Essay: Critically analyse current education policy context / identify and justify a Strategic Change Issue

It has been stated that ‘within education, across phases and across continents, the policy context impacts decisively on shaping institutional environments’ (Bell and Stevenson 2005, p.7). From a global perspective, education can be regarded as the key to a nation’s success or failure. Within Scottish education, this philosophy is echoed by John Swinney, Deputy First Minister and Education Secretary who states that, ‘every child growing up in Scotland, regardless of their background, should have an equal chance to succeed’ (TES, 2018). However, the definition of success within education can be open to interpretation and can be viewed differently in policies across the globe. Before policies are adopted and validated by a school community their key principles, pedagogies and content should be examined in order to evaluate the benefits for all children and young people.
For school communities to decide or interpret the content of local educational policy, it is essential that global and national policies are considered. The ability to exhibit up to date and extensive knowledge of education policy is a significant and recurrent theme in the General Teaching Council for Scotland Standard for Leadership and Management (2012). By effectively developing and engaging in this element of strategic leadership, a successful Headteacher can ensure the well-timed and relevant transference of global and national policy into local school context. It can also be said that a Headteacher’s ability to critically analyse policy is crucial, they should be able to use their knowledge and understanding of their local context to evaluate the effectiveness of policies. Effective Headteachers should also have the skills and confidence to decide whether policies should be delivered as they are or adapted to suit the needs of local context. As set out in the General Teaching Council for Scotland Standard for Leadership and Management (2012) a Headteacher should be able to ‘judge wisely and decide appropriately’ (2012, P. 9). Careful consideration should be given to the policy source, its influences and key drivers. Furthermore, it should be noted that political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legislative drivers can all adopt a changing level of priority at any one time and it is imperative that Headteachers demonstrate sound understanding of them. Global drivers such as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNICEF, 2004) and Learning for All (World Bank, 2011) continue to be key influential forces in policy formation. Likewise, legal drivers such as The Children & Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 and Getting It Right for Every Child: National Practice Model (Scottish Government, 2012) remain at the forefront of decision-making processes made by a Headteacher. Policy drivers can be diverse, multi-layered and complex and many policies and initiatives can be in existence calling for consideration and implementation at any point in time.
It is the purpose of this part of this assignment to therefore critically analyse current policy context with a view to identifying and justifying a Strategic Change Issue. A proposal will then be outlined using educational evidence as argument.
Global institutions such as United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Bank, United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), the World Health Organisation and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) all place tackling inequality and inequity at the centre of their practice and have subsequently prioritised positive early childhood development in their programmes of work. Policies such as the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s (UNESCO) Education 2030 (2015), the World Bank’s Learning for All (2011) and policy drivers such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) paper, How’s Life? (2015) also, visibly place children’s rights and nurturing approaches within the health and wellbeing agenda as high importance. How’s Life? states that ‘giving children a good start in life is important for wellbeing here and now, but it also improves a child’s chances later’ (2015, p. 7). Rizvi and Lingard (2010) suggest that policies are created and written to guarantee consistency in their delivery and whilst these policies demonstrate a desire for equity, equality and social justice within education whilst showing strong links to nurture and health and wellbeing, they lack consideration into execution and moderation at national and local level. Rizvi and Lingard (2010) also suggest that whilst policies are written with intended consequences in mind, unintended consequences may also come to light bringing silent tensions with them. Policies should then be critically analysed to determine how they are represented with education and how they impact on strategic leadership. Although the World Bank has set clear long-term strategies in place, backed up by data and additional International Development Association (IDA) credits have been pledged to those countries falling behind the targets set by the World Bank, there needs to be clear accountability measures in place at both national and local level.
