Vision and Legacy: Fiona Cottam's Educational Leadership Journey

In this episode of the Teach Middle East Podcast, host Leisa Grace sits down with Fiona Cottam, the principal of Hartland International School. They reminisce about the Middle East School Leadership Conference and delve into Fiona's journey into school leadership. The discussion also touches on the resilience and challenges faced along the way, reflecting Fiona's personal experiences and career path in education.

As they look to the future, Leisa Grace and Fiona explore the evolving landscape of education in the digital and post-pandemic era. Offering a mix of leadership insights and personal stories, this episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in understanding the dynamics of educational leadership today.

Teach Middle East Magazine is the premier platform for educators and the entire education sector in the Middle East and beyond. Our vision is to equip educators with the materials and tools they need, to function optimally in and out of the classroom. We provide a space for educators to connect and find inspiration, resources, and forums to enhance their teaching techniques, methodologies, and personal development. We connect education suppliers and service providers to the people who make the buying decisions in schools.

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Hosted by Leisa Grace Wilson

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:26

You are listening to the Teach Middle East podcast connecting, developing and empowering educators.

Speaker 2: 0:37

Hi everyone. This is Lisa Grace, and welcome back to the Teach Middle East podcast. Today I'm speaking with none other than my gut says the one, the only. But I'm not going to do that, I'm just kidding. So don't do that, Lisa. Do not do that. It's Miss Fiona Cottam. She is the principal of Heartland International School, Dubai, and it's my pleasure to have her One of the most longstanding principals in this country, in this region, in the private school sector, if I should put it that way and it is my pleasure to have her here. She was at the Middle East School Leadership Conference last week, so it's going to be a continuation of that conversation. Welcome, Fiona.

Speaker 3: 1:23

Thank you so much and thank you for the advice. Delighted to be here and begin by saying what a fantastic conference it was last week. I think there was something there for everybody to learn from, regardless of your position in the school. So well done to you and to your team. Yeah, I'm sure you're still exhausted, but it was really good Really good, thank you, I am.

Speaker 2: 1:41

I am less exhausted. All I need is like a good day of rest and some reality tv to completely get my mind off work, and then I am good and and I had that on Friday and a bit on Saturday had to take my kids out on Saturday, but it was, it was needed, and now I think I'm back to normal. Take me to young Fiona. Where did you grow up? Where did it start?

Speaker 3: 2:12

I grew up in Southern Ireland in a small town called Arklow, which is in County Wicklow, which is right on the east coast of the country, about 45 miles south of Dublin. Wicklow is the garden of Ireland. It's beautiful If you've never been plan a trip and it's it's full of, you know, mountains and rivers and valleys and lakes and beautiful coastline, beautiful beaches and beautiful gardens, and that was where I grew up. I was lucky that I went to a really fantastic school which had a very, very strong focus. It was a conference school but a very strong focus on music and music was my life really.

Speaker 3: 2:54

My degree is classical music and English literature, but music first and foremost was everything that I did, from singing to piano to participating in competitions, not not just in Ireland but internationally, being part of a choir that travelled extensively. I really had opportunities that are second to none really, growing up. I'm the eldest of three. I have two younger sisters and they're both very musical as well and my parents were both very musical, so it wasn't something that we stole, it was something we were very involved in and we were surrounded by music growing up and really I guess that's my greatest memory of my childhood is music Brilliant.

Speaker 2: 3:38

Do you know how to do that beautiful Irish dance that I often see?

Speaker 3: 3:44

No, do you know, I have to confess actually when I was to confess, actually when I was a teenager. One of the fads at the time was ballroom dancing and I did ballroom dancing. I was never involved in Irish dancing. I have a lot of staff who can, who are fantastic Irish dancers, but no, I was more involved in the silver shoes and did lots of ballroom dancing as a teenager.

Speaker 2: 4:05

Ah, that's interesting. I always, often see it and wonder, you know, if I could master it. I mean, not the best, the best dancer in the world, but hey-ho, music. When you, when you think about your time doing music, how does that prepare you for your current role? So, having gone across the world doing music, having been, you know classical, you did your degrees in classical music how did that prepare you for your current role?

