Fiona Hyslop - Keynote Speech

JM:

Cabinet Secretary, Richard and colleagues in such large numbers, let me welcome you to the Learning Festival for 2008.  There’s a tremendous buzz about the place.  When I walked in here this morning people were going about their business in a very positive way and we’re really very pleased about that.  Because at the end of the day this is your festival, and we’ve shaped this festival for 2008 in response to your needs: teachers; those who represent other professional backgrounds increasingly important in our educational landscape nowadays and those who are in administration within local authorities; representatives from the inspectorate, representatives from the Scottish Qualification Authority, representatives from the world of culture and arts and the Scottish Arts Council. 

So we’re here; we’ve taken your advice and we’ve shaped, what I think, is going to be, Cabinet Secretary, a really, really positive festival.  Over 7,000 delegates, I mean that’s just amazing.  14 different countries represented: Iceland, Belgium, Australia, Spain, Norway, New Zealand, Sweden, Holland, Portugal, Estonia - I sound as if I’m doing the Eurovision here - Germany, Slovakia, Bahrain and Pakistan.  And the furthest travelled delegate is clearly the representative from New Zealand.  Delegates from across Scotland, all 32 authorities and that’s a first for us.  All 32 authorities are represented here today.  Pupils, that increasingly important part of the shape of our festival, from 30 schools and, of course, Heather has already mentioned the Exhibition Hall, the larger Hall for bringing together good practice, learning practice, local authority, cultural and international villages and, of course, the main exhibition. 

So we have a new education showcase offering hands-on demonstrations and I encourage you all to participate in that.  And I think, equally important and very innovative at this year’s festival, is the new topic surgery discussions, where you can go along, share issues, share challenges with colleagues and perhaps find some solutions to those challenges.  Over 170 seminars, this session here, Cabinet Secretary, has proved to be the most popular.  I’m really pleased to say that.  1,400 people here and Charles Leadbeater talking to over 1,300 this afternoon.  We’ve got radio; we’ve got Brick FM community radio and I understand, Heather, that they’re looking for a weather presenter so if you would like to be involved in that, that would be good.

So that’s our festival.  And I should say, very, very briefly, in Learning and Teaching Scotland we’re a steadily changing organisation.  We don’t want to live in an ivory tower.  We have to draw ourselves, and are doing so, closer to yourselves: those of you working in schools, those of you working in local authorities.  We’re here to partner you and Bernard McLeary, the Chief Executive, and I have got really positive ideas about moving the organisation closer to the point of delivery.  After all, if we’re not there, then we can’t be as effective and as efficient as we would like to be.

And finally, if I may, Heather, just four thoughts.  Pretty obvious but as you’re moving round the festival, I’m sure you’re going to give priority to Curriculum for Excellence, seeing good practice, building up your own strategies for the future, managing change in your school, the shape of the professional development in which you would like to participate, and, of course, integrated cross-curricular working, which in the secondary school presents particular challenges.  So that’s priority number one in my framework.

Number two is the use of technology.  We have Glow.  Glow coming on really, really well, rapidly spreading across the country.  But I think there are big challenges for us in terms of using Glow in the learning and teaching process.  So please keep your eye out for that. 

And I’ve always firmly believed that my third point within this framework, this simple framework, is leadership.  Leadership holds it all together and by leadership I mean leadership across the organisation, across the institution, across the authority.  And in Learning and Teaching Scotland we stand ready to contribute further to the development of approaches to leadership which would draw different professional disciplines together and which would certainly put us way ahead in Scotland in terms of delivering leadership strategies.  Leadership permeates all that we do.

And finally, my fourth point relates to creativity.  And I’m really pleased to learn that the Cultural Village has been significantly developed this year.  I encourage you all to investigate the Cultural Village to see what it means for you in your developmental work within schools.  And as the new creative Scotland is being developed, then clearly the role of Creative Scotland in terms of learning and skills is one which we should be announcing, wearing another hat, over the next three or four weeks.

I’d like to thank you for coming; without you we don’t have a festival.  I’d like to thank our sponsors, many of them.  Always very grateful to them.  I think it’s marvellous the support that we have from our elected representatives.  We have Fiona here, we have Maureen, Maureen Watt in the audience, so all three, the Cabinet Secretary and the two Ministers will be here in the course of the next two days and that gives us really great encouragement.  It’s the type of support that we really like. 

Enjoy the event, keep my four points in mind and let me formally declare the event open.  Thank you.

(applause)

HR:

Thank you very much, John, and now I would like to introduce our first keynote speaker, someone everyone knows and recognises.  We’re very pleased she’s found the time in what is a very busy parliament period to address the conference and to tell us about the Scottish government’s ambition for a smarter Scotland.  Please welcome Scotland’s Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning, Fiona Hyslop, MSP.

(applause)

FH:

Thank you, Heather, for that kind introduction.  I’m delighted to see so many people in the audience today. This is a record year for the Scottish Learning Festival.  I’m told that as of this morning there are nearly 7,000 registrations for this event; the best year yet.  And looking at all of you in the audience, all 1,400 of you, I’m a bit concerned about who’s left teaching my children this morning. (laughing)

The purpose of this government is to create a more successful country, with opportunities for all of Scotland to flourish through increasing sustainable economic growth.  And all of the government’s activities are directed to achieving this one central purpose and our strategic objectives to make Scotland wealthier and fairer, smarter, healthier, safer and stronger and greener are all part of our efforts to bring more economic success to our country.  And as the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning, I want to create an environment where all people in Scotland can share in that prosperity.  And I believe that by investing in education, we’re helping to prepare all young people in Scotland to take their place in a modern society and economy. 

Investment in education is an investment in the future success of Scotland and that in turn helps us to achieve sustainable economic growth.  The pathway to achieving this success is set out in the 15 national outcomes and these describe in more detail how we intend to deliver on our purpose and objectives, working in partnership right across the public sector, all agencies that receive any resources from the public purse.  And all of these national outcomes are inter-dependent and relate in some way to education.  And as Cabinet Secretary for Education, I have the clear responsibility for delivering at least four of these 15 national outcomes.

Firstly, a Scotland where we are better educated, more skilled and more successful, renowned for our research and our innovation.  Secondly, a Scotland where our young people are successful learners, confident individuals, effective contributors and responsible citizens.  Thirdly, a Scotland where children have the best start in life and are ready to succeed.  And, fourthly, a Scotland where we have improved life chances for children, young people and families at risk.

