Posted in Accountability, School visits on Jan 7th, 2008 1 Comment »
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 [...]
Posted in Assessment, Performance Indicators, Unions, Using data on Jan 6th, 2008 9 Comments »
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 [...]
Posted in Accountability, OUtcome agreements, Partnerships, Performance Indicators on Dec 17th, 2007 No Comments »
Continuing on the theme of outcome agreements I’ve been working with colleagues over the last few weeks to try to put some meat on the bones of what this might look like.
It was interesting to read what the OECD examiners recommended in relation to this:
Greater school autonomy in a local government framework
Some of the recommendations [...]
Posted in Accountability, Culture change, HMIe, Learning and teaching, School visits on Dec 5th, 2007 No Comments »
I was in West Barns Primary School yesterday and was speaking to a P6/7 class. One of the boys asked me if I was an inspector and I asked him why he thought that - “Well you’re wearing suit and watching what we are doing”, was his logical reply. Euan had never seen an inspector in [...]
Posted in Accountability, OUtcome agreements, Using data on Dec 3rd, 2007 No Comments »
I’ve been doing some more work on how we might make use of outcome agreements with schools. I’ve looked at the logic of this in some earlier posts but it’s only by experimenting with actual outcomes that we can start to see whether or not they would be a good idea.
Sometimes it’s only by looking at such [...]
Posted in Assessment, Curriculum for Excellence, Ideas, Performance Indicators, Using data on Nov 30th, 2007 No Comments »
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an internationally standardised assessment that was jointly developed by participating countries and administered to15-year-olds in schools.
The survey was implemented in 43 countries in the 1st assessment in 2000, in 41 countries in the 2nd assessment in 2003, in 57 countries in the 3rd assessment in 2006 and 62 countries have signed up to participate [...]
Posted in Accountability, Communication, Public Services on Nov 13th, 2007 2 Comments »
Guilt at missing work was compounded this week by having to pull out of an important public meeting scheduled for this Thursday evening in Dunbar to discuss the plans for the new primary school provision.
I’d been e-mailed last week by a parent who’d read that I was off work and I’d assured them that I [...]
Posted in Culture change, Ideas, Leadership, Performance Indicators, Using data, honesty on Nov 2nd, 2007 7 Comments »
I spent today at the AHDS (Assocation of Headteachers and Deputes Scotland) Conference where I led a couple of workshops about the Seven Sides of Educational Leadership.
I’ll posts a series of short posts about elements of the conference and I’ll kick off with something which Jim Reid (one of the founders of Wolfson Electronics) said about [...]
Posted in Performance Indicators, Using data on Oct 31st, 2007 No Comments »
I was listening to someone recently who was talking about educational attainment in Scotland and the need to close the gap between our lowest attaining children and the rest - our 20%. This goal has taken on a mantra-like term in Scottish education - although much easier to say than to do.
The additional comment was [...]
Posted in Accountability, TESS on Oct 10th, 2007 5 Comments »
Here’s the third of my articles for TESS.
Before going on to read this article I’d like you to pause a moment and ask you to come up with a personal example of accountability.
Without claiming to be a mind reader I’d be prepared to bet that you selected something that will happen when something goes wrong! – [...]