Speaker 3: 4:37

No, I don't think anybody's ever asked me that before. I'm not sure I've probably thought about it deeply, but there are a lot of. There's a lot of synergy in some ways. First of all, I suppose as a pianist and somebody who was competing all the time from a young age right through even university, where I was at the Royal College of Music still competing in competitions I suppose there's a singularity to it where you have to sit down and practise, leading up to big competitions. At the time you could be looking at anything between six and eight hours practice a day. So I suppose there's a focus, there's a drive, there's a determination, there's a ritual and a sort of a methodical approach to everything that you're doing practice, practice, practice and you get better those. You know hours and hours of practice.

Speaker 3: 5:29

I suppose from the point of view of being involved in ensembles and particularly in choral work I was a founding member of the Irish Youth Choir and different things like that, where we travelled quite extensively Then it's been part of something that's bigger than you. It's the harmonisation of working with other people. It's being part of something that's bigger than you. It's the harmonization of working with other people. It's being part of a team. It's the ability to listen to other people, to pick up on their sounds, so that you're more integrated in terms of not just sticking out and standing out as a sole voice, but actually being part of something greater. So I suppose in some ways, yeah, there's synergies with everything in life. Isn't there? You can take from anything. I'm sure those experiences in some way played a part, but I've never really given it much thought before.

Speaker 2: 6:14

Thank you for that. No, no, you're welcome. When you said music, the first thing that came to my mind is, as a principal, that ability to listen to subtle notes and to pay attention to detail. That training from music. I could see how that would translate over into your role as a school leader. I'm weird like that, so, do pardon me, I do find those little lines. So where did your career in education start?

Speaker 3: 6:50

Began in the UK. Actually, I was part of that large cohort and generation of people in the late 80s in Ireland who had graduated from university and there weren't enough jobs. It was as simple as that, um, you know to, to find a teaching job at the time was next to impossible because the the number of people who went to university far exceeded the size of the country and the number of people, the number of jobs that existed. I think it was also a time in Ireland, it's fair to say, that the church still had responsibility for a large number of schools and, as a result, it's fair to say you probably had to wait for somebody to die before a vacancy became available. Because you know, in certainly my school which was run by nuns, or in the boys school up the road which was run by the Christian Brothers, there was still very much a greater number of the religious order who were running schools and they tended to be jobs for life obviously. So I still had teachers teaching me well into their 80s and it wasn't that you hit retirement age at 60 or 65 and you walked out the door. This was a job for life with them.

Speaker 3: 7:59

So getting a teaching job in Ireland was, was next to impossible, and large numbers of my class and my cohorts we all found ourselves in the UK. Many of them did find their way back to Ireland once. They had some experience under their belt and were then in a position to apply for jobs. For me, I stayed in the UK, taught for three years and then actually left teaching and joined the police. So I was in the police for four and a half years and then went back to teaching um, because it probably was where my heart had always been. Um, I just needed to scratch that itch of something that I'd always wanted to do in my life and then spend the rest of my career until 2009 in the UK when I came here.

Speaker 2: 8:41

So the time you spent in the police, what's that? Like the time?

Speaker 3: 8:46

you spent in the police. What was that like? Again, it was the early 90s. It was a difficult time in policing. In terms of the UK.

Speaker 3: 8:55

I'm not sure at that time if there were complete equal opportunities, even though on paper there were. I joined the police under a scheme called the Accelerated Promotion Scheme for Graduates, so there were about 28 of us in the country on my cohort and the idea was that we were on an accelerated promotion scheme. Quite literally, we would do our two years of foundation and then we sat our sergeant's exam and moved on. So when I left and passed my sergeant's exam, that probably should have been the next step, but I decided by that time to return to teaching. But it gave me a really good insight into human nature. It gave me a good insight into life.

Speaker 3: 9:38

It opened different types of opportunities whereby I got to experience things that other people can maybe only dream of in terms of secondments to CID and to drugs enforcement units and to some strategic planning. I was part of a team of three responsible for selling 10 and a half million pounds worth of police houses at the time. So I got to do different things that you might not necessarily associate with the police and at the same time still went through that physical training and examination training that at the time all police officers did. So a different world, a different time and a different experience that I don't regret and certainly gave me different insights, as I said, into human nature and into people. Yeah, which force were you?

Speaker 2: 10:26

a part of Kent County Constabulary oh, down there in Kent. And so you made your way back to teaching what subject and where.

Speaker 3: 10:37

So when I returned to teaching, I returned to a place called the Howard School, which is in Kent in the Medway towns. I went in as head of music and I stayed there for nine years. It wasn't always the easiest school, but what it certainly taught me was about collaboration with colleagues and how people you know if they work together with Synergy, they can be really successful in working with young people. Kent was an unusual authority because it still had the 11 plus system, so it was a grammar school county, which meant that those who didn't pass the 11 plus found themselves in more of a high school situation. And it's really interesting because I know that recently I think, you spoke and interviewed Simon O'Connor and that's where Simon and I first met, because he worked at the same school.