And at the heart of the government’s approach to delivering these outcomes is a new way of doing business.  This is our new relationship with Scotland’s local authorities.  And all of those 15 national outcomes are set out in the government’s concordat with local government and we now have single outcome agreements with every local authority in Scotland, setting out collectively how we will deliver better outcomes for all.  And this enshrines a new culture of collaboration, dialogue and joint policy development to deliver those shared outcomes.  And outcomes mean that we all play a part in delivering the ambitions for Scotland for our children and our young people.

And in order to achieve these ambitions, we need to reflect on the kind of education system we have at the moment and the challenges we face in making a vision a reality.  Scotland has a learning system and culture of which we can be proud.  Our participation, our research capacity, our teacher education and curriculum developments are quite rightly regarded as world class.  And this week alone, we are hosting delegations of senior policy makers and ministers from Germany, New Zealand, Austria and Japan to look in detail at all aspects of our education system and policy developments.  And within the last three months I’ve met delegations of key educationalists and policy makers from Sweden, from Denmark, from Victoria in Australia and from Canada. 

In your delegate bags, you should all have copies of the recent report of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the OECD, on the quality and equity of schooling in Scotland.  The review and our subsequent positive engagement with the issues it raises has increased Scotland’s standing and profile internationally.  The OECD report tells us about the current state of our education system in Scotland.  The report was led by Professor Richard Teese, who I’m delighted is on the stage with me today, having travelled all the way from Melbourne to attend the festival.  The report identified much of what we can be proud of in the Scottish education system, in particular a strong commitment to comprehensive education, a world class approach to teacher induction and the new universal and high quality pre-school education.  And it also described the greatest strength in Scottish schooling, our primary schools.  And I agree with that view and I’m providing the framework within which all of our schools can yet become stronger.

But the OECD also identified a number of important challenges; in particular the continuing achievement gap and the need to make the experience in Upper Secondary more relevant and engaging for all students.  And tellingly, the report commented that in Scotland who you are is far more important than what school you attend.  But the fact that it does matter who you are also says that the school system as a whole is not strong enough to make this not matter.  And it is unacceptable in a modern Scotland that those children from poorer families and communities often seem pre-determined to under-achieve.  I welcome the challenge and focus the OECD review has provided for us, and the early years and early intervention framework the government is developing in partnership with COSLA is making sure who you are doesn’t hold a child back.

It’s my view that the OECD report is an important catalyst for education reform and we should all use it to challenge our thinking as we look to deliver a 21^st century education system that meets Scotland’s needs.  And I believe that Curriculum for Excellence is absolutely central to tackling these challenges.  Curriculum for Excellence is the most radical reform of school education for a generation: different in scale, scope and approach to any kind of educational development we have undertaken before.  But it is built on a firm foundation of good teaching and subject and curriculum content, which already exists. 

Fundamentally, Curriculum for Excellence is about facilitating learning that is relevant, that has a clear context and stays with the individual to benefit them beyond classroom and throughout life.  Curriculum for Excellence puts the individual child, the individual learner at the heart of everything we do, so that each and every one of them can grow up to become a successful learner, a confident individual, a responsible citizen and an effective contributor.  And this is about creating an exciting, engaging and educational experience from pre-school to the end of compulsory education.  An education experience that meets the needs, the talents and the learning styles of every learner, and, most importantly, an experience which equips them from the life beyond school in an ever-changing and challenging world.  And Curriculum for Excellence is for all learners.  This is about transforming life chances through developing skills for learning, skills for life and skills for work.  And this provides the platform from which we can support those children and young people who do need more choices and more chances to fulfil their potential. 

And Curriculum for Excellence is also about professional development for teachers.  It provides teachers with flexibility to plan their teaching and the freedom to develop learning experiences in schools that are relevant, that are exciting and inspirational and it’s about recognising that practitioners are best placed to identify and meet the needs of young people, enabling schools and school staff to take greater responsibility for curriculum change.

In the summer I visited 11 council areas across Scotland.  I was struck by the energy and the positivity amongst teachers and local authorities for making Curriculum for Excellence a success.  There are, of course, challenges in the successful delivery of a project of this scale, in particular the importance of encouraging all involved in the process at all levels to embrace the culture change and the personal responsibility needed to make Curriculum for Excellence a success and having the space and time to do so.  It is my firm view that success can only be delivered if this challenge is embraced by everyone in the audience today and beyond.

Curriculum for Excellence is as much about culture change as it is about curriculum content.  It is also about leadership at every level: leaders in the classrooms, schools and authorities and communities across Scotland.  And Curriculum for Excellence is a collaborative process.  It is about working together in everything we do; for the benefit of the learners, for the benefit of teachers in the classrooms supporting those learners, and for the benefit of schools across Scotland supporting those learning experiences.  When I spoke earlier this month to the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland, they had a clear understanding of how they needed to take ownership of this reform.  They can’t do it in isolation; they will be looking for all of you working in schools and authorities to share that common purpose. 

In recent decades, we have seen a compliant culture of central direction in Scotland’s education system, which came from the top down: from ministers and civil servants to the directors of education to head teachers and then to teachers themselves.  I want to change this culture from dependence on central direction to independence for the profession.  Indeed the OECD recommended just this.  They said curriculum reform has to come from schools themselves rather than waiting for central direction.  And success means putting trust in the professional judgement of all teachers and education professionals to do what is in the best interests of our children and our young people.

Teaching is a graduate profession for a reason.  Professionals take control of their own development in adapting and improving what they do to meet ongoing challenges and changes and developments in their profession.  Professionals don’t want to be told.  Parents and pupils wouldn’t expect teachers to be told.  To help schools and educational establishments plan the changes needed to meet the ambitions for a Curriculum for Excellence, we recently launched Building the Curriculum 3: A Framework for Learning and Teaching.  It provides the framework to enable schools and teachers to plan teaching, and teaching with the needs of young people uppermost in their minds.  Of course, there is still much to do.  I know from speaking to the profession over recent weeks and months that there are further issues you want to see discussed and developed.  Other Building the Curriculum documents in the planning including frameworks importantly for assessment and for skills development. 

