Don Ledingham’s Learning Log

Norman Drummond led a wonderful session this morning at our Headteachers’ Conference.  Today’s theme was “Developing a Coaching Culture in East Lothian”. Norman is an exceptional presenter and his focus on co-coaching seemed to resonate with many of my colleagues.
Norman has an uncanny knack of helping people to unlock their own hopes and ambitions, and getting them [...]

 
We had a meeting on Friday where we looked further at how we could use outcomes as drivers of our new service improvement plan.
It was good to give this topic a significant amount of time and it looks like we are making progress.
We have agreed that each part of our plan will have:-
- an overall outcome, [...]

 
Ever since I started teaching I’ve been frustrated with the idea of “Christmas Leavers”.
The school leaving age regulations read as follows: 
Children may leave school once they reach their statutory school leaving date, this is dependent on date of birth. For children born between 1 March and 30 September it is 31 May of their 4th year [...]

 
I know I’m guilty of talking to people about the “big picture” as if I expect them to have the same appreciation of what’s going on in education in East Lothian as I have. 
It was a bit like that today when I briefed the team at John Muir House about our Service Improvement Plan; the [...]

 
I was just about to write my evening’s post when I saw on the dashboard that I’d written 639 posts and had 1,151 comments on this log since it started in August 2006.
I just wanted to thank all those who have left comments over this  period and to say that they have had a significant impact [...]

 
No posts for over a week but life has been something of a blur.
I’m probably earning my corn at the moment with some major challenges facing us in relation to efficiency savings having to be made in the education budget.  Every meeting and piece of correspondence seems to be connected to this issue and I’ve got 100 [...]

 
One of the things that schools sometimes fail to appreciate is just how intimidating they can be, especially secondary schools. We all have our memories of school, and for those of us in the teaching profession they are, for the most part,   likely to be positive recollections. Yet when you speak to some parents you [...]

 
Some time ago I made an offer to any teacher in East Lothian to observe my practice for a whole day.  The offer was intended to demonstrate my willingness to reciprocate the welcome I’ve had in East Lothian classrooms over the last term observing the teaching process.  I received the following account last week from [...]

 
The Educational Institute for Scotland (EIS) - the  biggest teaching union in the Scotland have issued a number of press releases over the holiday period.
The last of these was entitled League Table approach and too much Testing remains Harmful to Education, say EIS

“The Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) has called for a radical rethink on [...]

Should one of the key criteria for becoming a headteacher or school principal be that the person must have been an “outstanding” teacher in their own right?
Now I suppose this will inevitably lead to the question and some argument about the constituent elements of an outstanding teacher and headteacher.
It might even help to turn the dilemma [...]