Getting to the bottom of it. August 24, 2007
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In my last post I wrote about a job advertised by Midlothian Council. My hunch was that for whatever reason a mistake had been made when advertising the post.
At the time I had emailed their personnel department to confirm all the details were right and was given the assurance that there was nothing wrong in with the ad, thats why I mentioned it in my blog
Today I was contacted by a technician who had probed a little further. They were sufficiently concerned about the possibility of current Senior Technicians taking out grievances against Midlothian Council that they had been insistent in contacting a senior member of personnel staff to discuss the matter.
They immediately realised that there was a problem and contacted the school. This in turn apparently started a blame war, with personnel accusing the school for the mistake and vice versa.
Anyway, the upshot of it is that the post will be re advertised as a full time post and although their website still states the closing day as Friday the 24th the information pack when downloaded from the website states the closing date as 14th September.
Someone the other day asked why I bothered to mention it in the first place. Well, the reason is that I care passionately about my profession. I feel that if employers cant even take the time to ensure that the correct information for their technical support staff vacancies is available then it (1) shows a lack of respect for the important job we do and (2) shows a lack of organisation within the councils technical support service.
Technorati Tags: midlothian council, senior technician
Should we all be working for Midlothian? August 2, 2007
Posted by Brian in : Uncategorized , 2comments
Flicking as I do through the jobs pages of the local councils. I found an advert for a senior technician at Lasswade High School.
Quite amazing really. Over £21k for 30hrs a week and sessional to boot. With no mention of the salary being pro rata that would work out at around £31k a year for a non sessional 35hrs a week post !!!
So whats happened, have Midlothian decided to up its pay rates for technicians? Or have they simply made a mistake? I am guessing the latter of the two.
Advertising for technical support staff within the Lothians has always been something of a hit and miss affair.
Because there’s no one in overall charge of the technician service, personnel departments tend to use outdated job descriptions that hark back to the last technician review nearly twenty years ago. Our posts are often administered by staff who have are not familiar with our jobs and therefore mistakes in the advertising can be made.
So whats to be done? If councils want quality staff then the quality of their advertisments has to be high. That will only happen if and when technical support staff are involved in the recruitment process and outside agencies such as SSERC and STAG are brought into advise about qualifications and duties needed for the post.
If a council cant be bothered to get its facts right at the recruitment stage then it doesn’t give the impression that its trying to recruit the very best person for the job.
Technorati Tags: midlothian, council, support staff
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Holiday Time July 17, 2007
Posted by Brian in : holiday , 2comments
I am now on holiday. The only reason I make that statement is that even after 20yrs in education I still have to explain to people that as an local government employee of East Lothian Council I do not get the same holidays as the teaching staff.
So what goes on when the teachers vacate the building. Well, over the past couple of weeks there have had teams of workmen installing interactive whiteboards and ceiling mounting projectors throughout the school.
Ollie Bray popped in for a couple of days to oversee the installation and I know many staff will think him a bit loopy coming in his holidays but having a senior member of management on site turned out to make sense as he was able to iron out the inevitable glitches that occured at the beginning of such a large project. As far as I know everything should be in place by the time the teaching staff return.
While all that was going on I managed to have a good look around the department replacing items that have been “displaced” from their rightful storages and topping up various solutions, I caught up with a whole load of paperwork that needed attention, and finished a bunch of little jobs that needed seeing to.
I should really have been writing this from the south of France but due to circumstances outwith my control I had to cancel at the last minute and therefore will be enjoying the delights of the Scottish summer for yet another year.
Had better look out my waterproofs then.
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SWAN June 27, 2007
Posted by Brian in : swan , 1 comment so far
The upgrading of our Schools Wide Area Network was completed today.
Our computers were down for most of the day which allowed our IT department to weave whatever magic they needed to do to increase the bandwidth and thus the speed of the connection here.
It all seems to have gone swimmingly well and the dreaded lag when streaming video from google or some other such site appears to have disappeared.
Lets hope that the frustrations that staff have regarding the speed of the network when accessing the internet will vanish.
Greater bandwidth will encourage greater use of IT in the classroom therefore giving staff increased opportunity to enhance the learning and teaching experience of our pupils.
Learning and Glowing June 13, 2007
Posted by Brian in : GLOW , add a comment
At Knox Academy last night there was an informal gathering of staff who were connected with the GLOW project in East Lothian.
