Don Ledingham’s Learning Log

Over the coming year we are going to be exploring and considering the benefits of moving our schools in East Lothian to some form of local ownership and management.
To that end we are in the final phases of organising a conference to be held late March/early April 2010.
A key part of our approach towards the [...]

The EIS released its Charter for Instrumental Music on the 28th December 2008.
“The EIS believes that every child should have the right to learn to play a music instrument and to develop their ability to sing. Developing an understanding of music is beneficial to pupils in many ways, and can have a profound effect on [...]

I had to set off on a three mile hike through a blizzard this evening to pick up my son who couldn’t get the car home. He was only wearing jeans and a T-shirt!
As I left home our other son suggested that I looked like Denis Quaid who set off to rescue his son [...]

 I’ve been researching the OECD website and came across some interesting statistics in OECD countries.
Here are the comparisons for salaries in 2007.  Salaries are in US dollars.

Primary education

Notes
Starting salary/ minimum training
Salary after 15 years of experience /minimum training
Salary at top of scale /minimum training
Ratio of salary after 15 years of experience to GDP per capita

(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)

Australia

32 259
44 245
44 [...]

So it’s agreed - public service budgets in the UK will be drastically reduced over the next 3-5 years. Depending on who you want to listen to the figures range from 12-20%.  If that were to be translated against our £95 million education and children’s services budget in East Lothian it would be the equivalent [...]

I’ve just taken over as Chair of the East Lothian Violence Against Women Forum.  The connection between domestic abuse and issues relating to child protection is very significant at the moment with over 90% of child protection referrals having some reference to domestic abuse in the home.
Such a statistic made it comparatively easy for me [...]

This is a direct lift from a thought piece from the Innovation Unit’s reflections on mobilising schools and communities.  I think you might be able to imagine my surprise at the degree of concordance between what they are arguing for and East Lothian’s ideas about Community Ownership of schools.
System Leadership and Governance
Leadership beyond institutional boundaries
Introduction [...]

As part of my research into alternative school governance systems I’ve been directed towards work being undertaken by the Innovation Unit.  One of the key features of the Unit is their focus on the concept of Next Practice.  Here’s how they define some of the characteristics of Next Practice:

significantly changed methods of service delivery, organisation or structure, which, if shown [...]

It was  Cyril Northcote who came up with the adage known as Parkinson’s Law which appeared as the first sentence of a humorous essay published in The Economist in 1955:
“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”
I’ve been thinking about this a great deal in recent meetings with teachers (and managers) who complain that [...]