posted by Jacqueline McGuire, Principal Teacher ASN (Visual Impairment), Children and Young People
Family Day
On Saturday the Visual Impairment Team held a Guide Dogs Experience Day for children with a visual impairment and their families. This took place at the Guide Dogs Centre in Forfar. Activities included dog grooming, dog walking and dog interaction. Thirty parents and children attended from across Angus, new friends were made and fun was had by all!
posted by Jacqueline Smith, Head Teacher, Timmergreens Primary School
The staff, pupils and parents of Timmergreens Primary School came together to complete a challenge of seeing how many miles we could cover in one day. As it was the London Marathon weekend we wanted to see how many marathons we could complete and as some of the children have been learning about space, whether we could reach Tim Peake on the International Space Station.
We used our daily mile route and each class had to gather as many miles as they could, parents and the local community were invited to add to our classes totals by coming along and walking, running a mile as well. Our P7’s were the Stewards for the event and timed parents and pupils who wanted to compete for the fastest mile awards.
Having taken part in the daily mile for 9 months, the parents and school community were astounded at the levels of fitness our pupils have grown and their enthusiasm when participating. Our final total was 293 parent/community miles and a magnificent whole school total of 1,206.5 – this is the equivalent of 46 marathons and many times to the Space Centre! What a target for us to beat next year!
posted by Eileen Jackson, Early Years Collaborative Programme Manager, Children and Learning
On Thursday last week 82 delegates attended a partnership event at the Reid Hall. Jointly hosted by Angus Early Years Collaborative & Tayside Centre For Organisational Effectiveness (TcOE) the event celebrated the success of a range of improvement work across the early years.
Projects showcased included: –
There was such a positive energy and commitment throughout the morning as delegates shared practice, learning and considered next steps. Thank you to all who attended
The Early Years Collaborative (EYC) was launched in October 2012 and is the world’s first national multi-agency quality improvement programme. It is a coalition of Community Planning Partners in Angus – including social services, health, education, police and third sector professionals.
The overall ambition of EYC is ‘to make Scotland the best place in the world to grow up in by improving outcomes and reducing inequalities for all babies, children, mothers, fathers and families to ensure that all children have the best start in life and are ready to succeed.’
posted by Gillian Roy, Cook in Charge, Arbroath High School
Tayside Contracts and kitchen staff at Arbroath High School ran a competition entitled “Around the World”. Pupils were treated to Italian, Mexican, Indian, Chinese and good old British food. Those receiving a meal completed a competition entry slip. The two lucky winners, picked at random, were Zoe Rennie (S1 ) and Nicola Fenty (S1 ) who won an IPad Mini each.
Pictured are Mrs Gillian Roy, Cook in Charge, Nicola and Zoe with their prizes and Mr Bruce Pandrich, Head Teacher.
posted by Les Hutchinson, Head of Quality and Performance
(SLT = Senior Leadership Team)
We had a full discussion about the breadth of the Transforming Angus programme. The intention is to change Council services to improve customer experience and business processes. We also need to address the projected funding gap in future years.
Transforming Angus isn’t a job for a few people, it’s up to all of us.
We agreed a list of 7 potential service reviews.
These will be scoped by the end of June to decide which, if any should proceed. The reviews will be carried out over the next 2-3 years. If you have ideas about other areas to review, please let us know.
Tim Armstrong told us that:
“On Monday 18th April over 60 managers and frontline staff from across the wide range of statutory and voluntary services in Angus met to discuss the development of the new Children’s Services Plan for Angus. Together they considered a set of priorities and objectives that will guide the future development of services. The next stage is to use the coming year to work further with children and young people, their families and the wider community to ensure that the new Plan reflects their hopes and aspirations for services and in doing so develop a plan that really will help us Get it Right for all children and young people in Angus.”
More (regular) updates to follow. You can also check our Twitter feed (@AngusChildren) for other snippets of news from SLT.
posted by Amy Gibson, YMI Coordinator & Creative Learning Facilitator, Schools & Learning
Calling all Secondary Pupils who play in a band – Would you like the chance to perform to a live audience fully supported by Youth Music Initiative staff and receive positive and valuable constructive feedback?
Places are limited and if you are interested please email Amy, GibsonA@angus.gov.uk before the 12th May!
