Angus MacRury’s Weblog

The baby was born at 10:23am on Monday 26th of December. We had a beautiful baby boy who weighed in at 7lb 5oz. Both mum and baby are doing really well. Now all we have to do is get a name sorted. We are all very happy, especially Euan who still wants to call thebaby Maggie!!!

Monday

I am in class this morning as our NQT is visiting Yester Primary School.

We write a letter to Santa reviewing the highlights of our year and making our wishes for Christmas. After break we look at the concept of time around the world and I wish I had Ollie Bray in school to explain it better than I can. In fact Ollie could you do us a visit or can we go down to DGS for a Geography lesson on time zones? The blog that Ollie writes makes me wish I was studying Geogaphy at DGS.

Party for Primary 1-4. I do the catering. The children feast on juice, crisps, pizza, sausage rolls, veg rolls, satsumas, grapes, and maltesers. Every child receives a present from the school. (or Santa)

Tuesday

In class in tthe morning. We do a great lesson using kidPix stamps to create a Christmas Poster. The results are fantastic. After breaak we watch a DVD that arrived in school about Christmas. The DVD fits well with our RME programme.

Party for Primary 5-7. I do the catering. The children feast on juice, crisps, pizza, sausage rolls, veg rolls, satsumas, grapes, and maltesers. Every child receives a present from the school. (or Santa)

Wednesday

How long do you wait to send an e-mail? I have just sent two emails with 2 smart card photos to the Smartcard Office. The e-mails took 4 minutes to deliver each. I had tried putting the 4 photos on the one e-mail but this crashed the e-mail system on ny computer.

The school at Innerwick really needs to get better connectivity sooner or later or I will be going up the wall!!

We have a new
website which demands better connectivity I hope this will be with us soon.

Our NQT is moving to Yester after the holidays we wish her well in her new school.

I will try to update the Weblog during the holidays as I am a bit of a saddo.

Have a very Merry Christmas from everyone here at Innerwick.

Monday 12th December

Today is spent making up last minute stuff for the School Christmas play on Thursday. This includes a PowerPoint of all the song works and a cast list. Christine keeps me right and we manage to get it all done.

The rehearsal goes really well and the Staff breathe a collective sigh of relief that everyone finally knows their words and that the Sheep didn't strangle the donkey.

I update the website prior to going to Glasgow to have it all totally revamped.

Tuesday 13th December

I am in class today. Before this I meet with a parent about the improved progress of her child. The meeting is very positive and the pupil is doing well again. In class we delve into problem solving and complete our poetry writing for the session. I speak with Alan Borthwick and Dorothy at Yester on the phone. I manage to clear my in tray in the afternoon. We find out the school is short listed for a
BT Schools award, we will find out on the 16th January if we are successful.

Wednesday 14th December

Today I am in Glasgow at LTS revamping the school website. Richard Wilson is with me. The day is very productive and I come away with lots of ideas about how the school website will improve.
www.take2theweb.com will host our new site

We will for the first time be able to upload videos, articles PowerPoint’s and images produced by the children. This will only happen when the school is upgraded to more than the current ISDN line. This is promised in the New Year. Richard and myself have a good talk on the way to Glasgow and on the way back, about all matters Educational. Alan Borthwick is meeting with our NQT in the School today.

Thursday 15th December

I meet with a parent. The meeting goes well and matters are resolved satisfactorily.

“Tonight is the night”-said Rod Stewart (especially for Maureen Tremmel) but before that I have to make an unplanned visit to ERI with Marion. The baby is breech and as a result she has to have a scan. Everything is OK but we are given a date for the birth as it looks as if the baby is not for turning.

I go to West Barns on the way to school to pick up lighting for the show. Thanks David. I spend the rest of the afternoon getting the Stage, lighting, sound, music and PowerPoint ready for the performance.