And investing in our young people also means ensuring that when they leave our education system, they’re equipped with the qualifications they need to move to the next stage in their life, whether further or higher education, employment or training.  I’m committed to ensuring that our qualification system helps to deliver the values, purposes and principles of Curriculum for Excellence.  That’s why alongside the Building the Curriculum 3, I published a consultation on the next generation of national qualifications in Scotland and I would encourage all of you with an interest to consider the terms of the proposals.  This includes the retention of access, Higher and Advanced Highers as points of stability in the system, a proposed new qualification to replace standard grades and intermediate qualifications, and new awards in literacy and numeracy to ensure that the focus in developing these skills through Curriculum for Excellence is sustained.

I now want to talk to you about the development of Glow and the investment in this state of the art system to help make Curriculum for Excellence a success.  I want to talk to you about the latest developments around Glow, Scotland’s national schools intranet.  It really is a truly innovative service.  The first in the world to offer tools like this on a national scale.  Glow is already building up a strong international reputation.  Visitors from many parts of the world are coming to see what we are doing here in Scotland.  Even George Lucas, director of Star Wars, who now heads his own educational foundation, recently praised Glow for providing every student in every Scottish school with a common e-platform for student and teacher email, for parents to have regular communication with their schools, for publishing school websites and for features such as online courses and video conferences between schools and George Lucas is calling on the US Congress to do the same.

At last year’s Learning Festival we were discussing the ground-breaking potential of Glow.  This year we’re able to hear about it is starting to change education in classrooms all over Scotland.  It’s breaking down geographical and social barriers.  It is enabling joined up working and the length and breadth of Scotland and last week I spent a short time answering questions personally on the Glow chat room and saw its potential first hand.

And here are some other examples of the incredible diversity of the use of this technology.  Primary 1 pupils from Lairdsland Primary in Kirkintilloch, East Dunbartonshire used Glow to link up with children 450 miles away in Olnafirth Primary in Shetland.  They discovered what it’s like to live on a small island compared with their own lives, bringing to life understanding of Scotland’s geography and diverse communities.  Dundee librarians created a community on Glow to share ideas and plans for teaching information literacy.  This helped bridge the gaps between specialists working in single person departments.  At St James Primary, Paisley in Renfrewshire, pupils in P1, 2 and 3 used Glow Meet to link up with a circus performer by webcam, asking her advice on their own circus projects.  But this has given the pupils much richer access to information and experiences and made them more confident in speaking with others.  And S3 students studying biology in Cathkin High School in South Lanarkshire have been supported to learn using Glow at their own pace.  This saw a marked rise in attainment and motivation to study biology amongst the students and enabled the teacher to spend more time with those individuals who needed extra support.

Glow is a 21^st century communications tool that fits seamlessly into the lives of our young people.  Beyond the classroom they are even using the computers from social networking ... they shift from social networking on Bebo one minute to homework on Glow on the next.  So Glow brings to life in the classroom different subjects and experiences and helps make activities relevant and meaningful.  It supports innovative, engaging teaching and learning, it helps motivate young people to work independently and collaboratively and, in short, Glow helps to provide the person-centred learning that is at the heart of Curriculum for Excellence.

The challenge now is for numbers to grow.  If you’re not already a Glow user and want to find out more, then go to the Glow lounge in the Scottish Education Village and experience it for yourselves, that’s if you’re not playing guitar here. (laughing)

I want to say thank you and extend my welcome to the many people participating in the Scottish Learning Festival who have come together to make the Festival a success.  The Festival this year is bigger and better than ever.  I’m encouraged to see such a diverse range of delegates from all educational sectors and beyond and I hope you enjoy everything that the Learning Festival has to offer.  There are so many things still to come.  I’m here at the festival with my colleagues Maureen Watt, Minister for Schools and Skills and Adam Ingram, Minister for Children and Early Years, who’ll be around today and tomorrow.  And throughout the two days my team of professional advisors will be on hand at the Scottish Government Stand ready to talk to you, offer advice and answer your questions.

The Scottish Learning Festival is a place where teachers, educationalists and practitioners can meet to discuss, debate, engage, enlighten and learn.  I’ve always said the best thing about Scottish education, not just now but over the centuries, is the debate, the dialogue, that we’ve always had in our education system and our efforts to combine, to deliver the best possible education for our children and young people.  This is a critical time for educational reform in Scotland.  It is imperative that in continuing this spirit of participation and cooperation we all embrace the challenges ahead.  Success in the highly ambitious programme of reform I’ve described today cannot and, indeed, must not be achieved by the Scottish government alone.  This is about working together across government, local authorities, schools, colleges, early year settings, other learning establishments and employers.  This is a shared responsibility to make a real positive difference to the lives of Scotland’s young people.  This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for all of you to shape teaching and education in Scotland.  This is your chance to shape a nation.  It will be hard work but it will be highly rewarding and we owe it to our young people, and to the future success of Scotland, to each play our part in Curriculum for Excellence, to drive through our own improvements of which we can all be proud.  I believe that together we can achieve our ambitions for the success of our education system.  Together we can achieve our ambitions for the future success of our children and I believe that together we can achieve our ambitions for the future success of our nation.  Thank you very much.

(applause)

HR:    

Thank you very much, Cabinet Secretary.  Next, Professor Richard Teese from the University of Melbourne will respond to the Minister’s address.  Professor Teese is a specialist in student achievement, schools programmes and then transition to further education and work.  He has built up a strong relationship between university research and both policy makers and practitioners to raise levels of achievement and ensure good quality outcomes for all students and, as the Cabinet Secretary also mentioned, played a major role in the recent OECD report.  So, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Professor Richard Teese.

(applause)

PRT:  

Thank you, Heather.  May I respond to one major theme in the Cabinet Secretary’s address.  Curriculum for Excellence opens the door of opportunity.  It’s a door that often seems to be closed.  It might be closed by different factors: exams, parents’ expectations, the reluctance of teachers to move beyond the tried and true or, as an English researcher put it, the straightjacket of success.  Of course, there is ongoing innovation and change in schools but Curriculum for Excellence opens this up on a much wider basis.  It gives scope for professional sharing on a scale not hitherto experienced and that, in part, is a source of uncertainty and fear.  But if we talk about opening a door of opportunity, opportunity to do what?  Essentially it’s to build or strengthen relationships.  It’s to create a living culture of learning through this.

