Following one of my recent posts about political scrutiny I was thinking about whether or not we could expose ourselves to further scrutiny.
I was further provoked in this area when listening to Professor Michael Fullan during yesterday’s Scottish Learning Festival where he was talking about one of his Six Secrets of Change. Michael Fullan has had a significant [...]
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We had our second Policy, Performance and Review Panel (PPRP) Meeting of the session this afternoon.
The panel is made up of elected members who are not part of the political administration. It’s their job to publically scrutinise the work of the department.
I was delighted that they have agreed to focus upon our Standards and Quality Report. [...]
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The dilemma “Would you sacrifice occasionally excellent for consistently good?” has stimulated a fascinating variety of responses.
The motivation for creating this dilemma was a conversation I’d had with someone who had said that they would tolerate weak teaching as long as it was counter-balanced by excellent teaching in the same school.
I think it’s fair to say that [...]
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I went along to meeting this afternoon to find out more about the Standard Council for Community Learning and Development. (CLD)
The new council will have three main functions:
• to approve professional qualifications and courses for everyone involved in CLD
• to offer a registration system for everyone delivering community learning and development
• to support induction to the profession and [...]
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A group of us (some Secondary HTs and Quality Improvement Officers) met this afternoon to consider how we might develop attainment targets for schools.
One of the things we are all agreed upon is that the notion of plucking figures out of thin air and saying to a school “this is what you need to achieve [...]
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Unless you’ve been there I don’t think it’s possible to imagine the anxiety which teachers, principal teachers and head teachers experience at the time Scottish Qualification Authority (SQA) results are published.
I’ve been in there in all three roles and now in my wider role as Head of Education.
Over my 27 years in the business I’ve experienced [...]
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So often in education we focus upon the hard data - figures -statistics - numbers.
So it’s really useful sometimes just to stop and listen to people’s stories.
If you want to read an interesting story about a mother’s perspective on her child sitting his Standard Grades a year early tune into guineapigmum.
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I’m putting three half days aside each week next session to visit schools. I intend to make my visits much more focused than last year - where it was just a general review of learning and teaching.
I’ve recently written out to all Head teachers with the following letter. It will be interesting to reflect upon [...]
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Following yesterday’s post I’ve been doing a little more reading about honesty and leadership.
Honesty is seen by many as a key factor in effective leadership 1,2, 3, 4
However, the recurring definition of honesty in most texts relates to trustworthiness of the leader.
I’m convinced that trustworthiness is a key factor in effective leadership but “truth” is [...]
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I spoke to our staff team on Friday and announced the local election results.
It’s going to be quite a dramatic change from the labour adminstration that’s been in place since the creation of East Lothian Council 12 years ago.
I made the point that it’s our job to support the democratically elected members as best we possibly [...]
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