At 7pm the hall is packed. Ruth Munro has come to watch. “Mr Humbug sees the light” is a success. All the staff are exhausted, but it is over. After the play we have a Christmas Fayre and Wine, coffee, tea with Mince Pies. We finish with a raffle. The events raise about £500.

Friday

Today we have our end of term service in Innerwick Church. The children sing carols and read short thoughts about Christmas. Four pupils play on the Violin. Anne Lithgow gives the Christmas Story from the perspective of a mouse. The bus leaves three pupils in school ,so I do a drop off of the pupils. I go home at 2pm as tonight we are going out and I need to make myself beautiful.

Monday

Spent a lot of the morning filling in questionnaires. We seem to have a lot of these at the moment. I spend time looking over the Draft Anti Bullying Policy recently emailed to us. I think it is a god strong policy, however it will only have an impact if it is rolled out to schools as part of a focused co-ordinated, hands on training programme for all Headteachers otherwise it is just another policy. I hope this is planned, as the policy deserves it.

In the afternoon I attend a meeting with Alan Borthwick, Derek Haywood, and others regarding the class contact time of 22.5 hrs planned for next year. The meeting discusses a lot of options and we break up after planning a meeting for the New Year. I am quite clear in my mind about how we manage this. I believe that we need to increase the number of specialists in the schools. This does not have to be a music teacher or a PE teacher but maybe a teacher with a specific talent or skill in a curricular area. Specialist visiting staff, e.g. Music, PE and Art could also be used to allow this to happen but this would have to be agreed on a school-by-school basis. I think this one is going to be a hot potato.

Tuesday

Today I am usually in class but I have arranged to see Liz Mc Lean this morning after the Staff meeting. Liz is responding to my e-mail and a letter from my pupil council regarding the toilet facilities in the school which are the original 1968 fixtures and fittings. The boys’ toilets are really poor. The nursery does not have access to their own toilet and this has been raised by the Care Commission as a recommendation. The letter reads:

Dear Liz,

We have been inspecting our toilets to see if they were clean or not. The Pupil Council went around the school taking pictures of the disgusting toilets. The toilets need to be painted and get some heating and new mirrors. They also need bigger toilet cubicals. The toilet rooms are not very clean, the walls are chipped and the windows are cracked and it’s not a nice place. The boy’s toilets don’t smell nice and the floors are always wet. They only have one cubical and they should have at least two of them. The girl’s toilets are far too small and there is a big hole in the wall. The little ones toilet cubicals are so small they need to be bigger because some people can see right over them. The size is okay for the little P1 and 2’s.We came up with the idea of having two big toilets in each side of the school.

Yours sincerely

Innerwick Primary Pupil Council

The meeting with Liz is very productive and we view the school room by room. We get involved in a conversation about projected rolls for the school and I am brutally honest. We currently have 44 pupils; we have 4 leaving in the summer and possibly 4 others moving out of the area. We have 1 pupil enrolled next year. We could be looking at a roll of 37 pupils. The following year we have 8 leaving and 2 possibly enrolling. This could leave us at about 30 pupils. The signs are not good. Housing development work in the catchment area has resulted in no new pupils. The village has an aging population and the majority of children in the village are now in Dunbar Grammar. Currently we have 3 classes, this would not be the case with rolls as low as this. The building improvements that we are facing could possibly be very expensive.

With future pressures on Local Authorities to provide “Best Value” and Audit Scotland breathing down the neck of Authorities that have retained small schools I am forced to admit that the future could be quite bleak. I arrange to speak with Ian Fullerton, maybe he will give me more hope.

After Break I am in class working on Internet Safety with the class. This time it works, well kind of. We need to be upgrades from and ISDN line soon. After school I focus my work with pupils that have produced a murder movie. We edit it down to 1 and a half minutes and show the premier to the rest of the club. We then burn copies on Cd for the Stars and Production Crew .

Wednesday

Peter Peacock has been at it again today. He has stated:

"Improving school performance is the key role of local authorities in education, and the leadership of schools is the key to improved education, the school inspectors find that around 15% of our school leaders are regarded to be weak. That has profound implications for how teachers are managed and how schools are run."