We were all there to get a briefing from GLOW mentors extraordinaire Tess Watson and Glowboy Dave Rawson as last week they attended a special training event for staff of schools taking part in the phase three pilot.
Dave and Tess explained the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) component of GLOW and ran us through some its features. We had look at the ability within the VLE for staff to use templates to create tests for pupils, email and instant messenger.
The test templates come in a variety of formats i.e simple true or false, fields requiring a numerical input or short written answer and the old favourite of multiple guess choice. Apart from the short written answer questions GLOW can automatically mark these tests. To avoid cheating, tests such as the multiple choice can be structured so that each pupil is presented the questions in a different order.
The email facility looks straight forward so there was no surprises there. The instant messenger also looked very familiar. Anyone who has used any of the standard instant messengers available should have no problem at all using it.
There were a few reservations about the time it took to upload material to the virtual learning environment an also the blandness of the templates used in the automatic testing but generally I think staff are reasonable happy about how things are progressing, given that its still in its test phase.
A few minor problems were identified at authority level, mainly browser and java based, but at least its given us a heads up to potential hiccups that could occur.
Many thanks to Tess and Glowboy Dave for giving up their own time to keep everyone abreast of developments.
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Ready to Glow June 12, 2007
Posted by Brian in : GLOW , add a comment
Just before I left work last night I noticed that I had received my log on name and password for the latest phase of the GLOW trial.
I logged on and immediately started exploring.
I cant put my finger on whats different about it but was much easier to navigate around t and felt more Web 2.0 than it had before.
One difference I did notice was that instead of the 600 or so mentors being lumped together in one “school”, we have now been assigned our local authority “school” which in East Lothian is called John Muir House School.
I haven’t had much time to explore the new tools and functionality promised in this phase but I will be heading down to Knox Academy after work this evening with a few other of the East Lothian mentors for a briefing on it by Tess Watson who spent a couple of days last week in Stirling finding all about this part of the trial.
Technorati Tags: glow, glowscotland, elcouncil, haddington, knox academy
Over to Fife June 7, 2007
Posted by Brian in : Uncategorized , 1 comment so farI headed over to Fife yesterday to attend one of the quarterly meetings of the Scottish Technicians Advisory Group (STAG).
Technicians from all over Scotland meet at the Scottish Schools Equipment Research Centre (SSERC) quarterly to discuss a variety of topics including Health and Safety, CPD opportunities for technicians and other matters pertaining to the technician service in Scotland.
All 32 local authorities in Scotland are members of SSERC and although for some authorities its quite a journey it is very well attended with members coming from as far afield as Highland, Moray, Aberdeenshire and Ayrshire councils.
A lot of time at the meetings over the past two years has been taken up with the report SSERC and STAG were commissioned to write for the Scottish Executive with regard to provision of CPD and related activities for technical support staff. The report has now been finalised and is in the hands of the Scottish Executive and will also be made available to every Director of Education in Scotland.
It will be available for download from the SEERC website very shortly and I would urge all technicians, or indeed anyone interested in the future of science education in Scottish Schools, to read it.
The report makes a number of recommendations to the executive. I have listed what I think are some of the key points below and would welcome your comments on them.
With the final report having been published, this particular phase of the project has now come to an end. Project officer Phil Muggins is returning to the sunny shores of Inverclyde whilst project manager Brian Richmond will be carrying on for a couple of days a week to make sure that all the i’s are dotted and the t’s crossed. Project Co ordinator Ian Buchanan has retired and, I am reliably informed, will be taking his camper van around Scotland on a grand tour.
There were many other individuals involved in the project and I would just like to thank everyone for their hard work and effort on behalf of all the technicians in Scotland.
Its now all in the hands of the executive and should the worst happen and they decide not to act on any of the recommendations it certainly wont be as a result of lack of effort by the project team.
Key recommendations
Formulae for scales of provision
- There is a clear need for a national agreement on minimum levels of technical support across all Scottish local authorities.
- An agreed formula for calculating the numbers of technicians allocated to each secondary school should be introduced. The formula should mainly be pupil roll based with account taken also of the teaching time for science and technology courses.
- A nationally agreed formula should be used to calculate technician complements only and be separate from arrangements for calculating the number of other non technical support staff in schools.
- Trainee or modern apprenticeship appointments should be in addition to the calculated technician complement.
Central Support Services
- There is strong support for some form of central support service in each authority - managed by a chief technician, technical support service manager or similar appointee.
