Friday 28th October

8.15am-9.30am Education Officers' Meeting. Wide range of issues arising. We discussed the role of education officers in validating school's self-evaluation. For this validation to be reliable Education Officers need to be “built into” the school.

9.30am Meeting with a Headteacher.

10.00am – 12.00 Termly meeting with District HMIe Grant Mathieson. Alan Blackie and I went over the following: school inspection reports; curriculum for excellence – talked through our recent exercise; Schools of Ambition; PPP; Progress with Attainment Action Plan/Service Improvement Plan; and Exc-el. It transpired that Grant has been reading my weblog – Hello there Grant – Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

12.00 – 1.00pm Communications Group Meeting – this is a group of department staff who are working together to consider how we can continue to improve communication within the department. We all felt the new weekly briefing sessions were worthwhile, as was the whiteboard in the kitchen which is allowing information to be passed on effectively. We are going to explore if we could use the photos taken for our identity badges could be used on an internal network to enable people to know who everyone else is in the department. We are going to have a social event in the new year – no time to organise this before Christmas.

Out to North Berwick Nursery for 1.30 to take an engine room on a communication issue. It worked very well and we resolved a potential problem. Everybody involved was open and solution focused.

Rushed back to the office for a meeting scheduled for 3.30 but the person didn't turn up. Managed to get some work done at my desk and few phonecalls before leaving office at 5.00.