
• the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) continues to allow us to be bold and transformative. We should not only focus on Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), attainment and short-term, wider political issues
• the profession should be recognised for all the things they are doing well in school
• we need mechanisms that demonstrate professional leadership and articulate the professional agenda
• there needs to be a refocus on the quality of teaching, staff motivation and satisfaction
• we talk too much about the curriculum mechanisms and not enough about the purpose, i.e. what do we want children to be like as a result of education? There needs to be consistency, less talk about the system and more talk about children and young people
• the Scottish Government should utilise research and evidence as part of the Curriculum Review Cycle. It is important that we do not tinker with policies in the existing system but we need to take a wider look at what we want
• there is so much potential in the system that is not being utilised fully. Putting teachers in the front and centre can create empowerment and we need to move resources from the centre to the classroom

Session 2: The Centre for Teaching Excellence (Victoria Quay, Edinburgh)

The second session was chaired by the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills who invited the Council to work in groups and to provide their feedback on the draft aims and functions of the Centre for Teaching Excellence.

The following points were made in discussion:

• the overall aims of the Centre should include children and young people at the centre
• research needs to be translated into practice and that could be clearer
• the Centre needs to be systemic (whole system involved) and systematic (step by step approach)
• learning and teaching should be central to the Centre’s aims. The Centre should “belong” to the profession, not the Scottish Government or universities, although this does not mean that the centre cannot be funded by the government or housed in a university. It is an affective, rather than jurisdictive, issue. An example is the National Institute of Education (NIE) in Singapore. It is a university institute funded by the government. All teachers and school leaders are trained through the NIE. Throughout their career, many education professionals return to the NIE for professional development and further certification. A metaphor that is locally used to describe the NIE is “mothership” of the education profession. This creates a sense of belonging for education professionals and positions it as the institution in the country for career-long professional learning
• innovation and improvement can be done system wide if done in the right way through teacher engagement and satisfaction and student engagement and motivation. The focus on pedagogy, improving, developing, and being innovative with teachers for teachers is not backed up by research but driven by practice
• the Centre may want to be located in various hubs where needs are greatest
• it is important to protect the Centre from ideological bias. The terms of reference should set out clearly that the voice of the teacher should be the foundation
• it is important to emphasise the networked approach across different boundaries and different organisations

Session 3: Building a Networked Learning System (NLS)  (Victoria Quay, Edinburgh)

The third session was led by Professor Graham Donaldson and Professor Chris Chapman on their work researching and supporting the development of Networked Learning Systems (NLS) in Scotland and internationally.

Graham Donaldson and Chris Chapman shared the following key observations with the Council:

• from a socio-cultural perspective, systems with high levels of collaboration and flexibility afforded by lower levels of rules/regulation, tend to be underpinned by egalitarian cultures with mutualistic public service organisations. These organisations are self-improving and support each other’s and the system’s growth and development. With the appropriate leadership, collaboration between research, policy and practitioner perspectives can foster egalitarian cultures and mutualistic organisations driven by networks across different boundaries that can stimulate innovation and new practices and monitor and test impact of these developments in cycles of self-improvement
• bold reforms accompanied by weak implementation tend to lead to controversy without impact. When reform is well-implemented but lacks boldness, this leads to incremental improvement. To generate transformation reforms require boldness combined with strong implementation. With the appropriate leadership, collaboration between research, policy and practitioner perspectives can increase flexibility and build collaborative networks across boundaries that can stimulate innovation and monitor and test impact
• a Networked Learning System is a transformative approach to educational change and innovation that fosters collaboration and networking development across different types of boundaries. These boundaries may be professional, geographical, institutional, curricular or disciplinary in nature. NLSs are driven by the use of evidence and systematic inquiry to inform decision-making and optimise improvement
• the principle of subsidiarity is key to high-quality implementation and the building of a NLS. This involves shifting the ownership of change and decision-making closer to the classroom and residing within the profession. This leads to higher quality decisions being made that can impact more speedily and directly on classrooms
• this work serves to redefine roles and relationships between research and practice and in doing so supports and sustains the development of more equitable education systems. The university has worked with leaders and practitioners across Scotland which has led to a 13 year programme of work in this area. This work is highly regarded internationally, and has informed policy and practice development in a number of other systems
• the West Partnership is proof of concept that Scotland can become a NLS. The work across 8 local authorities (LAs) building a system of professional learning and leadership development underpinned by evidence and collaborative inquiry has been impressive and required an only a very small investment. It represents excellent value for money. The relationships, networks and joint-practice development that has grown over a relatively short period of time (including the pandemic) has been particularly successful. Here the system is beginning to show what can be achieved through subsidiarity and working smartly in localities and across a region. In this sense West offers a coherent set of mechanisms to bringing teachers (and others) together to support collaborative improvements
• another promising example is in Dundee where the Every Dundee Learner Matters strategy involves building a NLS through collaboration, evidence and inquiry and the rethinking of roles and relationships across the city. A strategy group led by headteachers is the driver of change and the LA plays a key role in facilitating and brokering partnerships and moving knowledge and expertise around the city. The sharing of knowledge and expertise is led by headteachers for headteachers rather than information being fed-down from the centre. The strategy is underpinned by the 3 Ps: presence, participation and progress and the use of evidence and building of capacity for collaborative inquiry within and across all schools and early years settings
• put simply, there are some innovative ways of working emerging that involve building a NLS within Scotland. These promising examples should be nurtured and supported more widely to achieve a more systematic approach to building the capacity to create and sustain a self-improving Scottish education system which shifts the ownership of change and improvements closer to the learning level and beyond the top-down, centrally managed approach to change that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report recommended in 2015

