Don Ledingham’s Learning Log

Our ideas for Community Ownership of Schools received some unexpected publicity today in the Scotsman.
It’s interesting that this came out today at a time when I was about to post some of my recent research into the UK’s Government’s support for the Co-operative Trust Model .  Ed Balls, the Cabinet Officer with responsibility for education [...]

The BBC’s Politics Show Scotland carried a piece on our evolving ideas for Community Ownership of Schools.  It was headlined as being about Trust Schools and showed two very interesting reflections on Jordanhill School in Glasgow and Ashington Learning Partnership in England.
You can see the programme on BBC iplayer for the next seven days.  You need to [...]

“It’s a Postcode Lottery” is a recurring term used to highlight any difference in provision of services between one area and another. 
The underlying assumption in all such cases is that this ”lottery” is unfair and that services should not be dependent upon the ”luck” of where one happens to live, i.e. they should be exactly the same throughout the country.  I’d [...]

It looks like our conference to explore the concept of Community Ownership of Schools will hopefully take place on the 1st April (no joke) at Queen Margaret University.
I’m working with Professor Richard Kerly to pull the conference programme together. We intend to invite all East Lothian Headteachers, all elected members, a parent representive from every [...]

I’ve been corresponding with David Jackson of the Innovation Unit who has referred me to the work the Unit has being doing in relation to what they describe as “Radical Efficiency”.
The basic premise is that it’s possible to reduce costs and improve services. As someone who’s at the sharp end of making reductions in budgets [...]

John McCann, Director of Next Practice at Scotland’s Colleges, has kindly provided me with a piece on the development of Scotland’s Colleges from their Incorporation in 1993 when they gained their own autonomy. 
 
I will be returning to this on numerous occasions over the next few months.
 
Introduction
 
Any reasonable commentator on the lifelong learning landscape [...]

I’ve been invited to give one of the Keynote addresses to this year’s BELMAS conference. Founded more than 30 years ago, BELMAS seeks to advance the practice, teaching and study of educational management, administration and leadership in the United Kingdom, and to contribute to international developments in these areas. The theme of the conference is [...]

 
One of the key findings of the OECD report on Quality and Equity of Scottish Education was that our system does not promote innovation and that there is very little diversity of schooling in Scotland. They identified the cause of this rigidity as a lack of autonomy - and what I would describe as an acceptance by all [...]

Schools in England have had the opportunity to join up as a local Federation of Schools since 2003 - see guidance document.
Glen Rikowski gives and excellent critique of the evolution of this approach and it would appear that it has become synonymous with the notion of businesses taking control of schools. Yet there are many aspects of [...]

As part of my on-going research into international school governance models I’ve copied the following from School Autonomy in England. It sets out the the main distinguishing features of the different legal categories of schools in England as follows:
Community Schools
· do not own land and buildings (these are owned by the local authority)
· receive recurrent [...]