Richard Wilson

The Parental Involvement Bill and all that it entails will soon be upon us. To date we have had five open meetings with parents to explore the issues and to seek a way ahead over the next few months. I will use my blog to keep a record of our progress and chart our success. The first four meetings were held over a period of time to raise awareness and to disseminate as much information as possible about the Bill and its implications for the existing structures. The School Board will cease to exist in its current form, the last five meetings to be held in school, finishing up in June. We will mark its passing with some cheese and wine on the final night and invite ex-members along to help drain the bottles and remember some choice moments.

During the last ten years or so the School Board here have had many interesting meetings and have had a significant impact on the life of the school. As a consultation body it was great and I personally found all of the members had the best of intentions and tried to promote the positive aspects of the school. Any problems were fully discussed and all parties had an opportunity to express their opinions. I found Board members to be of great assistance during recruitment and selection matters. I always used a representative to aid us at interview, the parent perspective was always useful and made the selection process a success.

We had a meeting in school today, a working lunch, with the school providing soup and sandwiches. I feel that we turned a corner today and am very positive about carrying forward the main items laid out in the Bill and being successful. The parents who attended were very positive and have agreed to get the ball rolling and set up a steering group who will help to establish the East Linton forum.

Our next meeting in February will establish a working group who will drive the process and set up our first forum.

Joined my NQT in teaching Primary 1 until eleven o’clock, I had to do a formal teaching observation based around a language activity and write up a report to send in to the Local Authority and the GTC on her (very good) progress so far. I then heard all of the reading groups in the class to get a feel for reading skills and am pleased to say that all of the class are making very good progress with one boy in particular making outstanding progress. Just to spoil it all we had to sort out a spat between two strong willed boys who both wanted the same piece of activity equipment. The playground supervisor is off ill so I had to go out and do playground duty. At eleven o’clock to about twelve two parents came to see me to help kick off the School Travel Plan. Their research and evidence was very impressive. There are some serious traffic management issues in the village that will have implications for our school and pupils. I hope they can be resolved but there are entrenched views on the solutions to some of the problems, but child safety should come first. Spent the rest of the morning putting together a questionnaire about school travel and issued it to all families in school , I await the responses with interest. Lunch time was as dreich as dreich can be, so we all spent lunchtime inside. I can feel the sympathy of all who have to supervise an indoor break. It’s bad enough looking after my own two wee boys when we can’t get out, imagine it with over 200! Ah, the joys. The afternoon was spent dealing with a variety of small but time consuming e-mails, letters and other admin duties.