9.00-11.00 Follow up inspection meeting at Ross High School. Met HMIe Grant Mathison along with Willie Carroll (Acting HT), Dorothy Bartholemew (DHT) and Maureen Jobson (Education Officer) to discuss the draft follow up report. Grant made some very positive suggestions and we ended up with what will be a very good report recording significant progress over the past two years.

11.30-12.00 Discussed the new remits of education officers with Maureen Jobson. I’ve used a system I developed in Dunbar where I try to give each task or job a weighting depending on the likely weekly workload, e.g. a task which has likely significant weekly workload rates 4 ranging down to 1 for less onerous tasks. The points are all added up and then used to give some equity between various remits.

12.30-2.00 Visit to Dirleton Primary School. Very hospitable welcome from Mary McCall and her staff. Yet again I was impressed by a small school providing a very high quality education. Thanks.

2.15-3.20 Popped into North Berwick High School to see how Stewart McKinnon is settling as Head Teacher.

3.30-4.15 Met with a HT about personal issues.

4.15-4.45 Met with Alison Wishart to discuss remit.

4.45- 6.30 Correspondence and paperwork

7.00-9.15 Musselburgh Cluster joint school board meeting. I’m finding these meetings to be very worthwhile. A lot of challenging questions were asked and we tried our best to respond. Many if the questions concerned budget related issues such as per capita allocations; business managers; difference betwen funding between primary and secondary schools – all issues I’ve been wrestling with this week. I hope some parents will take up the offer to enage with this website and even become bloggers. One school is interested in piloting a school board section on the site – this has real potential – watch this space!