Leading any organisation is challenging, but being appointed the new depute head of the Scottish School of Forestry during the COVID-19 pandemic has added another layer of difficulty for Neil Cleland, as James Hendrie reports.
THE Scottish School of Forestry is part of Inverness College, University of the Highlands and Islands, and operates from its own campus at Balloch, near Inverness. It is currently the only provider of undergraduate higher education in forest management and the only provider of both higher and further education in forestry in the UK. The Balloch site comprises classrooms, a forestry yard and building, and its own woodland for practical work experience, as well as a range of student study resources and other facilities.
The SSF allows students to study forestry and arboriculture at further and higher education level, from access level programmes through to HNC/D and then a BSc (Hons) in forest management. Students can study through the school with full-time, part-time and distance learning options. Level-four, -five, and -six courses are more practically focussed. As students progress to higher educational levels, they become more academic. However, there are elements of practical learning running through individual units including survey techniques, mensuration, tree climbing, and plenty of field visits to see the current industry methods in operation.
Neil was appointed depute head of the school in October 2020, taking over from Amanda Bryan. He is well placed to help the school chart a path through new ways of delivering education and training to its students, having been both a student himself and a lecturer.
He attended the SFF as a student studying on the OND in forestry from June 1986 until June 1989, returning in 1993 to complete the HND, and again in 2012, to complete a BSc in sustainable forest management with conservation. As a student, he benefitted first hand from the expert teaching experience in forestry and arboriculture the school offered then and now.
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“We had a very good team of lecturers with wide-ranging skills and industry experience,” he said. “A very practical course made it more enjoyable and certainly prepared us for industry. My compulsory mid-year placement was with the Forestry Commission at Delamere Forest in Cheshire, where I gained experience as a trainee forest officer working in the forest nurseries office, carrying out forest inventory, surveys, and inspections. I was also involved in measuring sample plots for tree felling and tree planting.”
As with many students, his time spent in further education offered lots more than academia.
He said: “We had a fantastic social life and visited many interesting places and met many interesting lecturers, presenters, and landowners. I made a few life-long friendships and we regularly meet up either through work or for social reasons. My fellow SFF students and I have an amazing network of colleagues, contacts and experience that we all can tap into throughout our careers. There is a proud association of being SFF alumni, and across the industry you will find people who have studied here. It’s like being part of one big family.”
Neil’s career in forestry, after leaving SFF, started in August 1989 when he joined Tilhill as a forester. The main work he was involved in was the reinstatement of a large number of opencast mines in the north of England. This gave him experience of dealing with the organisation of contractors to monitor and control the work being undertaken, as well as liaising with landowners and British Coal. This was necessary to ensure the work needed was carried out to the standards and specifications that had been agreed.
During his time with Tilhill, Neil also worked on a number of smaller establishment, maintenance and protection projects in the eastern and central counties in England, with estate and landowners. After leaving Tilhill, he worked for a time as a self-employed contractor back in Scotland and was involved in a number of large native pine woodland planting schemes right across the Highlands. He also worked on smaller-scale chainsaw and fencing operations for a number of land management companies.
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Neil returned to the SFF to work as bank staff in practical forestry skills. This has seen him teach on the certificate in forestry course for over 20 years. In 2011, he moved to full-time lecturing, teaching land-based skills, the certificate in forestry and the HND first-year students. He has also taught the woodland nursery production unit on the HNC/D first-year forestry and arboriculture course, as well as being the placement coordinator for the HND forestry mid-year placement.
It was in 1995, while working at the SFF, that Neil learned of a full-time lecturing position at a new college being set up at Cantraybridge, Croy, Inverness. This became Scotland’s specialist rural skills college for young adults with additional support needs. The role Neil was involved in was teaching the practical forestry element of rural skills, working with local estates and landowners to carry out practical activities such as fencing, tree planting, timber clearing and hand weeding, as well as helping in the formation of this new teaching facility.
“As staff, we had to set up the facility to accommodate the students and identify what was required to allow us to teach to a range of students with very different physical and mental abilities,” he explained. “At the same time, we set up the educational materials from the Scottish Qualification Authority (SQA) and some of what I had taught at the SFF, to ensure the students would be given the opportunity to achieve accredited certificates for their endeavours. It was a challenging but very enjoyable period of my life, where I learned more about individuals’ strengths and how to overcome physical and mental obstacles with determination, good grace and occasional confrontation to achieve an end goal. There are plenty of ways to achieve your goal if you are determined enough.”
It is clear from discussing his time at Cantraybridge that it had quite an impact on him. After he left in May 2003, his career took a completely different path. He attended Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh and trained to become a British sign language and English interpreter. After gaining the qualification, Neil worked all over Scotland in this field.