Speaker 2: 11:28

So it's funny how, even internationally then, we're all interconnected in different ways and how people sort of have those those connections that reach out beyond what might have been 25, 30 years ago yeah, I remember saying to, because Simon was trying to convince me on that episode that he was in a rough school and I was like you are in Kent, mate, but he said it was rough.

Speaker 3: 11:51

It was the same school I was in and Simon's father actually at the time was one of our governors, which is how that whole relationship began, actually, and how he came to work at the school as well. He had just graduated with a history degree. It was a very, very difficult and challenging school. He had just graduated with a history degree. It was a very, very difficult and challenging school, but some of my best memories to this day come from that school in terms of what I learned, how I grew, how I definitely listened to students more than I perhaps might have done in different types of contexts, because a lot of those young people had really really challenging lives. They had been.

Speaker 3: 12:30

A lot of families had been moved from sort of council estates in London. When they were trying to relocate people, they put them down into different parts of Kent where they built large housing estates and as a result of that, you ended up with huge socio-economic challenges where people were slightly displaced and didn't necessarily have the employment to match the fact that they'd been put into housing developments in the area. So yeah, it was a very, very challenging and tough school.

Speaker 2: 12:59

Yeah, a lot of those people were moved from my area, which is when they were gentrifying Tottenham, harbour, inn, islington, and they were just sent, some of them to Kent, some of them to Wales and Swansea. It's just like random places, but yeah.

Speaker 3: 13:19

Part of the problem in London was that they couldn't build the social housing that they needed and they couldn't develop the areas, so they literally made decisions about moving people to other places where they felt they could build large housing estates and hopefully improve quality of life. And I have to say that, you know, while it was a very tough school when when you've got 1750 boys in that type of environment, it was a tough environment, but actually some of the boys from there are still the greatest young men that I know today. The difference is they're now in their 40s, you know, but some great, great and successful people who came out of all of those schools and have proven to be great success is one of whom actually teaches for me here. So, yeah, so great connections and great follows through in life amazing.

Speaker 2: 14:10

So Dubai, when did you come out here and what led you to Dubai?

Speaker 3: 14:17

we first came to Dubai in 1998 at the end of our honeymoon, we'd we'd sort of gone that way around the world, um, and we had three days in Dubai after the Maldives and we stayed in what's now the Sheraton Hotel, which is down on JBR, which is sort of shaped like a sort of a pyramid with edges, and there was nothing else there. I think the Ritz Carlton was there and perhaps the Hilton, and then the next thing that you hit was the Burge being built and the top wasn't on it yet, um, and the Hard Rock Cafe was definitely the old Hard Rock Cafe, was definitely there on the Shakespeare Road. Other than that there was nothing. I mean just nothing. It's hard to describe today, um, and we come on honeymoon and then the following year, 1999, my sister-in-law actually took a job at English College where she spent the next 20 years.

Speaker 3: 15:11

So Maria came to work at English College and then my husband and I, john, we found ourselves coming out at least once a year to visit Maria, and every year we get on the plane and we go home. We think, what are we doing going back home? You know, gosh, this is this place already. It had a buzz to it, it had a forward thinking environment. It was good weather. It was much, much smaller then. It felt more like a small expat type community and we thought we could, we could really do this in Kent and after three years of that, a job came up in Dubai.

Speaker 3: 15:53

Well, an opportunity came up with GEMS really and I went for a meeting with some of the senior people in GEMS in a hotel on the M25, actually near Reading and it was whether or not I might fit into their organisation. And it was whether or not I might fit into their organisation. And the next thing I knew I found myself out here on interview in 2008, on a three-day type interview, and at the end of that was offered a job to start in 2009 and ended up coming out to be the principal at Chimera College. Originally, I was actually appointed to be the founding principal at James Wellington Silicon Oasis and there was an economic downturn at that time in 2008, 9. And the school was stalled in terms of its building. So instead I ended up at JC for the next four years and then appointed was part of the appointment team to appoint Simon to replace me there.

Speaker 2: 16:45

I nearly said that I was like, when were you there? Oh wow, how crazy is that. Like you knew him from Kent, you were in the same school then JC, then he took up that is. That is so crazy. I would not have guessed that that's a story you wouldn't guess. No, definitely not. Yeah, so then from JC you went to Heartland no, from JC actually.

