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A recurring theme in discussions with colleagues about the implementation of A Curriculum for Excellence has been the need to keep a strong focus on promoting a culture of trust in the professionalism of teachers.
All too often people in positions such as mine can focus upon the technical elements of implementation and see it a [...]
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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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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 [...]
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Posted in Accountability, Culture change, Ideas, Leadership, Leadership Dilemmas, Management, Partnerships, Planning, Policy, Power/influence, Public Services, TESS, professionalism on Jun 8th, 2008 5 Comments »
Every educational leader, regardless of position, has to wrestle with the powerful temptation to intervene or to meddle in the business of those whom they manage. The logic is fairly simple - “I’m being paid to manage and to be accountable for the work of others - so it’s reasonable that I take action in order [...]
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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 [...]
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I met this morning with Chris Mullender, a games developer from Dunbar, Ollie Bray, Graham Sales (a student of gaming technology at Abertay University) and David Gilmour to explore how we might make better use of gaming technology within the East Lothian education system.
I was intrigued to find out that schools would be much better making use of [...]
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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 [...]
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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 [...]
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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 [...]
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I came across the concept of a social return on investment last summer when Jim Honan explained the Program Logic Model.
The model seeks to find a way in which public services can actually have a greater impact by focusing upon the things that will actually lead to a return on social investment. The tendency in [...]
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