The World Health Organisation’s Nurturing Care for Early Childhood Development: A Framework for linking SURVIVE and THRIVE to TRANSFORM health and human potential (2018) reports that all children require nurturing care to help them reach their full potential and have set out 17 global targets to be achieved by 2030. Whilst these goals are ambitious and aspirational in nature, again it can be said that the implementation and success of the policy, will only be effective through possible adaptation, careful implementation, delivery and monitoring at national and local levels. The policy also states that governments should ensure equitable coverage of interventions should be put in place, mainly for those children and young people in excluded or marginalised groups. The Scottish government seek to close the poverty related equity gap with the introduction of the Pupil Equity Fund (PEF) by providing funding to schools focussing on children and young people who are eligible for such interventions and those in receipt of Free Meal Entitlement (FME). With accountability for Pupil Equity Fund spending resting on individual schools, the question of whether the Scottish Government can effectively measure the impact of positive interventions and confidently discuss the success of such funding is raised. Since the funding has only been in place since 2017 sustained impact across improvements in literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing may not be able to be fully demonstrated in such a short timeframe.
Global ideas around nurture and the health and wellbeing agenda directly influence Scotland’s national policy landscape as the context dimension of current educational policy drivers focusses around the achievement of equity and equality for all children and young people. Written in response to the OECD report Synergies for Better Learning: An International Perspective on Evaluation and Assessment (2013), it could be said that the National Improvement Framework (2016) arose from political pressures regarding the Scottish education system. The NIF is authoritative in nature but is clear in its goal and strategy in closing the poverty attainment gap whilst achieving excellence in raising attainment. A key priority in the National Improvement Framework (2018) states that ‘every child has the same opportunity to succeed’ (2018, p. 5). Rizvi and Lingard (2010) differentiate policies by the way they are communicated and promoted. They suggest that policies showing commitment to implementation backed up by funding can be seen to be material in nature. By contrast, symbolic policies arise from political pressures. Rizvi and Lingard (2010) also make distinctions between distributive and redistributive policy. Distributive policies by nature, distribute resources, whilst redistributive policies put appropriate interventions in place promoting positive discrimination. Although the NIF could be seen as being idealistic in nature, the introduction and use of Pupil Equity Funding (PEF) implies that the NIF has a material policy element to it as there is strong commitment to its implementation, backed by the Pupil Equity Funding. It is also redistributive as a policy as interventions are put in place by schools promoting positive discriminations, focussing on young people who are eligible to receive the funding and for those in receipt of Free Meal Entitlement (FME). Underpinned by the NIF, Getting It Right for Every Child (GIRFEC) and Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) the Scottish Attainment Challenge (SAC) programme also seeks to put positive interventions in place for children and young people in a bid to help them achieve their full potential. It can be said that the Scottish Attainment Challenge has a more holistic approach in its vision as it seeks to improve activity in literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing. This is in stark contrast to the National Improvement Framework, as although a key priority in the NIF is to improve children and young people’s health and wellbeing, standardised assessment showing improvements in literacy and numeracy is a significant factor of the policy. The NIF poses significant challenges and has implications for schools around the school leadership driver as there is ambiguity on how to evaluate impact across professional practice and change within the local school context. The policy makes no reference as to effective change for improvement can or should be managed within schools or how to effectively measure improvements in health and wellbeing for children and young people.
Ensuring children and young people achieve their full potential and improvements being made in their health and wellbeing should be top of the agenda in Scotland. Indeed, the Additional Support for Learning Act (Scottish Government, 2009), defines the need to ensure that nurturing students emotional needs are a statutory requirement. Scottish legislation reflects a recognition of the need to improve wellbeing for all our children and young people. This need is emphasised in policies such as Curriculum for Excellence (2004), the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 and Getting It Right for Every Child: National Practice Model (Scottish Government 2012). Getting It Right for Every Child: National Practice Model (Scottish Government, 2012) also links in with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) within the document and highlights the importance of nurture. It also empathises the significance of positive parental and family engagement. However, consideration must be given to staff capability and capacity and equal distribution of resources and opportunities in order to achieve equity and equality for all. Scottish Government policies and legislation for the benefit of children continue to affirm that ‘closing the gap in attainment, achievement and wellbeing between children and young people in our most and least deprived areas is the key challenge for Scottish education’. (HGIOS4 2015, p.5). The Child Poverty Strategy for Scotland: Our Approach 2014-17 (Scottish Government, 2014) also underlines the importance of addressing issues from deprivation figures and employment statistics. All these policies highlight the importance of nurture within the health and wellbeing agenda but give no solution in addressing the issues. It is therefore essential for education authorities and Headteachers to take local context into account when tackling them.