Speaker 3: 17:11

I went into GEMS head office where I was originally director of schools, so I originally took over the line management. At the time there were 25 international curriculum schools they were IB, american and British curriculum obviously and then from there got promoted again to senior vice president of new schools, so working a lot with particularly our school in Switzerland at the time, just in terms of where it was at and its growth and its change in leadership. So I did a lot of work with that and then from there came to Heartland in 2016.

Speaker 2: 17:51

Yeah, I remember when you, when you went to Heartland, but I wasn't quite sure where you had come from at that time. So you've been at Heartland from 2016 to 2024. And the reason I mentioned that at the top of the podcast is because I started to look around, because I know the schools very, very well and I've watched over the years the changes in the leadership et cetera. But you've remained very, very steady. One of the very few head teachers in Dubai apart from people like Mike who kind of came up from head of sixth form and then went to head teacher. One of the very few people who stayed in post. How? What do you credit for your longevity in that particular post?

Speaker 3: 18:39

Yes, Again, it's another interesting question. I think it's a mixture. I think, first of all, when I came here in 2016, the school had been through a very difficult first year and it needed some stability. Staff retention, student retention, was a real issue at the end of that first year of operating New school on the landscape Not that mistakes have been made, but maybe over-promised and under-delivered in some areas, and that caused an awful lot of anxiety within the school community. So I think when I came, first and foremost, it was to try and steady the ship, just to try and steady things, to get it focused in the right direction. That probably took 18 months, without any shadow of a doubt, before I really felt that we were having any impact in terms of where we got to. And then, of course, year three, we had our first inspection and at the time I believe that we were the first school to get good in a first inspection. That is, a standalone school, as opposed to belonging to a larger group or having a mothership, as I describe it. So we knew we were creating something that was powerful. We knew that we were creating and I don't mean powerful as in the ruling sense, I mean as in for children, something that was really important and that was making a difference. We knew that we were creating a community where families were very much fundamental to who we were and that sense of belonging, and we also knew from our staff recruitment and our retention that we were also creating something that was special in terms of people who wanted to work here, because we were creating a good and a strong environment.

Speaker 3: 20:22

We're not finished. I think that's what's kept me here. Certainly, all the time that we've grown, we've faced new challenges, because it's like opening a new school every year you add another 300 children and you add another 40 teachers and suddenly you're starting again. It's not like an established school where you're just replacing those that might choose to leave for progression reasons or whatever they might be. So I think there's a constant job to do. I think there is still more in us to grow. It's an unfinished job.

Speaker 3: 20:55

If I felt that I was coming into school every day with that sense of complacency, it would definitely be the time to move on. So I think that longevity why do people stay where they are? I think they stay where they are one because they're happy in themselves, and that's really important. I'm happy coming into work. I think you've got to be. I think, too, it's because people see that there's an extra horizon, there's a new project, there's a new venture, there's something else to make better or to improve or to do that's different, something else to make better or to improve or to do that's different. And thirdly, well, full circle. You know, I enjoy what I do. I enjoy the people I work for. I'm happy with the people that I work with. I'm delighted with the people that I've employed.

Speaker 3: 21:39

We've got great children in the school. We've got great families in the school. Why not stay? Why not still be part of the story as it develops and grow, rather than just always moving from job to job to job? And I think if you ask anybody who stays in the school for a long time I think today that's the same type of answer you will get from the majority of people. It's because they see a next job to still do there, an unfinished product, always striving for school improvement, always trying to make things better and to move things forward.

Speaker 3: 22:13

And it's a new and a growing landscape in Dubai. So schools are changing all of the time and we don't stand still. It's not like being in a school. Perhaps and I'm not saying all schools are like this, but perhaps in Ireland Ireland, for example, that's been around for 50, 60, 70, 100, 200 years and is very established and doesn't change very much. Here, change and the culture of change is something that we have to adapt to all the time, so it makes our jobs interesting and exciting. So I guess that's why I stay really yeah, no, that's a great answer.

Speaker 2: 22:46

What's your big goal that you're working on for this academic year in the school? Just one.