He goes on: "I have made it clear to directors of education that I want to be hearing from inspectors that the number of weak head teachers is declining because directors have taken action to sort the problem long before the inspectors arrive to inspect schools."

This percentage equates to over 300 primary schools!!

I have heard many stories of Headteachers getting moved sideways out of school to posts within an Authority or been given enhanced early retirement, this was viewed by others as reward for being a poor leader. I also know of local authorities that take little action on poor leadership despite poor inspection reports. It is easy to criticise but I want to see Peter coming out and talk about and praise the 85% of Headteachers who are not poor. I believe that we need to be thinking about how we train New Headteachers and how we continue to develop all the leaders in our schools. The current system is too fragmented, possibly even elitist. I would love Mr Peacock to come up with a package that ensures all Headteachers have more access to better training and development.

I spend the morning at John Muir House at the Authority Moderation Pane. There is a fire alarm and we are sent outside for 10 minutes, lovely. The meeting has its usual ups and downs. We agree some decisions easily and others we reject due to a variety of reasons. It is never easy to allocate resources and sometimes leave these meetings with a very sour taste in my mouth. After the meeting I catch up with Morna MacDonald who is now seconded as Pupil Support Co-ordinator in JMH. We discuss the IEP of a pupil and another potential IEP for another pupil.

In the Afternoon I prepare for Ruth Munro who is here tomorrow. I listen in to the rehearsals in the hall.

On the way home I visit the doctor. I will not go into detail but it was a painful visit.

Thursday

Last night Euan was not well and we were up for 2 hours through the night. I sleep in and arrive at school at 9 o’clock.

Ruth arrives at 9:30 and Alison arrives shortly after. Alison is the new E.O to replace Gordon Brown, (If Gordon can ever be replaced!!) We have a very good meeting and we tour the school. I think Ruth saw the huge improvement in the school witnessed the enthusiasm of the staff. I must be doing something right.

After Ruth departs I catch up with Marie Prior who is going to work with the school council on conflict resolution, this ties up with the work Katie Forsyth will be doing on playground games in the New Year. I then spend time with Marie talking about a lottery bid I am making and she has agreed to help me with. I give her the papers to go through and arrange a meeting for January when I hope the bid will be submitted.

Friday

I am in Primary1/2 tomorrow and looking forward to it. I spent 3 years in infants when I first graduated and really loved it.

The pupils will then have an assembly with Anne Lithgow and we will then have another rehearsal of our play.

Today I am trying to get a lot of bits and pieces finished. I cannot really get my teeth into anything as I have a hospital Appointment at 11’o’clock and I will be out of school for a couple of hours. After kidneys scan, a bladder scan and three x-rays I am back to school. This afternoon I have meeting with Liz Surrige who is the NQT co-ordinator for East Lothian Council. As a former PGCE Graduate myself I appreciate that my first couple of years of teaching were full of mistakes and poor judgement. I would have benefited greatly from the current in post training and support the current probationer system promotes. Having 0.3 out of class would have been wonderful as I would have had time to prepare lessons, reflect of the past week, observe colleagues, visit other establishments and so on. Read the article by KEVIN SCHOFIELD in The Scotsman 30th November, "Tomorrow's teachers face the hardest lesson". After school The children are working on filming a murder Movie with Kate Spencer and Marjorie as part of the Whoosh programme. There are 15 pupils after school that is almost the entire P5/6/7. We must be doing something right. I set the targets using all the available data in school for the next 2 years Our Tree year Average comes out at 84% for Reading, 73.4% for Writing, and 73% for Maths.

