The first week back in January has been a busy one getting ready for the launch of the new vision and strategy for education “Our Children, Their Future. There has been quite a scurry getting the final document all proof read, lay out agreed and various themes considered. As an Education team we spent time looking at the final document and exploring how we can implement the strategy. Leadership of implementation will be very important across all areas of the service.
Last Monday the new Education Vision and Strategy was launched at Tarbert Academy in a 3-18 setting and it was an important step forward for Education Services in Argyll and Bute.
The Strategy, Our Children, Their Future, strengthens our determination to ensure that Argyll and Bute is the best place in Scotland for our children to grow up in, incorporating a vision of partnership working to deliver equality excellence and ambition.
At its core are six high level objectives, and priority actions, the delivery of these actions will ensure our values are reflected in all that we do.
- Raise educational attainment and achievement for all
- Use performance information to secure improvement for children and young people
- Ensure children have the best start in life and are ready to succeed
- Equip young people to secure and sustain positive destinations and achieve success in life
- Strengthen high quality partnership working and community engagement
- Strengthen leadership at all levels
This important document will become the foundation as we move forward developing our Education Service. There will be significant engagement with stakeholders on the implementation of this document.
Leadership is one of the six key themes in Our Children, Their Future and on Saturday the 14th of January I was delighted to join the middle leaders at their network event in Colgrain Primary. The day was exploring about the impact of middle leaders across our school and establishments. The group of middle leaders from Argyll were joined by colleagues from East Dunbartonshire and were involved in Key Note Addresses from David Cameron, Professor Mark Priestly and Jay Helbert from SCEL.
The main emphasis of the day was how important middle leaders are to the whole system and how difficult their job can be stuck between “Pedagods and the Taliban”. Professor Priestly also gave much food for thought in relation to leading the curriculum. This is indeed an area that I am passionate about. The leadership of the curriculum is one of the most important tasks that our teachers and educators do. The leaderships of the curriculum and ensuring that teachers have the power to teach what their pupils need. This session we have had a great deal of development in numeracy and literacy in which teachers have had major contribution to the work. (Link to SALI Lit numeracy and assessment. To enable support and development directly to the classroom we have appointed 3 acting PTs
Clare Bryden, PT Literacy (Email: Clare.Bryden3@argyll-bute.gov.uk)
Maria McArthur, PT Numeracy (Email: Maria.Mcarthur2@argyll-bute.gov.uk)
Emma Dudley, PT Assessment & Moderation (Email: emma.dudley@argyll-bute.gov.uk)
https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/ab/sali/
During 2017 we will be working with Scottish Government to ensure that all our young people get the appropriate opportunities to reach their full potential.
Last week I was pleased to be part of the Secondary Head Teacher’s first meeting of the new year. It was really pleasing that Cllr Rory Colville the Policy Lead for Education and Lifelong learning joined the meeting. Councillor Colville is very supportive of the work we undertake in Education and a really keen to ensure we take forward the messages of Our Children, Their Future.
January has certainly been a brand new month and an exciting time to launch Our Children, Their Future.