First, relationships within schools, and within schools and their communities; relationships between learners, which we tend to neglect; relationships between teachers and students, a more obvious source of tension; and relationships between teachers in the same school, too often overlooked.  On the external front, relationships with parents, a crucial link that needs to be addressed; relationships with employers, so important in the Scottish context and elsewhere; relationships with community organisations, with further education colleges and with universities.  Before thinking about content, activities, outcomes, what goes into the Curriculum, we should be thinking about the relationships we are trying to build or strengthen within schools through the medium of the curriculum.  We could say curriculum development is the development of those relationships themselves.  We could speak here of forging bonds of learning.  For example, how will we engage students more fully in their own learning?  How can we use curriculum to lift the expectations of staff or to overcome a sense of resignation or pessimism?  What about involving parents, especially in communities that are deprived?  How will the curriculum serve to forge these relationships?  And we can test the curriculum in terms of the quality of the relationships it supports or fails to support.

Second, curriculum development can be a vehicle for building or strengthening relationships between schools, between teachers in different schools.  I would say that this is essential to tackle the anxiety and the fear that some teachers experience in the face of major change.  The fear resides in isolation.  But it is also vital to ensure that the curriculum remains supple, flexible, always open to new initiatives and approaches.  And without constant, fruitful interaction between schools, the curriculum cannot evolve and live like that.  Interaction between teachers from very different settings is essential to enable the system to move from curriculum as law to curriculum as culture.  Culture, a way of doing things which allows continuous variation and adaptation as distinct from compliance to a body of prescriptive law, a code that merely must be observed and implemented.

Standing back, I see the promise of Curriculum for Excellence as twofold.  On the one hand, to overcome the isolation of the learner within a school and the isolation of a teacher in the same school; the two often accompanies low achievement and low expectations.  I’m thinking of teachers who lock themselves in a classroom and won’t talk, won’t discuss the quality of their experience, their frustrations, their lack of vision or their fears.  And I’m thinking too of the learners that are too ashamed to raise a question in class lest they reveal their ignorance.

On the other hand, Curriculum for Excellence promises to end the isolation of schools that struggle to lift achievement and the horizons of their students.  They would prefer to be unknown.  To fulfil this promise depends on the willingness of schools and teachers to take risks and the commitment of local authorities and the Scottish government itself to support them in this, to share the risk of change.

Thank you.

(applause)

HR:

Thank you very much indeed, Professor Teese.  Now, in the time remaining to us we’re going to ask the audience to participate in our question and answer session.  The Cabinet Secretary and Professor Teese have made about half an hour available to us in this session to take questions from the floor.  This is your opportunity to ask the people with power and influence about things that you’re concerned about.  So if you could raise your hand and then perhaps make your way over to the fixed mikes that we have scattered around the auditorium; there are six in total.  I believe there is Learning and Teaching staff who are going to help with that.  And once you’ve got to one of the mikes if you could give us your name and the establishment you’re from, whether it be a school or a local authority or wherever you’re working, then that would be very useful.  I can’t really see standing here, so I’m going to ... hopefully this is working.  Yes it is.  I can see much better now if I move towards the front without falling off the stage.  Do we have anyone who’s willing to kick us off with this session?  Yeah, one at the front here.  I think there’s a mike right beside you.  Thank you.

Winton:

Good morning.  My name’s Neil Winton from Perth Academy, Cabinet Secretary.  Thank you very much for your talk.  One of the things that struck me from both yourself and from Professor Teese was this notion of empowering us as educators, and one of the things that I’m very pleased at with Glow is that it’s giving us access to so many tools.  However, one of the things that we do have quite often is a lack of trust in our professionalism.  We have sites and resources regularly blocked to us by people that we seem to have no say over and I was just wondering that, given the potential for these and the Curriculum for Excellence, pointing out that things are ... we should be allowed to innovate and to try things, is there any mechanism by which you could oversee or to provide us access to the tools which can make a profound difference?

FH:

I appreciate the point about being able to have access to different sites.  I’m not sure I can personally police all the Internet sites in all of Scotland but I think there is a general issue about how ... what can be accessed or not and I think that is exactly the sort of discussion you need to have with your head teacher and your local authority about how that’s managed.  I mean, parents put their trust in you and it’s about trust so, as a parent, I trust the teachers who teach my children to be able to protect them and make sure that they have access to what they need to.  But I think that’s an operational issue.  Part of this is identify if there are barriers to progress what they are instead of just accepting them and say, well how can we change this?  What’s a sensible way of dealing with that?  And that’s the sort of discussion I would expect to take place.  And certainly if that’s a general problem across Scotland I’ll certainly raise that with the programme implementation board to see if there’s something they can help facilitate the directors of education and head teachers to help liberate, I think, the learning experiences I think you’re asking for.

(applause)

Winton:

Thank you very much.

HR:

Okay.  Another question anywhere?  Yeah, there’s another one here.  Yeah, please feel free to ... we might take a couple of questions.  Is there any from the top that I’m missing?  If you want to try and make your way towards one of the microphones, then I see you better.  Yeah.  Or have you got a roving mike there?  That’s fine.  Yeah, that’s great.  Is it working?  Yes;

Williamson:

My name’s Avril Williamson.  I’m a head teacher of a nursery school in Glasgow.  I actually had the opportunity to ask Fiona a question this time last year and this is just a little bit of an update I’m looking for.  You talked about investment in education and I know that in particular you say that investment in early education is an investment in the future.  And I’d like to ask you what progress has been made in achieving the government promise of a teacher for every pre-school child in Scotland?

