Single Status Update October 25, 2006
Posted by Brian in : Single Status, Uncategorized , 1 comment so farAll the support staff received a special update on the implementation of single status in East Lothian.
It’s the first official information we have had about it since a letter from the chief executive in January. There will now be thirteen pay grades which will cover manual workers, admin, professional, technical and clerical staff. The update doesn’t specify when we will be told about the grade that we will be placed on, but my guess is that letters may be sent out early in the new year.
For the estimated 21% of staff that are unlucky enough to have been placed on a lower salary through the job evaluation process, their salaries will be “cash conserved” for a period up to three years. This means that their salary is frozen and no cost of living award applied until the lower “new salary” catches up. If after the period of “conservation” the “new salary” hasn’t caught up then the staff will be placed on the lower “new salary”.
It’s a massive change in how local authorities pay and grade their staff. Currently, across Scotland some staff are having to sign new contracts or face dismissal. In other local authorities many staff have lost several thousands of pounds. Each local authority is different but the majority of people losing money, sorry having their wages “cash conserved”, in other regions are the lowest paid, including classroom assistants and school clerical staff, whilst middle and upper management seem to be gaining most from the process. It will still be a while before everything is sorted out in East Lothian and the unions have still to ballot their members.
I only hope that it doesn’t turn into the farce that has occurred in other local authorities that have decided to impose new pay and conditions regardless of their employee’s views.
I have had a go at working out the new pay scales, they of course are only my opinion as to how the new grades will be applied but I think it will be interesting to see how close I am to the real thing.
Grade 1 £10,938 - £11,694 Grade 9 £27,039 – £29,349
Grade 2 £12,062 - £12,813 Grade 10 £30,279 – £32,658
Grade 3 £13,251 - £14,577 Grade 11 £33,447 – £36,642
Grade 4 £14,829 - £16,518 Grade 12 £37,539 – £41,100
Grade 5 £16,929 - £18,324 Grade 13 £42,024 – £49,476
Grade 6 £18,840 - £20,637
Grade 7 £21,327 - £23,610
Grade 8 £24,333 – £26,502
First Post on New Blog October 23, 2006
Posted by Brian in : Uncategorized , 1 comment so farThis is my first post on the new home of Exc-el. Its taken a wee while to get used to the new site but I think I have managed to find my way around now. I havent posted many additions to my blog recently as I have been waiting for the new site to be up and running.
Its an in service day today and I have been busy getting tidied up after last week. When the teaching staff arent here its just amazing how much work can be done without constant interuptions.
Last week I familiarised myself with the schools Canon XM2 digital video camcorder. Some staff in the Science department have expressed an interest in adding a multimedia element to their courses and this is the perfect pice of kit to do it. I did some test filming and acquainted myself with editing software that our computing department has. If all goes well then keep an eye out for Musselburgh Science departments videos on Google video soon.
Click on image for a larger picture.
I also managed to find a site to install the departments Vantage Pro2 weather station. This weather station uses state of the art technology to enable pupils to monitor the weather conditions remotely. It is hoped that the readings from the station will be transmitted to our local primary school cluster so that they can study the weather conditions at Musselburgh Grammar. It may take a little bit of setting up but I am hopeful that after some initial fine tuning it can be left to its own devices. I still have to get mangement and FES approval, but it shouldnt be long before its up, running and churning out readings.
Friday In Service October 9, 2006
Posted by Brian in : Uncategorized , add a comment
I gave a short in-service to the Biology department about ALBA data loggers on Friday afternoon. We have had data loggers in the department for a while but few staff have had the time to discover just what can be done with them.
I explained what all the components were, briefed the staff on what the different sensors looked like, how to connect them to, and run the software on, a laptop and then demonstrated three experiments.
The first was very simple one using the
Carbon Dioxide (CO2) sensor to measure the difference in levels of the gas in inhaled and exhaled air. It takes only a few seconds and the resulting bar graph gives a great visual representation of the increased levels of CO2 in the exhaled air.
For the second demonstration I simulated a biology practical in which the enzyme
catalase is investigated, the end product being oxygen. I used the oxygen sensor to detect an increase in oxygen level in a plastic container.
The alba data loggers have the capacity for up to four sensors to be used at the same time so for the third demo I used a combination of the oxygen and carbon dioxide sensors to show how respiration effects the levels of these gases in a sealed container.
To finish off I showed how the loggers could be used in their remote mode. This feature enables them to be disconnected from the PC and so can be left in a variety of locations to capture data over a period of time. I had left an experiment to run the previous evening, so demonstrated how to download saved data and how to produce a graph from the information that was remotely gathered over a period of ten hours.
As the session went on the Biology staff came up with interesting and novel ways of integrating the use of the data loggers into the syllabus, with some of them realising that they are not as difficult to use as they previously thought.
Hopefully the technology will get more use now and enhance the already excellent learning and teaching experience currently had by the pupils that visit the biology department of Musselburgh Grammar School.
Scottish Executive Survey October 5, 2006
Posted by Brian in : Uncategorized , add a commentI met with
Ewan McIntosh at lunchtime. When I was at the
GLOW mentors meeting last week I had mentioned, in general conversation, that our Chemistry department was starting up a Chemistry club. He came up with all kinds of suggestions and ideas with regard to new media/multimedia so I said I would mention some of them when I got back to school. I asked the teachers involved what they thought and we all had a meeting. The staff came up with some cracking ideas, so watch this space and see what happens !!!!!
This afternoon I received a report from the
Scottish Executive Education Department that contains a national survey carried out with regard to CPD and related activities for technical support staff. All 32 local authorities were contacted and asked to complete the survey form. In authorities where there was a central technical support team, meetings were arranged and heads of technician services were interviewed. In local authorities with no central service an appropriate member of HQ staff of sufficient experience was identified and interviewed or issued with a survey form to complete.
In cases where neither of the above scenarios existed an experienced school based technician was asked to complete the form. With regard to East Lothian we didnt fall into either of the first two catagories so I tried to fill in as much of the data as I could but couldnt find out any information regarding recruitment policy, formulae for staffing levels, levels of technical support in primaries or any information as to who is actually in charge of the technician service in East Lothian. In the end 30 councils fully or partially completed the survey forms.
I had a quick scan through the interim report and it seems that many councils are on the ball, others have let things slide since local government reorganisation in 1996 and some have left their technician services to languish in no mans land, unsure of whose in charge and what they should be doing. I will read through the more detailed report and no doubt some of the issues that it raises will appear as posts here very shortly.
Powered by FireStats