In at 7.00am as I'm out tomorrow at the BELMAS conference in Milton Keynes. As I've said before I enjoy getting in early and managed to complete a few things which have been hanging over me for a while. Met with Ray Montgomery at 8.45. Ray is Head of Transport for the council and was briefing me about the on going First Bus drivers strike. We have 940 pupils affected by the strike, of whom 200 are contract buses and the rest have bus passes for service buses. Ray explained what the council had been trying to do to bring in other buses but there are none available. I wrote an e mail to Heads explaining the situation. In my experience Headteachers appreciate having being well informed in the event of a parental contact.
9.00am meeting with Pete Gray. Pete's put together this site using
eZ publish content management software. He has now completed the users manual which will help us to involve more people in managing different parts of the site. This shared ownership will prevent one person controlling or blocking the growth of the site and should ensure its sustainablility. We looked at how we can improve the look of the site with photographs and how we can improve its presence on search engines – it will all take time.
10.30am CPD strategy meeting – we looked at how we can develop our continuous professional development programme and training programme. We recognised the need to improve our monitoring and recording systems.
12.30pm Investors In People preparation meeting. We reviewed the results of the staff survey and considered the elements of an action plan to address these issues.
2.00pm McCrone Advisory Group. This is a group which meets to prepare for the LNCT meetng scheduled for next week. I'm fairly inexperienced in these matters and it was good to gain the perspective and advice of my colleagues.
3.00pm Restructuring meeting – met with Derek Haywood, Sheila Ainslie and Sheila McKendrick to brainstorm possible structures for the schools support and challenge element of the department. Very worthwhile discussion and it seems we made significant progress. It's important we engage with childremn's services when we look at any elements which there is a shared focus.
4.30pm Met with Derek Simspon who had represented the department at A Curriculum for Excellence (ACE) seminar in Stirling last week. Derek provided me with a very comprehensive briefing. We are obviousy slightly behind on this one but our plans for our November HT conference should address this deficiency.
Too many meetings today but still felt it had been worthwhile