FH

Okay.  Since we last spoke, we’ve now had the agreement with local authorities as part of the Concordat, and one of the commitments is to one improve the hours; we’ve already done that.  We’ll also extend the hours later on by 2010, 2011 to make sure there’s been a 50% increase in pre-school nursery.  But your question really is about the availability of teachers in teaching establishments.  Now this is where I do know that there’s been an increase in access to nursery teachers across Scotland from something like 54% up to 66%.  That’s got to be 100%.  But there are areas where local authorities are perhaps more, can I say, tardy or reluctant to take part in progressing what they’ve agreed to sign up to as part of the local government Concordat.  Now I think Glasgow’s one of them and I’ve expressed my frustrations previously that despite an increase in education budget that Gordon Mathieson acknowledges, that he’s not making sure that the teacher numbers are kept at a level where every pre-school centre can have access to a nursery teacher.  Now, that’s a dialogue and discussion I will take up with him personally but can I say across Scotland there have been improvements in making sure we have teacher access.  And I say this quite seriously, there’s an important point to what I, as Cabinet Secretary, are doing to providing the resources that are required.  I’ve put enough resources into local government settlement to maintain 53,000 teachers in Scotland.  Now that would also ... that provides and makes provision for teachers in nursery as well as in primary but I think some of the issues and points where if you want to make a completely centralised education and take control of Glasgow’s education system, that’s one thing.  But that’s not the world we live in and it’s not the world we want to live in.  So part of that is that dialogue and don’t worry, I hope to be in the situation next year when you come and ask the question that we’ve moved on Glasgow.

Williamson:

And I will.  Is this microphone still on? Yes.  Are you aware though that apparently there’s an authority not too far away from where we are now that is removing its teachers and head teachers from pre-school provision?

FH:

Well, I’m more than happy if people want to draw attention to any particular issues or areas please contact me.  I’ll look into that further.  But I’m absolutely clear that we want to improve the early years.  The biggest thing we can do to help improve in education is early years and early intervention.  That means the strengths and the abilities of nursery nurses but it also means access to a nursery teacher.  I’ll make sure what I can do to deliver that nationally but what I can say is we talked about empowerment of the profession.  Part of this arrangement is also empowerment of local authorities in making their decisions. But they have committed to provide access to a nursery teacher for each and every child and we’ll be holding them to account in doing so.

Williamson:

Thank you.

HR

Thank you for that question and raising that.

(applause)

Another question?  You in the front here?  Can you move towards mike one and ...

Webb:

Good morning.  My name’s Richard Webb.  I’m afraid I cannot give an establishment.  I was one of 93%, so I’m told, of probationers from 2007 who acquired a post.  I now report every fortnight to Musselburgh Jobcentre.  What I’d like to ask the Minister is what progress is being made in addressing the mismatch between intake to initial teacher education and the demand for posts?  And is there any progress in addressing the enormous waste of talent and ability that is sitting around on street corners at the moment.

(applause)

HR

Okay, thank you.  Cabinet Secretary?

FH

Richard, thank you very much for that question.  I know there’s a great deal of frustration for those post-probationers that haven’t been able to find employment as of September this year.  Now, there are approximately, and certainly when we came into power, 53,000 teachers in Scotland.  The resources are available for local government: we put them in the settlement to maintain teacher numbers at 53,000 despite any efficiency savings.  Efficiency savings aren’t about frontline service cuts or job losses.  That’s something that I don’t accept.  So the resource is in local authority settlement for 53,000 teachers.  Now we all acknowledge that with 6,000 teachers leaving every year, this year are expected to retire or leave the profession mostly through retirement, 6,000 this year.  That’s 400 up on last year.  And that’s going to be the same next year and the year after.  So 18,000 teachers are expected to leave the profession.  Perhaps you might want to look at the audience and perhaps some age profile and have a look about some of the issues and the challenges.  (laughing)  But the problem is that not all jobs are available in September.  That’s the difficulty.  Now, in secondary teaching, the survey, the GCC survey, showed that 72% of secondary teachers found permanent employment and the rest were in supply or certainly in temporary employment.  I think there’s more of a frustration ... I don’t know if you’re a primary teacher.  I think what I have concerns about is that isn’t reflected in primary and we need to make sure, especially with the reductions we want in class sizes, to make sure that primary teachers have more permanent ... because there are fewer primary teachers that are in permanent positions.  But can I tell you, there are resources in each local authority for them to maintain their numbers so if you look at your own authority and if you look at how many teachers are retiring, each one of them should be replaced.  Now, there are more challenges in the west of Scotland than there are in the east of Scotland because of falling ... falling school rolls will mean that they’ll not necessarily need the same numbers, but in the east of Scotland obviously the population’s increasing.  I can’t ... and I’m not the employer; the employers are the local authorities.  But what I can say is I inherited a workforce planning system.  What I have done is set up a teacher employment working group to look at whether that matching process that you’ve identified is fit for purpose and what we need.  So I ... that will report some time in October and I’ll make that public as the findings of that because I think we can and should do better to tackle that mismatch because we’ve got fantastically committed talented people.  Whenever I go around schools, what is said about the quality of probationers is excellent.  The issue is we’ve got such a wonderful probationer system, the problem is we can’t and maybe with the questioner is we can’t guarantee every teacher a job or a job for life, certainly in September. What we can do is to get that matching right.  Can I say with 6,000 teachers expected to retire this year the opportunities might not be in September but they’ll be in February, January, March and I’ve got a responsibility to parents.  If every single post-probationer got a job in August, September when the term started, when the vacancies came up in January, February, March and there wasn’t teachers available for those classrooms, I certainly would have ... I find that unacceptable. So I know it’s frustrating but can I say I am determined to try and resolve it for the benefit of, not only you, but also so many other people in that situation.  And I look forward to the teachers working employment group coming back, that has COSLA, GCC,  employers etc.  Thank you.

Webb:

Just one other point on this.  You mentioned that they’ll be work possibly arriving during the year.  I’ve been looking now since this time last year.  I’m not a post-probationer.  There’s an awful lot of us that went in ... onto supply or temporary contracts last year that are now quoted as success stories, ‘Oh look you got us a job last year’, who are now struggling.  I’ve just squeezed onto my second local authority supply list.  Others are not even interviewing, they’re so inundated.

FH

Can I say, I hope from my first answer you realise I am quite aware of the difficulties and the problem.  At the end of the day local authorities are the employers.  We provide the resources but we don’t employ teachers.   What I can say is even of last year, one of the first things I did was to put an additional £9 million into the system to provide 300 extra jobs that otherwise would not have been there.  So I’ve shown that commitment and I’m determined to make sure that we can take that forward with the local authorities because when they have teacher retiring they have a duty to replace them when they can.  And I’ll be making sure that that’s monitored and reported on. But thank you very much for raising that question.

Webb:

Thank you.