Speaker 3: 22:54

Quality of teaching and learning to make it truly outstanding right across the school. I think when you, when you do have growth the way we do and you're trying to, you're bringing in, you know, 300 new children every year on top of of you know, it's not like it's just 300 into year seven or 300 down the bottom of the school, but it's just that constant growth and change. I think that flux takes time to to really truly embed itself and when you're bringing in, like we did this year, 42 new teachers, it takes time to embed the culture, the understanding of standards, the Heartland way, how it is that we do things. Now, that takes time. So that's the constant, biggest challenge all the time is standards to both promote, maintain and continually improve.

Speaker 2: 23:48

Yeah, I can see that, because if you've got 40 odd new staff members in one year, that's easily two years work to embed and to get everybody up to speed. So, in terms of because I can't not speak to the fact that I've personally spoken to parents who have kids at Heartland and they speak so highly of the way you particularly treated them during a time when they needed a lot of help how do you maintain because the school is growing? How do you maintain because the school is growing? How do you maintain heart in such a big school?

Speaker 3: 24:31

You make sure that the people that you employ at least have the same DNA as you do, or that we share values. We're not all the same. We're all very different. If we're all the same, life will be so boring. We need people who can push and pull and push against things and bring in new ideas and innovate and create, and people who are at the start of their journeys are indeed people who are really experienced but have a lot to offer.

Speaker 3: 24:55

But what underpins us all, I think, is a common humanity. Perhaps I think that comes from the owners of the school. I think that's very much their philosophy. That was very much the way that they built the school fundamentally, I think, sharing a belief in the possibilities for children. So, yeah, it's just. I think it's getting the right people on the bus. It's getting the right people to travel and to take the journey with you. I think that's what keeps you grounded and that's what keeps that line that follows and filters through everything that we do, the same in terms of the people that we hire. That keeps us strong, I think.

Speaker 2: 25:41

How do you handle when, maybe by chance, a wrong person gets on that bus?

Speaker 3: 25:48

You have conversations. You have honest and open conversations. You have frank conversations because if you feel they're not right for you, the chances are they feel you're not right for them either because they don't quite fit in. It usually works both ways. Um, rarely do you have somebody who comes in and says this is not the school for me. I don't want to work here if you're not feeling the same about them and maybe you're not quite right. So, whilst they're difficult conversations because nobody likes to have those difficult conversations with people, because we do care about each other um, sometimes they just have to be. Had that frank discussion of we're not the right fit for each other.

Speaker 3: 26:28

You may find your fit somewhere else and be truly successful and I hope that you are, but it isn't quite right here, and usually 99 times out of 100, if that happens I haven't done it 99 times, but I'm using that as just a statistical probability usually they will feel the same way.

Speaker 3: 26:46

So it's not always a totally difficult conversation to have, and rarely is that a conversation that comes out of the blue that there perhaps have been some blips along the way where there have been different conversations or different thinking or different feedback, whether it's through lesson observations or whether it's through general conversation about how happy they feel or how they're managing the workload or how they're managing the transition.

Speaker 3: 27:11

Sometimes people come to Dubai and after a year they say this is just not the place for me. Um, because it isn't everybody's ideal place and some people miss home dreadfully and they miss family dreadfully and we have to be able to support them to reintegrate, to move home if that's the right thing for them, because an unhappy teacher results in unhappy classes, unhappy children, unhappy parents, unhappy everything, um. So sometimes it doesn't work out for a variety of different reasons. It's not always about competence. It sometimes is just about how a person feels about themselves and their place and where they are, and just having those open and honest conversations usually leads to a synergy in terms of an agreed pathway forward yeah, you're right.

Speaker 2: 27:57

I really, I really like the fact that you say it doesn't come out of the blue, because if the conversations are happening over time, by the time you get to that ultimate conversation of like we don't, we don't fit each other's um mold, then it's not a complete shock. What's wrong is if the school ignores and and then suddenly everything is oh, you're not, you're no longer needed because you don't fit with our ethos, etc. Etc. So I love that sometimes it's.

Speaker 3: 28:33

It's the fact that our, our aspirations and our way of working doesn't work for them as well, by the way. So it's not a one-sided affair, um you, sometimes the school perhaps makes mistakes and doesn't quite get it right for a member of staff, and that gives us cause to reflect and that's important, that we don't think that it's us that's perfect and the member of staff isn't perfect. I think it's really important that we learn from any of those conversations so that we can reflect and we can do things better, because sometimes we let people down without even realizing we're letting them down. But if we listen and we have those honest conversations, we have to be able to take that honest feedback as well yeah, brilliant.

Speaker 2: 29:18

Okay, too much heavy stuff. Okay, fiona golf, how good are you?

