I’ve become a parent again!!!!
One of the most exciting aspects of my new job is that I intend to take on the role of Education Champion for Looked After and Accommodated Children in East Lothian. The reality of the educational outcomes of this group of children in Scotland is is quite shameful:
The attendance of children [...]
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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, [...]
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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 [...]
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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 [...]
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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 [...]
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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 [...]
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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 [...]
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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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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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