(applause)

HR

Thank you, Richard.  Now any more questions that ... I can see hands going up.  We’ve got another hand ... well, I’ll take one from the front and do you want to make your way towards a microphone as well and we’ll maybe take two off the back of each other here.  And we’ll keep things moving.

Unknown:

Just to be very quick.  This is just a follow up to the last question.  I’m one of these people who’s come into education from 20 odd years in industry and to be honest one of the things that really surprised me was the discovery of people who really just did not want to be any longer in teaching jobs.  This is not something that I’ve seen elsewhere. There usually comes a point where people are given acceptable way to get out and I think it’s definitely a national issue that at the same time as we have these people trying to find jobs in schools, and some of them are very, very good, we have staff still in schools who want to be out, who are not going to be helping with Glow or with Curriculum for Excellence and are really just biding their time until they can collect a pension.  Is there anything we can do nationally to help these people to make a discreet departure?

HR:’’

(laughter)

((applause)

Okay.  My parents were both school teachers and I’ll run that past them as well for some inspiration.  So that’s one point for the Cabinet Secretary.  I’ll maybe take another one here as well, just to keep things going.

O’Dowd:

My name’s John O’Dowd and I’m a teacher at Bishopbriggs Academy.  First of all, the reason I’m here today is because I refused to cross a picket line outside my school and the question I’ve got is for Professor Teese.  It’s about testing.  What’s his view on testing?

HR:

Right, thank you for those two.  I’ll ... is that it, yeah?

O’Dowd:

Well, first of all being a teacher obviously we have this Festival every Wednesday/Thursday which I think is pretty pointless.  For myself, I can’t come in until the weekend.  I would like to see a shift in the date for a start.  I would imagine that I’m the only person here from my school.  As I said, my colleagues, a lot of them have chosen to go across this picket line; I’ve chosen not to, right.  My plan tomorrow is to go and see my line manager and say look, I’ve done a bit of CPD today.

HR:

Well, that’s probably a question that I think the Cabinet Secretary will maybe respond to as well.

O’Dowd:

Thank you.

HR:

And Richard Teese is back this afternoon to give a keynote, when he will be exploring more ideas and I’m sure testing will come up.  But Richard, will I start with you perhaps and anything about testing that you want to say at the moment.

PRT

I think the reputation of testing in the United Kingdom is somewhat sullied.  But from where I come from we haven’t had that experience.  But testing doesn’t drive teaching but it does help us assess where children stand against pre-defined outcomes that we think are valuable.  We don’t use testing to judge schools or to out or shame or humiliate teachers, and I’m completely against that.  But testing is important if it serves a diagnostic role, if it supports teachers and if it comforts parents in relation to their expectations on how far their children have got.  Testing regimes are very difficult to adapt to the diagnostic purpose but that’s what their ideal role is.  And, as I’ve said in one of your newspapers, and in the Scottish Educational Review, how long do you wait to know whether a group of children who might come from a very poor background are not achieving the outcomes that we wish them to achieve and that we should be supporting teachers to enable to be achieved?  Do we wait until they crash out in the exams?  Or do we have a more continuous monitoring process that enables us to intervene effectively, not to hurt the school but to help the child?

FH:

May I come in on this briefly?

HR:

Yes, please do.

FH:

I think the critical success factors for Curriculum for Excellence will be leadership at all levels, continuous professional development and assessment.  And the importance of assessment is, I agree with Richard about the importance of improving the learning, but that is an important area to develop as part of that collegiate work within schools.  The new HMIE inspection is going to be about how schools can self-assess themselves and that trust we talked about, we’re going to have to make sure we have a system where the ability of teachers to assess their children, to see whether they’re developing the outcomes from the earliest years, and certainly primary and early secondary, the assessment that we build into Curriculum for Excellence in a way that helps learning as opposed to tests or judges I think is going to be increasingly important. And that again, over the next few months, will be an area for development on a national basis.  But I’m afraid about the experience ... the first question about teachers.  There is an issue, there are some very experienced teachers who we need to learn from, particularly with so many ... if you’ve got 18,000 new teachers coming into the profession over the next few years, to put out with the 53,000 we need that support and common interest.  But there is an issue about retirements and this is a difficult time because the credit crunch means everybody’s looking to see how they pay their bills, their mortgages etc.  But perhaps we should look again at the teachers agreement and some of the issues. Not open it up by any means but the step down issues were put forward in the original McCrone report - opportunities for people who might not necessarily want to have a full week but can contribute to enable that there’s opportunities for others to come in.  And these are all things that I would expect employers, as in the local councils, to be thinking about themselves.

HR:

Thank you for raising that and yes, I’ll let you come back with one more before we move on.

O’Dowd:

Thank you.  Surely a start would be to scrap league tables because coming back in the summer there, we’ve had meeting after meeting after meeting.  And I’m being told by line managers and SNT that performance isn’t good enough; we need to improve, we need to get more As and Bs in Higher.  Now, if the future is a Curriculum of Excellence, lifelong learning, what we’re talking about always in education is passing Highers, standard grades and the rest of it.  Surely there should be a system of like credits for whatever you pass in school.  And, dare I say, long term universities are going to actually have to have an entrance exam per course.

FH:

Can I just say, that is an absolute critical and central point to where we want to go.  The Curriculum for Excellence, as I said, the four capacities are part of what local authorities have signed up to in the National Outcome Agreement.  Now that, yes it has successful learners, but it’s got the other three capacities as well.  And how they’re going to be judged will not just be on the successful learners, it will be on everything else.  And can I tell you, we don’t, as a government, produce league tables.  I don’t, even when I get asked produce league tables by parliamentary question, I refuse to produce league tables.  I don’t think they’re acceptable in our current education system.  It doesn’t stop newspapers’ freedom of information; they can do what they want.  But if we’re really truly determined to make sure that all four capacities are valued, then we have to make sure that they’re assessed and they’re also recognised and they have the status of similarity with each other.  It doesn’t mean that somehow we’re undermining the importance of attainment.  What it is saying is that the other areas of achievement are as important to us.  And can I tell you, one of the things I’m doing as part of the Curriculum for Excellence development is bringing together colleges, universities, employers because I’ve been saying to the colleges and university, you’d better wait and see what’s coming through.  The pupils that come through with those capacities, individual learnings and demands they’ll have, but employers want these capacities and universities increasingly.  Part of my discussions with principals of universities in the last six months and our vision of what they need to do for the next 20 years is employability issues and adaptability and change.  These are all things that will be supplied by Curriculum for Excellence.  So you’re absolutely right, that the change that’s coming about for Curriculum for Excellence isn’t just an initiative that somehow changes how we join up subjects or the rest of it.  It’s actually reaching far, far through and far deeper than ever before.  So when I met with 11 councils, it wasn’t just the Directors of Education I met.  It was the Chief Executives, it was the Director of Finance, it was the council, the political council leaders because they’ll be held to account, not just for being able to respond how they’re achieving their single outcome agreements, their part of the bargain.  And it’s the four capacities; it’s not just the successful learners type.  So the philosophy and the thinking’s there but that’s something to manage within your own local authority about the pressures that you’re under as far as the exam attainment levels are concerned.

