As Head of Education I had a very clear and unambiguous role, i.e. I was responsible for everything which came under the banner of education of children and young people from 3-18 years of age. In my new role as Acting Director of Education and Children’s Services I have a much wider remit which includes the oversight [...]
Read Full Post »
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 [...]
Read Full Post »
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 [...]
Read Full Post »
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. [...]
Read Full Post »
We are holding a conference in October entitled:
Curriculum Architecture in East Lothian Schools: Building A Curriculum for Excellence
Objective - To provide direction for policy decisions relating to curriculum architecture in our secondary schools.
Some of the issues which will be discussed at the conference will include:
Timetabling; Class Organisation (setting); Age and Stage; Choice and Personalisation; [...]
Read Full Post »
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 [...]
Read Full Post »
East Lothian Council met this morning to consider a number of reports - one of which was ours on Dunbar Primary education provision.
The vote went 20-3 to reject our recommendation for two separate schools.
The decision reflects the democracy in which we live.
This has been a significant learning experience for me
Read Full Post »
I attended my third community evening in Dunbar this week regarding Dunbar Primary School provision.
Due to a rapidly expanding population in Dunbar it has become necessary to enhance the primary school provision in Dunbar earlier than had been previously predicted. There are a number of options - all of which involve the construction of a new building.
As [...]
Read Full Post »
We held our Education Policy and Performance Review Panel (PPRP) meeting today in Preston Lodge HIgh School.
The panel consists of elected members who scrutinise the work of the Education and Children’s Services.
We met in the school to show elected members how ICT policy is translated into action in our schools.
We looked at two very different examples:
The first [...]
Read Full Post »
I was invited to take part in the Scottish Parliament’s
Education Committee seminar on
pupil motivation.
The event took place at Dynamic Earth with members of the committee joining various break out groups- see below
Group 1
? What steps should be taken to emphasise further the fundamental importance and value of education?
? What can be done to build earlier [...]
Read Full Post »