Well supported teachers means better supported children
Headteachers in the Highlands and Moray are making the most of an innovative support programme – and children are reaping the benefits too.
A headteacher and two principal educational psychologists have shared their experiences of the initiative with the Children and Young People’s Commissioner in a short film. Children have asked Nicola Killean, the Commissioner, to make education a priority issue for her office. The Commissioner’s new report ‘“This is our lives, it matters a lot”: Putting children’s rights at the heart of education’ makes recommendations to improve the education system for all children, including calling for fundamental reform of the support and resourcing for children who have additional support needs.
Under the theme of ‘Culture’, one of the Commissioner’s recommendations is that support and supervision structures should be embedded for all staff within education settings, and that there should be sufficient access to ongoing training.
There is a professional reflective supervision programme in Highland Council, which began as a pilot with 12 headteachers before being more widely rolled out. The scheme has now recently been taken forward by Moray Council. It provides headteachers with six supervision sessions with an educational psychologist to talk about issues they want to raise in complete confidence.
Commissioner Nicola Killean said: “We know from children and young people that more needs to be done in education to help all of them enjoy all their rights, but I also know there are amazing things happening in Scotland. I’m pleased to be sharing this example – it demonstrates that supporting headteachers with a bespoke support and supervision model designed for education professionals can have a positive impact on them, and the children in their school community.
“This is a model that can be replicated across all local authorities. Highland has pioneered this, and Moray recognised the model’s strengths and benefits. Other councils should see this as not only inspirational and innovative, but realistic and feasible.”
Bernadette Cairns is the Principal Educational Psychologist at Highland Council who pioneered this approach with headteachers. She explained: “Most other professions who work with children and young people have some form of professional supervision built into their roles, but teachers and headteachers don’t have access to professional reflective supervision.
“Professional reflective supervision is not counselling, neither is it supervision in the traditional sense, so we are not overseeing somebody’s work or being judgmental.
“Carrying the emotional load, and the management structure that we have with schools, it’s really important that there’s a space for reflecting on the job, reflecting on issues that they might have, strong emotions that they might feel, difficulties that they might have experienced, or just to use as a sounding-board for some of the decision-making that they’re having to do during the school day.”
Anna Meneely, headteacher at Coulhill Primary School, benefited from the supervision. She said: “The sessions are very informal, very much led by me with the educational psychologist that was supporting me. I found that the conversation was just so powerful, and it would resonate with me, and I would be thinking about it throughout the week,”
Craig Fowler, Principal Educational Psychologist at Moray Council, runs the programme for the council. He said: “The early responses that we’ve had from headteachers who’ve signed up for professional reflective supervision in Moray has been really positive.
“I think the impact on children’s rights by having headteachers and senior leaders who are able to grow, and develop within their sessions is going to be that they are happier leaders, leading to happier teams that they manage, leading to collegiate, collaborative work. And when you’ve got happy managers and happy teachers, you’ve got happy children.”
Ms Meneely felt her reflective supervision had an impact across the whole school. She said: “As the wellbeing of everyone is improving, the ethos is improving. We’re just all that wee bit more resilient and able to cope with the needs of the children.”
The Commissioner has a statutory duty to promote good practice, and pledged in the office’s 2024-28 Strategic Plan to share examples of adults working well to fulfil children’s rights so others can learn from it.