Tuesday

I am in class today working with P5/6/7. We are now on to planning and writing our poems. The children are writing really well and we will continue tomorrow. WE then go on to problem solving. The whole class are really enjoying this. We are beginning to see the confidence and approach to the problems being more systematic. The class do not want to stop, they are really enjoying today’s problems. We then spend some time before lunch continuing our Internet Safety theme. The internet fails as it tends to when you want to do something on line, so I wing it and do a lesson on saving documents into your own folder on the fileserver. This is successful with all pupils able to do it. We are getting somewhere. In the Afternoon Ann Marie takes the class for Art and the children create Items for our School Christmas Fair. The art work and ideas are super. After Art I try the Internet Safety Site again and this time it works. After School I take the ICT club till 4:45pm The 18 children at the club are really enthusiastic about ICT. Today we had primary 4 pupils recording on the I-pod and uploading their interviews to I-tunes This little machine has huge potential for developing Listening and talking skills in pupils as well as giving them a focus for active questioning. At the same time six primary six pupils are filming a scripted scene on the school digital video camera and editing it in Imovie. The club is buzzing with innovation and creativity, all of it pupil generated. A core group at the Ict club are working on online games and the challenges they have been facing are incredible,. As Marc Prensky stated at SETT maybe this is the way education is going.

Wednesday

This morning I am with P5/6/7 language group. Today we continue our Poems which are beginning to emerge as very strong pieces of writing cross Levels C, D and E.

After being in class I completes Evaluation Visit Return before Ruth Munro visits next week. The school is changing and for the better. When you see all the changes in a year in front of you on paper you wonder how the staff have been able to take it on board. The focus is very much now on the children and with this we cannot go wrong.

After this is emailed I start an application to the Young People’s Fund to try to secure funding for the Trip to York. I email Marie Prior to give me some pointers for the application and we agree to meet.

I then contact Margaret MacPhail at LTScotland about a training day for changing our school website on 14th of December in Glasgow. I look through the material, Creating and Managing a School Website and e-mail Richard at East Linton to see if he is going to this too.

After I do this I update the school website which I neglect every now and again. I want to get the pupils more involved and hopefully this new website will allow this to happen.

I pop into the hall to check on rehearsals for the school play on the 15th December. The singing is super the acting is of Coronation Street standard.

Christine and myself collate the latest school Newsletter. This one is huge as there are so many things going on in the school.

I contact Liz MacLean about various outstanding issues with the fabric of the building especially the pupil toilets which are now reaching the end of their life. I enquire again about storage in the school.

I head home to music from Crowded House. Tonight I am making a beef and green pepper stir fry for dinner and cannot wait to eat it.

Marion is on Maternity leave from today and Euan starts 5days in West Barns Nursery tomorrow.

Thursday

Today I catch up with various things such as distributing to staff the 360 degrees Competency Assessment Materials. They think this is wonderful and the word revenge is mentioned a few times (in jest I hope.) I am looking forward to seeing the results from this. I work with a P7 pupil on her Level C writing re-assessment. I hope this is successful as the pupils has shown huge leaps in learning in the past year and deserves to do well. The test itself is nonsense “Food Journey”. This must rate as one of the worst assessments I have ever seen for a Level B/C. But who am I?

I phone David Hughes from ELIS regarding a pupil and we agree to meet later in the day.

I then update any errors in the school parent handbook. I pass them to Christine to alter.

I e-mail Penny at Dunbar Primary and Gavin at Dunbar Grammar about pupils being put forward to the Authority Moderation Panel. I enquire whether it would be good to meet or observe the pupils prior to the meeting so I can add additional supporting information.

I contact Paul at Dunbar Grammar about whether the science department want us to deliver the first two lessons from CASE for Primary Seven pupils. This was raised at the last Cluster Heads Meeting and I need to know as staff Development are chasing me to confirm attendance at training. Paul. replies informing me that this has been passed to the Science department.

I receive a positive reply from Liz MacLean who agree to come down next week to look over my concerns. Thank you for a speedy reply Liz.

Tonight we have after school Sports which Fiona our PE specialist takes till 4:30pm.

This week 48 pupils will have stayed on at school for after school activities.