Speaker 3: 29:25

you, yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm. I'm not fantastic, I can hold my own, but what's really important to me is I I've got the bug and I absolutely love us. You know, it's fresh air, it's. It's a bit more difficult in Dubai, but you have to use a buggy in most of the golf courses and that's because of how they're designed. But even with a buggy, I can walk about seven and a half kilometers around, simply because the ball can go that way or that way, or that way or that way. So you have to follow the ball, so it adds to your steps. So it adds to your steps, um, but I love it.

Speaker 3: 30:08

I get to meet the most extraordinary and different people every single time I play, which is just fascinating, um, people from all walks of life who've done the most amazing things. You then end up coming in to give talks for the kids here from from a careers perspective. So I create my list of careers talks from the golf course. But yeah, if I can, it's twice a week and it's just a great way to spend four and a half hours for me. I absolutely love it.

Speaker 2: 30:35

Brilliant, apart from golfing. What else do you do to you know, relax.

Speaker 3: 30:42

I read vociferously when I get the chance, particularly during holiday periods. Sometimes during term time, I don't get to read as much as I'd like to, but I do listen to podcasts and I do listen to audio books as well, so that 15 minute drive in the morning into work I never waste it. I'm usually listening to a book of some sort, so I love reading. I love jigsaws Sounds like an odd thing. I've actually got one here behind my desk that I just lent to somebody that's just come back. I tend not to like normal jigsaws. I like those whizzjig ones where you don't know what the puzzle is and you don't know what the outcome is going to look like.

Speaker 3: 31:21

I find them really good fun summer's going to look like. I find them really good. Fun, um. I like spending time with friends and with family. We love traveling. We, we travel, travel, travel every opportunity we can get. So I spend a lot of time planning my next holidays, the whole time um trying to tick off places on my bucket list of where I need to go on holiday at. At the moment, I'm deep into planning this summer holidays sort of four weeks, and that's really exciting places that I want to visit. Where are we going this summer? We're going to Brazil, argentina and Peru. Ooh.

Speaker 2: 32:02

Peru. Peru has had a little bit of some shakiness happening, are you aware.

Speaker 3: 32:11

Yeah, but you know, many places in the world have had lots of shaky moments, but for us, I think at the moment we're very seasoned travellers, we play it safe. We're not going to go to anywhere that we shouldn't go to Machu Picchu, I think, will be safe in terms of what we've planned and what we're doing. We're not going to go into the wilds. We have got Chile on our list, but we just haven't got enough time to get Chile in, so I think that has to be a separate trip all by itself. But really excited about Argentina and, yeah, just really excited about Argentina and yeah, just really excited about sort of visiting Rio and and really taking in different places as well in Brazil. So, yeah, looking forward to it?

Speaker 2: 32:54

Now that sounds amazing. Where have you been to? That is completely unforgettable in your mind.

Speaker 3: 32:59

I don't know, uh, japan, um, just because it was so extraordinarily different. Um, we've been twice. China I've been three times to china and again, depending on where you go in china, that was that was really memorable in terms of, again, you being very different and looking different to everybody around you. Um, it's very rare that you know a white westerner walks into somewhere where they're the only person who looks like them, surrounded by thousands of people around them. So that sense in China was quite extraordinary of being somewhere just so remarkably different to anywhere else that we've ever been.

Speaker 3: 33:45

I think New Zealand. New Zealand was definitely one of my highlights. Travelling through New Zealand, sort of bottom to top, that was just fabulous. We've done Australia a couple of times and that was extraordinary, again, getting the opportunity to see different parts of the country. I would say that Uluru is still in my top three places of all places I've been in the world. Definitely a sense of something completely different by going there in Australia. That was extraordinary. And maybe South Africa, I guess South Africa, our trip there, has been again something very, very different. Where did you go? In South Africa, we did the whole sort of coastline, the whole way along the coast and drove the coast, um, only as far as Port Elizabeth, as far as sort of Knysnair Port Elizabeth, um, and I guess one other highlight was we followed the wildebeest migration in Kenya and Tanzania. So again, that was one of my bucket list, um, and that was that was extraordinary. Yeah, that was. That was also phenomenal to do that.

Speaker 2: 34:51

Wow, I've never been to. I've never been to New Zealand or Australia, and they are definitely on my list. They're like my ultimate. I've said to my, my family, I want to do that for my 50th birthday, so I've got a few years yet. Hopefully I can make it there. When it comes on to your family, I know you're out here with your husband Do you have kids out here? Are they back home or do you not have kids?

