Don Ledingham’s Learning Log

I’m attending a 24 hour conference on public service reform.
Colin Mair - CEO of the Improvement Service for Scottish Local Government set out the national context:
The comprehensive spending review of government spending will result in flat financial settlements to the public sector over the foreseeable future. The result of this will be limited real growth [...]

We held our first of three seminars today to explore links between Community Learning and Education.  What was striking was that there are so many existing links between community education - in all its forms and our schools.

The Museum Service support many curricular projects - they even offer a mobile service such as this display [...]

Throughout my career I’ve been impressed by a succession of outstanding Guidance Teachers. Without fail they are driven by a commitment to support and help children and to solve any crisis which comes their way.
However, (you were waiting for that) does the system which has been in place for so many years - certainly throughout [...]

I was invited to address the members of East Lothian Children’s Panel this evening.  We spoke for 90 minutes about how we approach attendance, exclusions and inclusion in our schools.
A key theme which emerged in the course of the evening is the perception that there are still issues to do with consistency between how our schools approach each [...]

We’ve been working on a paper which explores the next steps we need to take to fulfil our obligations set out in For Scotland’s Children 2001.
The first part of that exploration is an appreciative inquiry perspective on the Integration Team.
I found it really helpful to adopt this type of thinking as opposed to focussing on [...]

Chief Officer’s Group - Children’s Services
Originally uploaded by Don Ledingham.
The Chief Officers Group for Childrens Services met this morning at Musselburgh Racecourse.
In what was a very productive meeting we looked at how we can improve the delivery of services to children.
I was asked to make a presentation on the new quality indicator framework for evaluating [...]

In Part 1 of this post I set out some of the obligations facing Local Authorities in relation to school improvement.
In this, the second part, I’ll explore some of the alternatives which might be considered.
I’d distinguished between school review (quality assurance model) and school improvement (quality improvement model). If an authority only were to adopt [...]

I’ve been working on the Multiple Metaphor Model of change for a few weeks and was indebted to Rob Lewis who suggested some key questions which could compliment the metaphors.
Around the same time that I received Rob’s questions I came across the notion of Appreciative Inquiry. In order to try out the model I used [...]

I’ve pulled apart the most recent new-format
HMIe inspection report of the education functions of Clackmannanshire Council undertaken in May 2006
THE CHILD AT THE CENTRE
The various headings I’ve identified all feature in the actual report.
It would be my hope that something like this would form the basis of our 2006 Standards and Quality Report and the [...]

Following on from my posts about
Children need to be liked and
Being positive about inclusion have set me to thinking that this is perhaps the key to the inclusion agenda. In my experience where a teacher, or a school for that matter, adopt an “Unconditional Positive Regard” for children, then the inclusion responsibility is effectively discharged. [...]