Posted in Assessment, Consultation on Aug 12th, 2008 3 Comments »
The Scottish Government issued A Consultation on the Next Generation of National Qualifications in Scotland on the 10th June 2008. The authority will be making formal response before the closing date of the 31st October 2008.
I thought it might be useful to try to work out my own perspective on the questions. In a future [...]
Posted in Consultation, Corporate, Curriculum for Excellence, Ideas, Learning and teaching, Partnerships, Planning, Strategic on Jul 24th, 2008 3 Comments »
I’ve just had a very positive meeting with some senior colleagues from Queen Margaret University. The new QMU has just been built in East Lothian and has been named as one of the top 10 modern universities by the Sunday Times Good University Guide. It’s mission statement reads as follows:
To enhance the quality of life and serve communities, through [...]
Posted in Blogging, Communication, Community Learning, Consultation, Corporate, Edubuzz, Elected Members, Ideas, Learning Logs, Public Services, Social media on Apr 21st, 2008 No Comments »
We held a meeting last week where we explored the potential of weblogs to assist the community planning process - based on the edubuzz model -although not necessarily using the same platform.
Community Planning is a process which helps public agencies to work together with the community to plan and deliver better services which make a real [...]
Posted in Consultation, Differentiation, Leadership Dilemmas, Learning and teaching, Management, Parental Involvement, Policy on Apr 20th, 2008 22 Comments »
I’ve received number of e-mails this week from parents pleading with me not to establish composite classes in their schools. A composite class is one where a primary school class is composed of children from more than one year group, e.g. P3/4 composite class.
The common theme in all the e-mails is that if I care about children then I can’t allow [...]
Posted in Communication, Consultation, Early Intervention, Early Years, Learning and teaching, OUtcome agreements, Strategic on Feb 24th, 2008 2 Comments »
The power of our strategic groups came to the fore this week at our 3 -18 Strategic Learning and Teaching Group.
This group has 25 members who represent a wide cross-section of those of us involved in education in East Lothian. I know its accepted logic that such a large group can’t operate successfully but it’s [...]
Posted in Communication, Consultation on Nov 25th, 2007 No Comments »
I attended the fourth Leaders of Learning Network meeting in Musselburgh this week.
These meetings are an opportunity for members of staff who do not hold promoted positions to contribute their own ideas towards the development of education in East Lothian and to have direct access to the Head of Education about any matters of concern.
The meeting went [...]
Posted in Consultation, Culture change, Ideas, Parental Involvement on Nov 13th, 2007 5 Comments »
Let me put my cards on the table. I’ve never been comfortable with the idea of seeing parents as customers. For me it only served to reinforce a subservient model where we - professionals - would be told what to do by parents. The second difficulty was the transactional nature of my understanding of the [...]
Posted in Consultation, Ideas on Oct 4th, 2007 3 Comments »
We held the second Leadership Development Network (renamed Ideas Forum) yesterday afternoon.
Once again it was great to speak to teachers about their ideas and suggestions about how we can improve education in East Lothian and also help to develop careers.
So what did we discuss?
Promote teacher exchange - but rechristen it “Learning Exchange” - it’s more [...]
Posted in Conferences, Consultation, Culture change, Curriculum for Excellence, Elected Members, Head Teachers, Parental Involvement on Oct 3rd, 2007 No Comments »
Our curriculum architecture conference proved to be a great success.
The evaluations from the 100 participants has been exceptional. It validated the approach we selected to involve a wide range of participants - HTs, DHTs, PTs, Primary HTs, elected members, parents, students, business people, community services and members of the department in the development of [...]
Posted in Accountability, Consultation, Ideas, professionalism on Sep 10th, 2007 No Comments »
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 [...]