“You don’t fatten the pig by weighing it” An evocative phrase used by those who would rightly challenge the concept of over-assessment or too frequent external assessment or inspection. A Head Teacher’s Union leader even described the English Ofsted as the “Office of Pig weighing”. The use of the phrase has taken on a global currency as [...]
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I was chatting recently with a former colleague about “A Curriculum for Excellence“. He has responsibility for developing learning and teaching at his school and was telling me that they are going to give every pupil comprehensive course support materials for each of their certificated subjects - once the course has been completed. The teachers didn’t want [...]
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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 [...]
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This morning I met with colleagues from our Cultural Services Department to discuss how we might promote the East Lothian Council’s commitment to:
“Embed Scottish history, culture and heritage throughout school life and make every effort to support Scotland’s languages - both Gaelic and Scots.”
The associated outcome that schools have to work towards is:
“All children and [...]
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I felt enormously privileged today to be able to attend the Tapestry Conference in Glasgow to hear Jerome Bruner give a spellbinding performance.
For a man born in 1915 (93 years ago) he displayed humour, warmth and humility which would bely most men half his age - quite aside from his iconic intellect. In what was a [...]
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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 [...]
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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 [...]
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I spent this morning at the Ansel Adams: Celebration of Genius at the City Art Centre in Edinburgh.
I first encountered Ansel Adam’s work a few years ago when I led a party of Dunbar Grammar School pupils to Yosemite Valley where we were “Following in John Muir’s Footsteps” - John Muir was a former pupil of [...]
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A Curriculum for Excellence provides us with a singular opportunity to radically transform our secondary school curriculum. It seems to be taken as a fact in education that change should be something that evolves over time “Evolution not revolution” - I’ve used the term myself on many occasions. But there are times when evolution just [...]
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I had a very interesting and rewarding day yesterday visiting Dunbar Grammar School and Musselburgh Grammar School, concluding with a visit to Ross High School to meet a group of teachers from the cluster.
I know the common perception is that secondary schools are significantly behind primaries in the implementaton of formative assessment but I saw enough [...]
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