Don Ledingham’s Learning Log

The HMIe have recently published a fascinating report into educational leadership in Scottish education.
It starts out by asserting that 85% of educational leaders in all sectors are good or very good – which obviously leaves a question hanging about the remaining 15%.
I really like Graham Donaldson’s foreword where he says something very important about the [...]

I find it ironic that the only training/continuous professional development (CPD) which is compulsory for educationalists in East Lothian relates to such things as Health and Safety; Recruitment and Selection; or Disciplinary and Grievance courses.
My experience at Harvard has made me question whether or not there might be a place for compulsory professional updates on new knowledge [...]

I got back to Scotland on Friday.
So what did I take from the Harvard experience?
There are ten inter-related things I’d like to do as a consequence of attending the course:

Identify and remove all things which erode or prevent a sense of belonging - in schools and the authority
Reduce the variance in the quality of learning [...]

 
For the next ten days I will only be posting to our Harvard Leadership Log
If the last 24 hours are anything to go by it’s going to be an interesting ten days.  So far I’ve been described as:
“one of the girls” and “The bodyguard”
I’m not sure which one I prefer?

 
I fly out tomorrow to Harvard University tomorrow afternoon.
Only one more sleep!!! 
I’ll be updating my Learning Log for the duration of the course and also contributing to our team blog.

 
I was recently asked to speak at the Braw Lads Gathering Big Breakfast. This meant getting up at 5.00am for a 6.am start. 350 people gathered in the Galashiels Volunteer Hall for an hour and half of song, speeches and general good fun.
I spoke about one of my favourite poems “The Borderland” which was first [...]

 
Over the summer we are working on improving the information we provide about East Lothian education on the council’s website.
We’ve set up a temporary holding point to help us gather some of that information together.
We’d welcome suggestions for what additional infromation you would like to be able to access about education in East Lothian.
Please note that [...]

One of the responsibilities I have - in fact which I volunteered for - is to co-ordinate the East Lothian Integrated Children’s Services Plan.
Now that the schools are off I can turn my mind to this although we’ve been involved in preliminary work for the last couple of months. One of our goals is to try to [...]

In the last week I’ve twice been described in introductions to people as “Don blogs” - another one went “you’re the person who blogs”.
It’s as if by blogging someone can draw some conclusion about me from that fact - regardless of what I write about.
I did a quick search for blogito ergo sum - “I [...]