Education Scotland update (Victoria Quay, Edinburgh)

This session was chaired by Gillian Hamilton, Education Scotland’s Chief Executive and Accountable Officer and Janie McManus, Education Scotland’s Interim HM Chief Inspector. They gave a presentation which included an update on Education Scotland’s priorities, restructure and responsibilities, as well as the Inspectorate’s engagement with the education system, curriculum improvement, evidence and reporting, and frameworks and methodologies.

The following points were made in discussion:

• the challenge for an independent inspectorate is to create an empowering environment for innovation. Improvement is the prime function of inspection and will have more effect if you engage constructively with the school and help them build on their own self-evaluation

Session 4: Educational improvement (Victoria Quay, Edinburgh)

The fourth session was chaired by the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills who invited the Council to consider how the Scottish Government builds on the key priorities for Scottish education in the National Improvement Framework to support our long-term improvement agenda and how we can better improve links between national and local government to deliver better educational outcomes for all of our children and young people.

The following points were made in discussion:

• the key priority is to be bold and engage the teaching profession
• we must harness artificial intelligence (AI) effectively
• if the Scottish Government wants to move faster in 10 years and expand good practice, we must find ways to encourage and support the profession
• in Singapore, the school system is managed using a “centralised decentralisation” approach. There is both strategic alignment (at national level) and tactical empowerment (at local level), thereby achieving both system-level synergy as well as local-level agency. This could be a way for Scottish Government to work with local government agencies

On the evening of 5 June, the Council members attended a formal dinner hosted by the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills at Angels with Bagpipes, an independent Scottish restaurant on The Royal Mile in the heart of Edinburgh's Old Town.  

6 June 2024

Session 5: Feedback and conclusions (Scottish Parliament, Committee Room 4, Edinburgh)

The final session was chaired by the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills. Council members were invited to present their conclusions based on the information they had gathered, and the discussions that were held, over the two-day meeting.

The Council set out the following recommendations for the Scottish Government to consider:

• Scotland has the potential to lead the way internationally on how a system can build the future for education. To do so, there is a need to think differently. Even the PISA benchmarking metrics are going to change in the future
• the ICEA appreciated that the Scottish Government had to be realistic in the current financial context. It should build on existing relationships to establish a platform for a longer-term strategy for Scottish education
• children and young people should remain firmly at the centre of educational change
• the Scottish Government should focus on ways of enhancing engagement in learning as part of a strategy to address attendance and behaviour issues
• there are 3 main “A”s to focus on: assessment, additional support needs and artificial intelligence 
• the teaching profession is complex and we need to make sure they are supported both to teach children for today and to prepare them for an uncertain future. Curriculum for Excellence can still provide a basis for such an approach
• there is a lot of support for the Curriculum for Excellence, but it has been 20 years since its origin. More detailed information about where teachers are finding CfE hard to translate into classroom practice is needed
• headteachers and officials are key gatekeepers in innovation. In a professional learning strategy, such gatekeepers need to be on board and have an early focus and active engagement in creating change
• think about how to move forward in 10 years in terms of technology. With artificial intelligence, we have the means to personalise learning as well as to reduce certain types of laborious work done by teachers. The challenge is to build the capacity in the education profession to use AI effectively. This is where the Centre for Teaching Excellence can come in. We must also start to think about how young people could be equipped for learning in an AI environment
• we need to think about ways to support and encourage the profession to see itself as leading change
• it is all about ownership. As long as teachers feel ownership of the reforms and are enthused about what is being done then it will make a difference. There is a lot of latent expertise and enthusiasm in the system and the profession should be much more involved in trying to shape the agenda/change, etc.
• according to the United Nations (UN), there is a global crisis on teacher retention. Working conditions matter and making a difference is what brings people into teaching, but this is not always felt. Scotland should invest in developing skills and opportunities for the workforce

Any other business

No other business was raised. The Cabinet Secretary thanked the Council for their advice and guidance across the two days.