Speaker 3: 35:25

Yeah, no, we have one son. He's currently at university in scotland, um, and but he grew up here, he went to school here, um, and, you know, got a fantastic education in two outstanding schools, three outstanding schools here, um, he was at jps first of all, where he started off, and then he went to Jumeirah College and then he went to Dubai College for sixth form. So he's been in three extraordinary and exceptional schools and we're incredibly grateful as parents for that. And yeah, he's now at university in Scotland and seems to be happy, although he was at the England-Scotland rugby game this weekend and I don't think he left that too happily because of the results. But, um, other than that, um, he seems to be quite content. And then, um, in Ireland, I, obviously, as I said, I have two sisters and their families, um, so, yeah, strong family connections. Still, my husband is from Bath, just outside Bath in the, and his parents and his sisters still live around there. So, yeah, we've got strong family both in the UK and in Ireland.

Speaker 2: 36:31

Brilliant and in terms of your, I know your ties to Ireland are quite strong and to the UK, but if you were to think of a place where you would retire not that you're about to retire anytime soon- when would that be?

Speaker 3: 36:47

We had such a debate about that just this weekend. Oh, I don't know. I don't know. Sometimes we talk about the fact that you know, having part of the year here, this is somewhere we love. I'd love to have that blend of life that you had part of the year here, maybe part of the year in Ireland or in the UK. We've considered other places in Europe as well, that we're sort of exploring for short trips just to have a look at different places, but I'm not sure. I'm not sure where the final days are meant to be.

Speaker 2: 37:25

my heart says Ireland, but then when you marry an Englishman, that's not always an easy debate to have, because your family is split in different ways, and so we might need to pick somewhere neutral, and as long as it's got half decent weather and good golf courses would be okay yeah, it is one of those debates that, um, when you are because I'm married to somebody who is from another country as well, and when we have these conversations, we normally end up with, oh well, we're not retiring anytime soon, and we get no result, we get no resolution to that one, we're just, we just left it hanging and it will hang there maybe for another decade or so.

Speaker 3: 38:04

I'm really saying, well, although we are sort of at that retirement point if we chose to, but I'm just not sure where it is that we're meant to be really, and right now here, as it has done for the last sort of 14-15 years, still feels like home. So it's really hard to detract yourself away and even though everybody knows that ultimately they will potentially leave here, trying to think where to is actually a different concept. So I just have to keep traveling and I have to keep trying to find new places and figure out where we might fit in.

Speaker 2: 38:39

Yeah, no, I do agree with you. I think just keep exploring and eventually you'll come upon something maybe that you were not even expecting, and that will be the place we're going to wrap the podcast. But before we wrap, I really wanted to talk a little bit about you know, your kind of hopes for education as someone who's really served and seen a lot and done a lot. Where do you think it's all going, and seen a lot and done a lot.

Speaker 3: 39:08

Where do you think it's all going? I mean, I think it's going to change significantly. I think we're still doing things like we were doing in the 1920s in some ways. You know, we still have children sitting in classrooms. We still have children. I know we change how those classrooms look and how children move around the rooms, but we still have teachers who teach and we still have some students who listen and, even though we'd like to be more engaging and more involved, there are times where things slip back to how they've been for over 100 years, 150 years.

Speaker 3: 39:45

I think technology is the thing that's going to be the shifter. I think technology not just AI, but our understanding of technology and how we use technology is going to shift our thinking. I think COVID shifted our thinking drastically in terms of how things can be done in different ways, how things can be more mixed and blended and virtual. You know people talk about 21st century skills. We've been talking about 21st century skills for 25 years, but I do think that the skills of you know empathy and compassion and listening and communication. They were actually skills that I was taught at school back in the 70s and 80s. Now we've just maybe rephrased them and rebranded them in a different way. So I think a focus on the human, who we are, what it means to be human, that integration of what technology means and how the human can take advantage of technology and use technology and manipulate them that way, it's got to change education. That's from the point of view of character, traits and people. From the point of view of examination boards, um, we've, we've got to be ready for an overhaul in some ways. Um, you know, still, our examination boards in the uk system are so much driven by the universities and I think that the universities are increasingly realising that what they're looking for is a different type of skill and therefore the only way to change that is to change what it is that we do in schools.