O’Dowd:

So long term we looking at a credit system, then?

FH:

The other point about a credit system they ... to me one of the best parts of our education system is the Scottish Credit and Qualification Framework is a gold standard internationally.  It’s about the only system in the world that brings together vocational and other experiences and certainly academic work.  And I think we need to build on that strength.  Now, that’s one of the discussions I’ve been having with the SQA about how do we ... how do we make sure that we can have a recognition of the other issues that other people have in work learning.  I’m responsible for employability and skills and some of the issues about learning that happens in the work place has to be put on to the Credit and Qualification Framework.  So you’re absolutely right, moving to a system where young people can have and be able to demonstrate what they’ve done and achieved in a whole variety of areas will become increasingly important.  So in terms of does that mean that they’ll be more kind of credit responsiveness, yes, that’s the only way.  How else are we going to make sure that we can celebrate our youngsters being responsible citizens and effective contributors.  There’s got to be a way to demonstrate that.  That’s what employers want.  And one of the critical points, I’m sorry if I’m going on a bit but this is absolutely essential.  Employers judge schools and other ... and the public judges schools by those attainment levels and Highers and all the rest of it.  If you ask an employer what he wants from an individual, they’ll want the four capacities and there’s a bit of a mismatch there between what people judge generally about what’s important and what they actually want when they’ve got somebody’s through the door working for them and their organisation.  And that’s the bridge that we’re going to have to have and developing that community of interest and what the Curriculum of Excellence means, I think, is one of the exciting things to take us forward.

O’Dowd:

Quick point, quick point.

HR:

Very quickly because I’ve got another question over the other side.

O’Dowd:

So, what you’re saying is long term Higher, Advanced Higher will go?

FH

No (laughing).  Absolutely not.  No, you’ve got to have a balance between ... successful learners are still part of that.  Our qualification system is there but let’s remember that what’s valid and what is important isn’t just the formal qualifications in terms of examinations, it’s everything else as well.

O’Dowd:

Yeah.  Okay that’s fine.  Great.  Thanks.

HR:

Thank you for those questions.  Thanks very much indeed.  I think we’ve got one ... we’ve got a couple over the other side.  We’ll take both of those, if you both want to ... one after each other.

Donnelly:

My name is Hugh Donnelly.  I’m a classroom teacher at Hill Park Secondary here in Glasgow.  And I have a question both for the Professor and for the Cabinet Secretary.  We’ve already heard a comment today about the burnout of teachers and that ties in with very much what the Professor was saying about the isolation of teachers.  So the question for the Professor is, what is the single most important thing that authorities, government and local authorities, can do to actually overcome that isolation and that burnout.  Because I think the important thing about the observation earlier on was the fact that those teachers who are now isolated and burned out were not always like that; they weren’t always isolated and burned out and they are good ... there are very, very good reasons why they’ve become that.  And if we’ve got to learn the lessons, I think it’s important that we learn the lessons for this generation who are coming through that they don’t end up isolated and burned out as well.  So that’s the first question for the Professor. 

(applause)

The second question for the Cabinet Secretary also relates to something that the Professor said about the quality of building relationships.  One of the most welcome things amongst classroom teachers in recent times has been the secured reduction in class sizes in S1 and S2 and in Lower Primary.  And the question for ... is the thing that has really opened up giving teachers the time, the space and the opportunity to build quality relationships that are going to be so important for delivering the agenda for Curriculum for Excellence.  And the question for the Cabinet Secretary is, how confident is she that those gains can be secured across all local authorities across the country?  And how confident is she they can actually roll out further class reductions which are historically well overdue in Scotland?

(applause)

HR:

Thank you.  Well I’ll take another question.  Do you want to respond just now or take ...?

FH:

Do you want to take Richard first?

HR:

Right, Richard. Okay.

PRT:

The burnout that teachers experience, in my experience, is linked to their being isolated, frustrated, unsupported, not knowing what strategies to go forward and being assessed in a narrow and restrictive way.  How to address that?  There are two things that are really important.  Certainly they need time and opportunity to talk, to discuss, to review their experience to meet ... to think about their objectives.  But the other aspect is equally important.  They need to communicate with each other.  They need to talk beyond the walls of their classroom and beyond the walls of their schools.  Burnout can result from not knowing which way to go forward and I can’t give you details of examples but the ones I’m familiar with show that being locked in, unable to go forward, unable to find strategies to lift their game and improve their satisfaction in their profession.  So those two things I think are vital: the opportunity to talk, to reflect with others and to gain support from others; and exchanging experience and preferably with schools that serve similar communities but also schools that serve diverse communities.  So the two things, freedom in your workplace and exchange with other teachers.

HR:

And the point about class sizes?

