Michael Alexander speaks to Derek Allan about the challenges he’s faced during his 39-year education career in Fife. Derek retired on June 30 after 13 years as rector of Kirkcaldy High School.
If there’s one message that Derek Allan wants pupils to take away as he retires after 13 years as Kirkcaldy High School rector and after 39 years in education, it’s that every young person is “worth their place in the world”.
Sometimes, he admits, it can take years for the impact of education to be realised – like “lighting a fuse”, he says.
But judging by the many positive messages sent to Mr Allan ahead of his retiral on June 30, it’s a legacy he can be proud of.
Amongst those paying respect was Fife musician Darren Forbes who brought his band Shambolics to Kirkcaldy High School to raise money for Kirkcaldy Foodbank.
Having been repeatedly excluded from Kirkcaldy High School for being a “wee pain in the backside”, the now 27-year-old praised the “gentleman” head teacher who, years later, has helped him realise the error of his ways.
Culture of resilience
More so, however, Mr Allan is proud to have helped build a culture of resilience for young people that gives them the skills to take on challenges and “bounce back” when things go wrong.
“When kids are that age and you’ve not got the life experience – sometimes setbacks can be really devastating,” says Mr Allan.
“We keep trying to work kids in a way that helps them understand that life is full of setbacks and it’s not failing that matters, it’s getting back up.
“The other thing that I left the kids with at one of the last assemblies we did was I wanted them to know they are worth their place in this world.
“Because an awful lot of kids who are brought up in less than ideal circumstances feel they don’t deserve better, or they feel they are not good enough because they are too fat or not good looking enough, or not as good at football as their pal, or not clever enough.
“We really give children the notion that they have rights: the right to be heard, the right to want the very best for themselves.
“But if they’ve got rights it means everybody has. I think that’s important as well.”
Why did Derek choose teaching?
Brought up in the mining town of Newtongrange, Midlothian, Mr Allan never envisaged becoming a teacher.
As a young lad, he wanted to be a bus driver.
His mum was keen that he wouldn’t follow his dad down the pit.
Encouraged to read by his parents, he developed an interest in maps and atlases and knew all the flags and the world’s capitals when quite young.
However, after two years working in the Royal Bank of Scotland – a job which he found to be “a wee bit too dull” – he went to Edinburgh University to study geography.
After embarking on a teacher training programme, he realised teaching was the career for him.
Mr Allan probably would have stayed in Midlothian if he’d had the chance.
But with few jobs available, he moved to Fife “fairly randomly” in 1983 to take up his first post as a geography teacher at Glenrothes High School.
He worked in Fife for the rest of his career.
Inspired by the “connected family feel” he experienced on training placement at Galashiels Academy, he brought a “personal approach” to the heart of his interactions with pupils, their families and colleagues.
Luckily, at Glenrothes High, a similar friendly, community culture was encouraged and he thrived.
Career progression
Mr Allan worked his way up in Glenrothes and became a guidance teacher.
By this stage, he’d developed a philosophy that “kids should never feel something is being imposed on them”.
This contrasted with his early training when the message had been ‘never smile and show them who’s in charge’.
However, he never found that to be the right approach.
“I would try and see it through a young person’s eyes if you like,” he says.
“Especially as a guidance teacher, to be their agent. To help them – to extend the system, to reach out to them rather than expect them to be ‘pulled in’ if you know what I mean.”
Mr Allan eventually became depute head at Glenrothes. He stayed at the school for 26 years.
When he left Glenrothes in 2009, however, to become rector at Kirkcaldy High School, the challenges he faced were far greater.
Challenges at Kirkcaldy High School
“I admit when I moved to Kirkcaldy I was a bit intimidated,” he says.
“It was a bigger school, a busier school. I think I was the fourth head in four years.
“The school had a big tradition as well going way back to 1582 or whatever.
“There had been repeated inspections saying things were not going well, and inspectors were due back.
“But we did well. I’m not claiming I did it myself, because it’s very much a team game learning, and a school is a community thing.
“But I did my bit to make everyone feel we could work together and overcome the challenges we faced collectively.”
Teachers must be ‘authentic’
When it comes to teacher recruitment, Derek says he’s always “been able to spot the folk with the big hearts”.
He’s always “recruited on the basis of attitude rather than ability or skill or experience”.
For him, teachers having the “right mentality” and being “prepared to give a bit of themselves to the school” are vital.
Experience and skill will come over time, he says.
But above all, teachers should be “authentic”, he says. They should be themselves.
“The minute kids think you are just playing at it, they ignore you,” he says.
“If kids suss that you genuinely have a fondness for them or you genuinely want to do your best for them, then they’ll sign up for it.”
High profile awards
Kirkcaldy High School was awarded UNICEF “Gold” Rights Respecting status in 2020.
It also became only the second state school in Scotland to be awarded the LGBT Gold Charter by LGBT Youth Scotland in 2020.
Other successes under Mr Allan’s leadership include winning best school twice in the Kingdom FM Local Hero Awards.
Perhaps one of the most ground breaking accolades, however, came in 2014 when Kirkcaldy High won the COSLA (Convention of Scottish Local Authorities) Excellence Award for its work with NHS Fife in relation to teenage sexual health and pregnancy prevention.
During a three-month pilot scheme, staff gave out 373 condoms to girls and 252 to boys in a controversial bid to cut teenage pregnancies.
At the time the area had Scotland’s highest rate of teenage pregnancy, with 4.8% of girls under 18 becoming pregnant.
The Family Education Trust condemned the scheme at the time, claiming it was “grossly irresponsible” to give out condoms to pupils, many of whom were under age.
But Mr Allan said the Fife Council-backed scheme worked.
Over the course of several years, the local teenage pregnancy rate went from being amongst the worst in Western Europe in 2010/11, to being halved.
“It was remarkable how well that went,” he says, “partly because we enlisted a peer educator group – a bunch of kids who were involved in teaching the younger ones.
“We got fourth and fifth years to help with the sex education lessons for the younger ones.
“More likely we called it relationships education. It had a significant effect.”
Challenges and opportunities
Mr Allan is proud of the “nurturing atmosphere” developed at Kirkcaldy High School.
There have been challenges, of course, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic.
It was “basically a rolling fiasco between November and March”, he says, with around 25% of staff off with Covid-19 throughout those months.
There’s also been a significant rise in Covid-related child protection, neglect and welfare concerns that’s putting an ongoing strain on pastoral systems within schools, he says.
Overall, however, what he’s been most impressed with is young peoples’ resilience and how they’ve “bounced back” and got “stuck in”.
Mr Allan, who’s previously spoken about child poverty being the “number one barrier” to raising attainment in schools, said the pandemic had also highlighted inequity across Scotland.
While schools handled the fallout “the best they could”, what governments need to do is find ways to make pay and taxation fairer to help reduce poverty.
Mr Allan regards school exam league tables as a “false way of measuring” success.
He’d much rather see a “league table of happiness”.
Of course, gaining qualifications is important because it can give access to different opportunities in later life.
But if that’s built on “shaky foundations through force feeding kids through exam systems”, then that’s “no good”, he says.
“I’m proud of the scores of well-balanced happy kids who’ve done their best, who leave our school,” he says. “For some getting an apprenticeship is a fantastic achievement.
“Exam league tables inadvertently stigmatise those that are not going to get five Highers.
“Why don’t we focus on what young people do achieve and what’s right for them?”
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