Within my local authority level, policy adoption is driven by poor attendance rates, high levels of deprivation and poverty and reported low rates of emotional wellbeing and life satisfaction. Whilst there has been a local authority focus on improving outcomes for learners across literacy and numeracy, the health and wellbeing of our children and young people also needs to be considered. Only focussing on improvement in literacy and numeracy levels in a bid to compete with local and national league tables may have an unintended negative impact on the health and wellbeing of pupils arising from such pressures. Within Applying Nurture as a Whole School Approach (Education Scotland, 2016) fostering positive relationships using nurturing approaches underpins all positive learning and teaching experiences for children and, in turn, can have a positive influence on increased attendance in school and raising attainment. This is supported by Geddes (2018) who acknowledges the correlation between positive relationships with trustworthy adults and attendance and attainment. However, Geddes (2018) also acknowledges that teachers may not always feel equipped or have the knowledge and understanding on how to support children with emotional, social and behavioural needs. Research carried out by Doyle (2004) supports the ideology of mainstream school staff undergoing professional development supporting children with diverse social, emotional and behavioural needs, regardless of their own barriers to learning.
My local authority have recently introduced their own Health and Wellbeing Strategy (2017) and a policy entitled ‘Boosting Brains, Boosting Learning: A Briefing to Support Educator Understanding of the Readiness for Learning Approach’ (2018) in a bid to support the structure and delivery of the curriculum so that children can be the best learners they can be and achieve the best possible outcomes, regardless of background. Both documents take account of global and national policy and have been written in direct response to the work carried out by the Scottish Attainment Challenge (SAC) and the National Improvement Framework (NIF) with schools held accountable to strategic aims of the documents. They take relevant data from the 2016 Scottish Multiple Index of Deprivation (SIMD) into account which indicates that 26% of families in my local authority live in poverty and locality data stating that Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) are more prevalent in my local authority than in other parts of the Scotland and the UK. The long term aims of the policies are clear with both seeking to achieve both excellence and equity for all children and young people, but neither have been disseminated to council employees effectively and few know of their existence. Although staff are familiar with Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE), few are aware of how the data is directly linked to local families thus impacting directly on the experiences our children and young people have.
As stated earlier, it is the aim of Scottish education to give every child equal opportunity to succeed. It can also be said that having a good start in life is essential to success in later life. Having examined and critically engaged in global, national and local policy, whilst also conveying an understanding of the implications or strategic leadership, I will now seek to outline my proposed Strategic Change Issue and justify this. Having carried out a whole school audit based on Education Scotland’s Applying Nurture as a Whole School Approach (2016) during session 17/18 it became clear that staff’s understanding of how best to support children and young people with social, emotional and behavioural needs was inconsistent across the whole school. Data showed that staff did not understand the ‘six key principles of nurture’ as detailed in Education Scotland’s Applying Nurture as a Whole School Approach (2016) and there was a lack of understanding that all staff have a part to play in establishing and sustaining positive relationships with children to then support them to achieve their full potential. The audit highlighted the need to develop the staff’s knowledge of different strategies and approaches which can be used to best support children with social, emotional and behavioural needs. My identified Strategic Change Issue therefore is to address: Inconsistencies of staff knowledge and understanding on how to best support children with social, emotional and behavioural needs in order to achieve best outcomes for learners. It is important that as educators we recognise the importance of positive interactions with children and young people and are equipped with the skills, knowledge and understanding on how to provide appropriate support so that every child and young person can flourish, giving them the best chances for success, regardless of their background. It is hoped that through identification of this Strategic Change Issue the school community can work together in order to address this issue.