One could have felt more en-burdened than en-lightened coming away from the joint HMC/IAPS conference for school leaders this week, given the focus on many of the current challenges and even crises in education globally. But conversations with fellow educators and some inspiring talks from influential leaders gave me hope. All the speakers agreed upon the transformative power of education. But how best to harness that power?
Set in the elegant city of Edinburgh, the conference took its theme as “Enlightened Education”. If the enlightenment of the 19th century was all about reason, tolerance, fraternity, progress and liberty, then the conference certainly encouraged enlightened dialogue, inspired by much musical accompaniment.
I was invited to the conference to speak about cross-sector partnerships and while I hope I imparted some useful thoughts on this, I also came away with lots of fresh ideas on how to support schools in their partnership working, following some fantastic conversations with fellow delegates. Here are these thoughts, and some of my other take-aways:
1. We have to listen to our young people. They crave education.
Bruce Adamson, Children and Young People’s Commissioner for Scotland, spoke eloquently about the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and wondered how their voice got so lost during the Covid pandemic. The lack of access to education and social interaction so damaged our young people; did we sacrifice them to protect us adults?
Sarah Brown leads charity TheirWorld, which campaigns globally for children’s education. She quoted Antonio Guterres, the Secretary-General of the UN, who stated recently: “As the world faces unsustainable levels of inequality, we need education – the great equalizer – more than ever”. With a shocking 260 million children out of school globally, TheirWorld’s campaign #LetMeLearn is a powerful reminder that children crave the freedom that education provides. It made me ponder again the lowering of the voting age and further reinforced my belief in the importance of student voice, including in steering school partnerships, which I’ve written about here.
2. There is huge untapped potential for schools to work together and for the corporate sector to support them.
There are countless examples of brilliant partnerships between schools, both within and across sectors, but many schools remain unconvinced of the benefits or nervous about approaching partners. Worries about resourcing partnership projects or scepticism about the motives of ‘the other sector’ can limit collaborations to somewhat ad hoc outreach events. Real impact comes when partnership projects are strategically co-created from a respectful relationship between schools – and that impact confers sustained benefit on both partners. I’ve come away more motivated than ever to help break down these barriers to collaboration; it’s good to know that the School Partnerships Alliance will be offering further support in future, as Headteacher, trustee and partnerships champion Leo Winkley writes here.
It was exciting to meet a number of suppliers at the conference exhibition who are exploring dual funding models: charging those who can afford to pay and providing services pro bono to those who can’t. Independent-state school partnerships are often looking to share buying power and interested in group discounts. It was good to have conversations with some organisations who hadn’t yet considered these approaches.
3. We have much to learn from other jurisdictions including our own home nations.
During Friday’s Open Conference we enjoyed a panel session chaired by Henry Hepburn from TES Scotland which drew out the similarities and differences between the education systems of our four nations. The conversation ranged around curriculum, community relations, pedagogical innovation and school systems. England, described as a “jungle” by Tim Brighouse in 2017, covers indeed an extraordinary spectrum of models from highly-centralised MATs to curiously individual free schools. No wonder it can be difficult to foster successful inter-school collaborations! And in Scotland the local authority control also affects the process for collaboration between schools.
The success in Northern Irish schools might be due to the respect in which the teaching profession is held. For many years we have looked to Finland as a model of educational excellence – maybe because the education departments in Finnish teaching universities accept only 10% of applicants! Finland is now giving way to Estonia at the top of the Pisa league tables, but there is certainly much to learn from other countries. As one panellist observed, we can import principles from other nations, but we have to set them in local context (rather like partnership working, I thought).
My hike up to Arthur’s Seat with fellow delegates to watch the sun rise over Edinburgh was certainly a moment of spiritual and literal enlightenment: what a great start to the conference! And of course it was Edinburgh’s James Hutton, that paradigm-exploding geologist of the Enlightenment who first proposed that the rock formations that make up our landscape have been constantly evolving, including the extinct volcano topped by Arthur’s Seat.
The inspiration I’m taking away from this summit is the ever-shifting landscape of education which can adapt to meet the needs of our young people. Yup, I’m feeling enlightened, educated and energised!
