Category Archives: Speak Up for Scottish Education

Learners Leading Learning: Speaking up for Scottish Education

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Alison Taylor, Principal Teacher and Primary 3 teacher at Stoneyhill Primary School, Musselburgh, takes time out to describe how she gets learners to lead their own learning.

We followed this up with an interview which showed how Alison uses this same approach to promote deep learning in Science.

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Speak Up for Education

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John Connell has kindly set up a channel on You Tube for people to link their own submissions to Speak up for Education.

I like John’s idea of extending this beyond Scotland and building a community of people who are passionate about education and want to open a door on their practice to the world. 

I’m loooking forward to viewing the first submission from beyond Scotland.  Remember to try to keep it to around 2 minutes. 

Now if someone could just let me know how post the above logo into my margin?

Planning for integrating skills from existing core programmes with Curriculum for Excellence: Speaking Up for Scottish Education

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Katie Nelson, Principal Teacher at King’s Meadow Primary School, Haddington, talks about the school’s Curriculum for Excellence planning. She explains how skills from the existing core 5-14 program are being integrated with the outcomes and purposeful applications of CfE.

Using a Victorian school day as a context for art and other learning experiences: Speaking Up for Scottish Education

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Kirsten Innes, NQT at King’s Meadow Primary School, talks about drawings of chimney sweeps done by her class, and how the drawing, together with drama work, writing and maths, were integrated using the context of Victorian school days.

High Standards are an outcome of high teacher expectations: Speaking up for Scottish Education

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Robert Virtue, Principal Teacher of Craft, Design and Technology at Musselburgh Grammar School, speaks up for Scottish education when he describes some of the work completed by 14 year olds at the school.  He shows us an example of integrated project work where rather than following one unit of study with another the department integrate a variety of elements into a cohesive whole.  The outcome – which builds upon work done in the two previous years – is outstanding and goes to demonstrate how Curriculum for Excellence can really lead to incredibly high standards of work. We shouldn’t settle for anything less!

First Steps Into Leadership: Speaking up for Scottish Education

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Kirsty Robertson, Staff Development Officer for East Lothian Council Education Service, Speaks up for Scottish Education as she describes the innovative First Steps into Leadership programme which she and colleagues have developed over the last two years.

Speak up for Scottish Education

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Link: Speak up for Scottish Education

I’d be delighted to accept positive examples of your practice  (in fact it doesn’t even have to be about your practice – it could be a colleague, your child’s teacher, or someone you know is doing brilliant things) .  All you have to do is set up a video camera and speak for up to two minutes on something that you think is making a positive impact.  It could be something from your daily practice with a class; something from your school or a larger scale project.  You could be a teacher, a parent, a young person, a member of support staff, headteacher, someone who works in further or higher education, or anyone with an involvement in the Scottish education process.  It doesn’t have to be new and shiny – just something which is leading to positive outcomes for learners.

If you are fed up only hearing negative stories about Scottish education or Curriculum for Excellence and want to provide some balance then send in your clips and speak up for Scottish education.

If you upload your video to You Tube and send me the URL  at dledingham@eastlothian.gov.uk I’ll attempt to categorise your submission so that others can find it easily.  The only fear I have is that our natural Scottish reticence will prevent people from speaking up in the belief that what they are doing is nothing special.  Believe me what you do is very special. It will only be by sharing this that we can counter some of the wilder assertions about how bad things are in our schools.

Good luck – and don’t be shy!