Posted in Blogging, Parental Involvement on Jul 14th, 2008 No Comments »
Flickr - landofnod
Back to work today after a great two week holiday without any contact with the web. It’s been the longest time I’ve been disconnected for over three years and I can’t say I missed it.
Having said that there have been lot of ideas floating around my head over this period and I look forward to […]
Posted in Ideas, Integrated Children's Services, OUtcome agreements, Parental Involvement, Partnerships, school based management on Jun 15th, 2008 3 Comments »
Over the last few weeks I’ve been continuing to exploring the concept of school based management.
Some authorities in Scotland have implemented the concept of Learning Communities based around the secondary school and the local primary schools, Glasgow runs New Learning Communities, Falkirk has Integrated learning communities and South Lanarkshire has Learning Communities.
Each of these schemes has very […]
Posted in CPD, ICT, Parental Involvement, Partnerships on Jun 2nd, 2008 1 Comment »
East Lothian Council, in partnership with Lothian and Borders Police, will be hosting a series of Internet safety and responsible use training sessions for parents with pupils in P5 - S6 across the county. This is in response to growing concerns, expressed by individual parents and parent councils, about how to make sure young people […]
Posted in Culture change, Entrepreneurs, Ideas, Parental Involvement, Partnerships, Public Services, School Systems on May 31st, 2008 No Comments »
In the spirit of provoking a dialectic of possible worlds I came across an interesting model of football club ownership this weekend when I read about Ebbsfleet United Football Club:
Fans’ community website MyFootballClub has agreed a deal to take over Blue Square Premier outfit Ebbsfleet United.
The 20,000 MyFootballClub members have each paid £35 to provide a £700,000 takeover pot and […]
Posted in Children's Services, Conferences, Culture change, Ideas, OUtcome agreements, Parental Involvement, Partnerships, Planning, Public Services, Strategic, Uncategorized, Using data, school based management on May 15th, 2008 4 Comments »
I’m attending the Association of Directors of Social Work conference in Crieff.
One the key themes emerging is that of personalisation of services to users. The social work field is light years ahead of education in terms of using a mixed economy system for delivering services, by commissioning others from the private and voluntary sector to […]
Posted in Children's Services, Communication, Conferences, Corporate, Early Intervention, Early Years, Integrated Children's Services, LAAC, Leadership Dilemmas, Parental Involvement, Partnerships, Public Services on May 6th, 2008 1 Comment »
We held a very successful “Corporate Parenting” Conference today at the Marine Hotel, North Berwick. .
Adam Ingram MSP , Minister for Children and Early Years gave a well informed and committed keynote address and emphasised the need for us to collectively address the needs of Looked After and Accommodated Children and to focus upon the improving […]
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 Parental Involvement on Mar 18th, 2008 No Comments »
We held our second East Lothian Parents’ Councils Association meeting this evening. This was very well attended by over thirty parents. We intend to collaboratively evolve the role and function of this group over the next few meetings.
Agenda
Parents as Customers
Budget plans
Edubuzz parental websites
Training for parents
Future structure of meetings.
I think this is going to prove to […]
Posted in Curriculum for Excellence, Learning and teaching, Parental Involvement, Personal Lessons, personal on Feb 23rd, 2008 5 Comments »
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 […]
Posted in Culture change, Head Teachers, Parental Involvement, Positivity, TESS on Jan 8th, 2008 1 Comment »
One of the things that schools sometimes fail to appreciate is just how intimidating they can be, especially secondary schools. We all have our memories of school, and for those of us in the teaching profession they are, for the most part, likely to be positive recollections. Yet when you speak to some parents you […]