FH

Absolutely.  By maintaining teacher numbers at 53,000 in the face of falling school rolls creates some headroom to reduce class sizes, particularly in the early years.  That’s why P1 to P2, P3, the early intervention, early years agenda, is very much the focus of what we’re achieving.  Now we’re already this year managing to see class size reductions in the early years across Scotland and that is happening in each of one of the 11 councils I met over the summer were committed to reducing class sizes.  Some of them are doing it across the board by getting the P1s down to 23 this year; that’s North Lanarkshire are doing that.  Other local authorities are targeting the areas of deprivation and reducing class sizes to 18 as of now, in areas of deprivation, where previously they were higher.  So part of that is making sure that we have the teacher numbers in the system.  So it is related to the previous question about local authorities as employers using the resources that they have available to employ the teachers that are required.  Now, some local authorities are a bit slower in delivering this than others and I have concerns, and I think it goes back to the question about the Glasgow experience which a number of teachers in Glasgow raised issues today, and I understand and we’ve got it on record from the convenor of education, he recognises the education budget in Glasgow is higher than it was previously.  The issue is they’re not necessarily using it for employing teachers to reduce class sizes in the early years in the pace and scale that they could, and certainly with the retirement numbers in Glasgow they’re perfectly capable of doing it.  Other cities have problems: Aberdeen, I think we’ve all got to recognise they’ve got challenges.  Inheriting a £50 million deficit can’t be dealt with overnight but I think that’s an area we have to recognise that there are challenges in.  But if we recognise that smaller class sizes are important .... and many of you will be members of the EIS that have campaigned long and hard for smaller class sizes.  Now you have a government that is with you in wanting to deliver class sizes.  We’ve put reduction in class sizes as part of our remit with local government.  We’ve got four years to make sure and drive those down.  I’m very pleased with the progress so far.  I think it can and should be better and I’ll be pushing them to make sure they deliver that.  But early years is critical if we want to make sure we’ve got the best start in life.  Smaller class sizes in the earlier years is where we can identify those children with problems, help support them and have more time for teaching and learning and literacy and numeracy and getting the basics right.  Secondary teachers tell me, if we get the basics right in early years it makes their opportunities so much greater when they get to secondary.  So the commitment’s there; 53,000 teachers are funded in the local government settlement.  I think if that’s not happening in your local authority I suggest you try and speak to the convenor.  [drops microphone]

HR:

I think you’re still connected.  Are you still on?

FH:

Are we still on?  Can you hear that, yeah?

HR:

Yeah, you’re still on.  I’m aware that we haven’t had anyone from the top actually, which is very hard to see.  So I think you need to wave and stand up if you’re particularly keen to ask from the upper layer there.  But I know that we had a second question down there so I’ll go to that one first. 

FH:

There’s somebody up there.  Would you shake your jewellery or whatever? 

HR:

Yeah, we’ll take the next one from the top.  If you could make your way to that microphone at number six there and I’ll take this one here, yeah.

Sutcliffe:

Hi.  My name’s Adam Sutcliffe.  I’m a teacher at the Gordon Schools in Huntly.  As the Cabinet Secretary’s probably aware, teachers have to do 35 hours annually CPD.  How is the Scottish Government helping local authorities undertake CPD opportunities to enable them to carry out the necessary developments that a Curriculum for Excellence and Glow and such like will require?  I mean all these opportunities are fantastic and so exciting but how are teachers going to get the time to help push that forward within their own schools and how can the Scottish Government help that?

HR:

Okay, so time to take part in CPD.  Do you want to respond to that one first?

FH:

As I said, leadership, CPD assessment, critical areas for support for delivering Curriculum for Excellence and that’s the discussion I had when the majority of directors of education met only two weeks ago to discuss how they collectively were going to help drive forward Curriculum for Excellence and everyone recognised the importance of creating space and time for CPD.  Now can I ... I’ll be frank.  I think in my discussions and views of councils across Scotland, the progress is a bit variable.  Some have already had quite extensive CPD developments, both on a cross-council basis and between schools and within schools.  It can vary from place to place and that’s what I think we’ve got to do and the challenge on what I can deliver on a national basis is to question and probe how much CPD is being delivered and supported.  There’s some extremely good practice already happening and indeed the pace and progress of CPD development for Curriculum for Excellence is really gathering a pace.  But I think it goes back to that question about the isolation of the teacher.  If there’s one thing that’s going to change the atmosphere in the schools is the collegiate nature of delivering for Curriculum for Excellence which means cross support, mentoring, individual supports across schools will become increasingly important and now you see more work cross-council area and also cross authority.  So the idea of people doing things in isolation, I think, will be long gone and part of the delivery of this will be sharing experiences of developing Curriculum for Excellence as part of that CPD programme.  But you’re absolutely right that that will be a critical success factor and it’s something that the directors of education are quite aware of and are building in their strategies and their programmes to make sure that’s delivered.

HR:

So thank you for raising that issue.  I’m aware that sessions will be starting at 12 so I think this really will be the last question from the top there that we have time for.  Over to you.

Noble:

David Noble from Hillside School.  Cabinet Secretary, I’m delighted to hear that you stated earlier on that the teachers agreement will not be reopened but assuming that you accept that the findings of the review of the Chartered Teacher Programme and accept the findings and recommendations in their entirety, what steps can you take to ensure that in the future people who wish to join the Chartered Teacher Programme it’s not a case of their face having to fit?

FH:

That shouldn’t be the case and wouldn’t be the case in our response to Chartered Teacher.  I think it’s important that people can demonstrate their experience in applying for that.  I have already responded to the Chartered Teacher Review Group, and that’s available on the government website, in taking things forward but part of that is recognising that the talents that we have within our schools at all levels where there are chartered teachers or others and I think drawing on the strength as I said of the experience of many teachers in our system but also quite clearly the numbers of probationers and post-probationers and new teachers in the system can help provide that injection within a school.  And I think that we have a great opportunity in that combination in that ... yes, it’s in flux.  Any organisation replacing almost 40% of its numbers within a short period of time is challenging.  But it’s ... if you grab the opportunity and see the positives from that I think we can really have an engine for change and to see and deliver, I think, what will be a transformation.  And we’re preparing and you’re educating children for a world that none of us have an idea of what they’re going to have to have in the future.  But if we embrace the challenge and we think creatively and innovatively and you, the professionals, you are the people that know how you can deliver that in the classroom.  I think we’ve got great opportunities and we can look forward to the future with a great deal of confidence.

HR:

Right.  Thank you very much for all those questions that we had there this morning.  As the Cabinet Secretary said, there’s a Scottish Government stand over in the Main Hall within the Exhibition where you can take further points and questions that we haven’t got to this morning.  I think that’s one of the longest question and answer sessions that we’ve ever done here.  So on your behalf I’d like to thank the Minister and, indeed, Professor Teese for participating in that.  Thanks for the questions and really all that’s left to say is, thank you very much to Fiona Hyslop and Richard Teese.  Thank you.

[applause]