Speaker 3: 41:19

The new British government proposal of sort of a baccalaureate type system for post-16. Sort of a baccalaureate type system for post-16. I don't see that as particularly creative or particularly innovative, quite frankly, because some of us, like in Ireland and France and other parts of the world, have been doing that for years. So I don't think that there needs to be an overhaul in some way. I hope it will look different in the future.

Speaker 3: 41:44

Long after I've left education, I hope that it will be more balanced, looking at the individual rather than just looking at results, results, results, and that we will look more to what people have to offer in terms of humanity and making the world a better place. That sounds a little bit idealistic, but I mean a focus on a focus on entrepreneurship, a focus on eco-sustainable systems, a focus on the environment, a focus on you know, discourse and debate and dialogue and social policy driven curriculums, and can move to a different space where we take the ideas of young people along with the expertise or years of experience of of teachers in inverted commas and somehow find a greater synergy between the two that it creates a better system for all young people yeah, fantastic.

Speaker 2: 42:44

Um, you know, while you were talking, all I could think about is this is exactly the direction that I would love education to go, but I just keep wondering what's holding us back?

Speaker 3: 42:56

I think what's holding us back is bureaucracy. I think it's fear, you know. I think it's the fear of the unknown. It is still to do with entrance requirements for universities. I think, particularly in the Western world and the US, we're driven by requirements of what young people have to have to pass a threshold to enter university. And until that changes and until that work with universities becomes different and it needs to be radically different then nothing really is going to change.

Speaker 3: 43:29

We need more focus on the apprenticeship type system, where I can go and work with PwC but I can attend university two days a week. I both have hands-on on-the-ground work and I also have the intellectual development and capacity that a university might give me in terms of the dialogue and the expertise that they need to impart the knowledge piece, as it were, because knowledge is important. Um, knowledge is is fundamentally very important, as is, you know, the flexi, flexi flexicity of the brain, as it were, and the flexibility of how we think. Um, but I think we're driven by bureaucracy. I think we're driven by fear of the unknown. Um, I think we're driven by bureaucracy.

Speaker 3: 44:07

I think we're driven by fear of the unknown. I think we're driven by still an old-fashioned thinking at some points that is driven by old-fashioned institutions who insist that it has to look like this. If it looks like this, that's what we'll get, and they're afraid to shift because they're not sure what to shift to and also money. To be honest, you know, equality in terms of access for everybody in education is a really difficult thing, making sure that and I hope that technology will give that equal access. But there are still parts of the world where there is no technology, so I still don't have equality. No technology, so I still don't have equality. So it's a really difficult one and it's a social challenge and it's absolutely an economic challenge for governments about what is important and what isn't important.

Speaker 2: 44:57

Yeah, you're right. No, you're right. I can't end this podcast without talking about the fact that you are a fantastic writer. I've said it on LinkedIn and I'll continue to say it again you haven't written for us, but you are a brilliant writer, and I think it stems from the fact that you are a ferocious reader. What are you reading currently?

Speaker 3: 45:16

Oh gosh, I'm not reading at the moment. Believe it or not, I'm still halfway through. Stephen Barclay's podcast is all I'm halfway through at the moment, just listening to podcast after podcast. I have bought his book but I haven't actually ventured into it. It sits on the side of the table and for everything I love about Stephen Barclay, there's another half of me that sort of disagrees with some of the things that he says, which actually is the great point about listening, isn't it? So I'm not reading anything at the moment. I did bring a good book with me on holiday, which was actually a Sudoku book. It was as simple as that. I was just on a ski trip and I didn't get to open it for the whole week I was there on the school ski trip. So, no, just listening at the moment, unfortunately just listening.

Speaker 2: 46:00

Well, let it be known publicly that, if ever you want to write, I would absolutely welcome an article from you for the magazine, so that people can actually get to see what I see when I read your writing. I read your tribute to your mum, I read certain other pieces that you've written, and you do have a fantastic way with words, so it's an open invitation, fiona.

Speaker 3: 46:26

Thank you, that's really kind of you. Thank you for that.

Speaker 2: 46:29

Thank you, I appreciate it and thank you so much for being on the podcast with me today. It has been my absolute pleasure.

Speaker 3: 46:36

Good, well, lovely talking to you too and, as I said, well done again on last week on the conference and look forward to catching up again Brilliant, and look forward to catching up again Brilliant.

Speaker 1: 46:46

Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to the Teach Middle East podcast. Visit our website teachmiddleeastcom and follow us on social media. The links are in the show notes.