My own fun photocollage, “cash flow”.
What a crazy title for a blog posting I’m sure you’re thinking. After a weekend of reflecting on the budgetary situation in Scottish Education I have come to the conclusion that it is a good thing. Please don’t think I’m suggesting that the cuts in school budgets to frankly pathetic levels are a good thing, because they are not and I bitterly regret that they are occuring so widely. Nor am I suggesting that it is a good thing that headteachers in small schools are looking over their shoulder to check whether their beloved schools remain financially viable. I am not a tiny bit happy that my colleagues in development, support and directorate services are waiting to see how the budget settlement will affect job security and the structure of local authorities. All of the aforementioned are trying hard to do a good job and don’t particularly deserve the stress of the recession induced crisis. So where is my optimism coming from and what justification can there be for it?
I don’t believe there is much evidence for radical and transformative change in our education system nationally. I concede it exists, but in small pockets indeed and often scratching the surface will reveal that some radical change in circumstances underpins it. One example of a school that has made radical change is Islay High in my own beloved authority area of Argyll and Bute. They have a combined upper school timetable with the irratating and stupid arrangement of young people by age thrown out. Young people learn together in groups depending on chosen pathway and stage of development instead and it is in my view fantastic. What underpins this is the interesting mindset that a relatively remote island school can develop. Add to this some visionary leadership from their headteacher and some fabulous people within the consciously distributed leadership structure of the school who are encouraged to think big and think radically if it works, and we have a recipe for effective change. Oh and there is the small matter of a large cash injection during the “schools of ambition” programme. One way or another, this is an unusual change story, but not yet a common one. My desire is to have many more schools thinking differently since young people need to be prepared urgently for a different world – a very different world and our current schools are only preparing some young people for it, not all young people. Do I believe that the current approaches to adopting the “Curriculum for Excellence” nationally will deliver this? Well, the best I can say is maybe, but not nearly fast enough. So enter the fiscal crisis.
I didn’t order it, and I don’t particularly want it, but it will do us good. We need to change how we work because we can’t afford to work the same way. We need fewer schools operating under capacity, we need smaller central support and leadership teams, we need schools to come up with radically different ways of working with less money for a little while at least (Fewer well paid SMT members supervising low level paperwork anyone?). That much we have known for quite a few years now, but other than in a few creative pockets we are seeing very little change; but you know what, now we are about to see some forced change. This is an opportunity to be creative and we had better grab it with both hands. What choice do we have?
And as a parting incentive, don’t forget that one of the problems we face, not enough private sector growth in Scotland with an overpopulated public sector is a direct reflection of the skills and beliefs that our schools have failed to engender structured as they are. Scotland has to earn its way out of the financial crisis and we have to teach young people to have the skills and confidences they need to do this. It’s in their interests and ours.