“There was a lack of interpreters at that time,” he said. “For me, it was an opportunity to try something completely different as I was never any good at languages at school and I found a language I enjoyed and could use my skills to ensure inclusion across all areas of personal and professional life.”
While Neil enjoyed this role, it was a decision to return to the Highlands that saw him pick up his forestry career again, resuming lecturing at the SFF in 2005 on a part-time basis, before then becoming a full-time lecturer in 2011, a role that he has carried out until his recent appointment as depute head of the school.
On his appointment, Neil said his priority was to ensure students got the best possible experience during the COVID-19 pandemic, through a mixture of face-to-face teaching and remote learning. Overall, he aimed to maintain the school’s strong reputation in the forestry sector, providing students with the skills they need to be successful.
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“We have had to have a complete new approach to our teaching, identifying those programmes and units that require practical face-to-face teaching and the risks and organisational issues that come with bringing people from all over the UK together,” he explained. “Staff who have traditionally only been involved in face-to-face delivery have had to reconfigure their approach to lecturing: altering materials, videoing assessment sites with commentary describing what is being shown, altering assessments within awarding body guidelines, and upskilling themselves for online delivery.
“Our priority has been getting students onto campus to deliver practical elements of their course, which are difficult to teach remotely. These include things like tractor operations, all-terrain vehicles, care of young trees, tree planting and tree identification. For higher education, forest mensuration, practical forest science (looking at soil pits and plant species identification). Some things like site visits have not been possible yet because of COVID-19, but we have tried to work around this with lecturers going out on sites to record visits and share their experience with the students. We have encouraged students to do the same.
“The practical elements of the further education programme have been timetabled to follow strict college guidelines. This has included restrictions as to the amount of people allowed on to site and the need to take into account social distance criteria and additional safety precautions, such as personal protective equipment and materials for sanitising equipment (machinery included) and materials prior to and post use. There have been challenges, but everyone – staff, students, and our industry partners – is working together to ensure we can continue running our full range of programmes within the parameters laid down by the Scottish Government.”
HND forestry students attending the SFF are expected to complete a mid-year industry placement. These take place between the first and second years of their study and can see students travelling across the UK, as well as on some occasions internationally, to do their placements in a wide variety of situations. Just before Christmas each year, students have the opportunity to meet up with potential mid-year employers to allow them to decide where they might go for these placements.
With the restrictions in place because of COVID-19, trying to arrange this has been challenging, but Neil and his team have been determined to find ways to make sure this important element of the various courses is continued. He has found the industry very supportive and was able to organise and run an ‘industry meets the students’ seminar in late November last year. This allowed organisations to deliver a 10-minute presentation about their work and role in the industry, followed by a 15-to-20-minute question-and-answer session.
“Fifteen organisations joined us from across the UK,” said Neil. “We had 29 students attending, armed with an array of questions that industry answered openly and concisely. Each organisation gave a good summary of their business and what a student would expect from their time with them.
“We have had two organisations place their advert already, with promises from the rest that adverts will be forthcoming in the New Year. I have been contacted by other organisations unable to attend the seminar to tell me that adverts are ready.”
With 30 years’ experience in the forestry industry as well as teaching experience in both further and higher education, Neil has the ideal background to bring continued success to the SSF. He sees his practical background in forestry and his knowledge of how the industry works as well as his understanding of how both further and higher education works as giving him critical experience to bring to his new role.
“It is vital that the two areas are taught alongside each other,” he said. “We have the potential to produce practically skilled craftspeople, machine operators and practically experienced forest managers, conservationists and consultants of the future. I am proud of our reputation and of our high employment uptake into the forest industry on the whole, as well as our international relations with colleges, universities, and industries. I have a desire to keep the Scottish School of Forestry at the forefront of that industry and education.”
Perhaps not surprisingly, Neil’s short-term goal for the SSF is to successfully guide it through the COVID-19 pandemic. He wants to make the student experience as good as it can be and to ensure that the courses offered at the school are appropriate to both student and industry needs. In the longer term, he feels growth is important for the school.
“I will be actively encouraging the continuation of links with innovation in industry at all levels, developing courses that will prepare the foresters and practical workers of the future,” he said. “We are a small facility and yet we have a fantastic network of colleges and facilities under the University of the Highlands and Islands banner that will allow us to develop further courses with integration in mind, as well as working with the research organisations at a graduate level to enhance our degree provision further.
“We have worked alongside industry with our Forest Advisory Council to ensure our courses match the requirements of the sector and I will definitely be championing this as it is crucial for our direction and future identification of course requirements.”
Neil’s appointment has come a time of unprecedented challenge for the SSF, but it is clear from talking to him that he has a vision of how to deal with the new teaching methods needed in COVID-19 times, as well as a longer-term view of the direction the school should be heading in.
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