- The chief technician should have responsibility for managing school based technicians.
Raising the Technicians Professional Profile
- Technicians should be involved with teachers at the development stage of all new science and technology curricula and course materials.
- They should be seen as part of the a professional team and be able to offer assistance and advice - particularly on what is practical given available time and other resources. They should also contribute to making risk assessments (particularly where rocesses will involve them directly).
- Technicians should be entitled/expected to attend relevant national conferences , or similar professional events.
- Having a central technician resource service with a chief technician (or equivalent post) to communicate with heads of service would give technicians a “voice” outwith the school and at the whole authority level.
- Technicians should be interviewed as part of the HMIE school inspections (by an HMIE inspector rather than a “lay” inspector). The quality, or otherwise, of technical support services in schools should be specifically mentioned in the inspection report.
Technorati Tags: stag, sserc, scottish executive
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All Systems Go / Any Questions? June 5, 2007
Posted by Brian in : transition , add a comment
Its been all go for a couple of weeks as the school prepares for the new term which started at the beginning of the week.
Pupils and staff alike are adjusting to the new timetables as the cycle of learning starts again.
P7’s from our primaries are also visiting this week for a taste of what life will be like at the Grammar when they start here in August.
A lot of excellent work has been done by staff over the past few years to ensure the transition from Primary to Secondary education takes place with the minimum of disruption.
Acting Depute Ollie Bray has even started a blog where P7’s can have their questions about the Grammar answered by S1 pupils.
It makes fascinating reading and members of staff can get an idea of some of the concerns that pupils currently have.
Click HERE to view the transition Blog.
Science - Keep taking the tablets May 17, 2007
Posted by Brian in : Uncategorized , 5comments
Earlier this week the science department took delivery of 24 tablet PC’s as part of a project to evaluate their use within a school science department.
Our most excellent IT staff loaded them with the required software and they were then split up into groups of eight and distributed around the department enabling each of our science subjects to access them when they wish.
The tablets come with a wireless connection, voice recognition software and screens which after being rotated can be placed flush to the keyboard to enable them to be written on with a special “pen”.
I was pretty skeptical that it could decode my scrawl but it had no problem converting what I had written on the screen in to a fully formatted word document.
The opportunities for their use in Science seem endless.
Finding out how to use them to maximum effect and therefore enhancing the learning and teaching experience of our pupils will hopefully prove a fruitful, worthwhile and fun experience for all concerned.
Technorati Tags: tablet, PC, elcouncil, science
Equal Pay - How Ironic May 16, 2007
Posted by Brian in : Single Status , add a comment
Along with approximately 3500 other East Lothian employees I received a letter at the weekend detailing the anticipated new grade for my job, based on the predicted outcome of my job evaluation.
My salary is predicted to rise by 19p an hour in the first instance and then gradually increase over the next two years by another 65p.
Armed with this information I attended a single status briefing being carried out by East Lothian Council. These briefings are taking place across East Lothian and are intended to keep the workforce up to date on how single status is progressing.
The meeting in Musselburgh Sports centre was well attended with around 100 employees turning up to take part in the briefing.
Zoe Thomson,from personnel, talked us through the latest news with regard to single status and outlined some of the options the council is considering in its bid to implement changes to the pay and conditions of its employees.
The presentation explained that one of the prime motives of single status / job evaluation was to do away with inequalities in pay between the genders.
For example, blue collar jobs, which attracted bonus payments of up to 40% were traditionally carried out by males, similar jobs of equal value carried out by females were not entitled to any bonus payments. In effect males were earning more than their female counterparts.
Nearly forty years ago, in 1970, the Equal Pay Act was passed and made it unlawful for employers to discriminate between men and women in terms of their pay and conditions when they do the same or similar work; work rated as equivalent; or work of equal value.
Looking round the room I estimated that women made up over 95% per cent of the assembled staff and it became apparent during the question and answer session, and upon chatting to them later, that the majority
- worked in education.
- were being “red circled”, therefore expected to have their pay frozen for a period of up to three years.(This particularly applies to administrative and clerical staff in schools)
- were all on the lowest 4 grades in the councils new 13 point pay scale.
It was then I was struck by how ironic it all was.
It may very well be the case that the group of employees single status was introduced to protect- low paid, female workers- may be the very same ones that lose out if it is implemented in its current form.
Jings.
Technorati Tags: single status, equal pay, irony
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