Falkirk Children’s Commission – Children’s Rights and Engagement Group are recruiting staff, children and young people to help create our Falkirk Council and Partner organisation Integrated Children’s Services Plan. We are doing this partly because the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014, Part 3 – Children’s Services Planning and Part 1 – Rights of Children,  requires Local Authorities and Health Boards, alongside their community planning partners, to improve outcomes for all children and young people in Scotland by ensuring that local planning and delivery of services is integrated and their rights upheld. However, we are also building this Falkirk Children & Young People’s Planning Team because we believe it is essential that pupils’ voices shape their education and life experiences, and because research shows that their participation in decision-making improves their academic performance and life chances. Learn more about the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC – recently passed into Scottish Law) by clicking here or by visiting the pages of the Children and Young People’s Commissioner for Scotland here.

We will work with interested staff colleagues and the children and young people to create this plan and to design the processes needed to make the group and the work sustainable in the long-term. The children and young people joining this group will also plan and co-ordinate other tasks and initiatives. Our main aims are to:

1. Connect and co-ordinate pupil council and leadership groups in schools, across our health board, community and third sector organisations
2. Involve children and young people in shaping their own education, lives and communities through integrated organisational processes via our Members of Scottish Youth Parliament
3. Ensure that our group and processes are truly representative, inclusive and diverse
4. Establish processes which build children and young people’s voices and participation into all layers of our organisations without adding to bureaucracy.

To help staff in our early learning and childcare centres and schools connect this work with their curriculum, we are making it part of our wider Falkirk Learning for Sustainability Framework (click here for more information about the framework). Children’s Rights and political literacy are already built into the experiences and outcomes of Curriculum for Excellence and our framework includes plans and professional learning which early years officers and teachers can use. The work of the Falkirk Children & Young People’s Planning Team will be supported by Julie Williams our Rights Respecting Schools development officer alongside Fiona Malcolm, Faculty Head of Humanities, Braes HS. Fiona and Julie will liaise with schools and centres who are working towards Rights Respecting Schools Accreditation (click here for more information about this) and education support officers Yvonne McBlain and Jane Jackson will offer professional learning and co-ordinate the development of safe online collaboration via a Microsoft Team in Glow.

Please leave your comments below or email yvonne.mcblain@falkirk.gov.uk or jane.jackson@falkirk.gov.uk for more information or to help with this exciting work.

Callum MacLellan of Sustainability Scotland is helping to organise online events in the 8 electoral areas of Scotland where S5/6 school pupils ask questions of local representatives from the five main political parties. Climate change is the most important issue that faces humanity and it is vitally important that politicians take it seriously. On Friday 2nd April at 5pm young people from Central Scotland high schools will be quizzing local representatives from the 5 main political parties about climate change at an online event. You can watch this live by registering here , to stream live from Facebook click here and you can also watch later via YouTube here.

Please do what you can to spread the word so that as many people as possible (young and old) are aware of this opportunity to question political leaders about their views on climate change. Sustainability Partnerships would be happy to pass on urgent questions about climate change to the main Scottish political parties. Send these to: howard.beck@sustainabilitypartnerships.org.uk

This post is designed to collate the many Learning for Sustainability teaching and learning resources available to practitioners during school closures as a result of Covid 19. Obviously most of these sources will still be relevant and accessible when we reach “the new normal”. Jane Jackson and Yvonne McBlain, curriculum support officers compiled these links and wish you and yours well during these challenging times. Please contact jane.jackson@falkirk.gov.uk with any queries you have and click as directed below to access each resource.

Click here to open the Sway presentation created to give you an overview of Learning for Sustainability as part of your whole-school curriculum – this presentation also provides links to key reading about LfS.

Click here to open the Sway presentation created by Yvonne and Jane to share the LfS bundle planning they are working on with practitioners in a few Falkirk schools. We will soon add a link to a new Learning for Sustainability Team where Falkirk practitioners and senior leaders can access these new plans and help us develop this key curriculum support.

Click here to browse outdoor learning specific support from our Outdoor Learning Blog

Click here to access a new Sway presentation which Yvonne has prepared to collate reading and policy documents about pupil voice, participation and empowerment. Pupil voice, rights, participation and citizenship are all part of Learning for Sustainability.

Education Scotland have a summary of all LfS support materials in the National Improvement Hub here.

Click here if you would like to take advantage of the British Council/UKAid CLPL opportunity for training in Learning for Sustainability- offer closes 30th April 2020

This link will take you to the support page of Keep Scotland Beautiful, and you may already have spottted their message regarding Green Flag/Eco Schools award submissions which you have pending.

Scotdec have a brilliant range of teaching and learning support materials available by clicking here. 

Social Enterprise Academy also offer resources and support online by clicking here and are exploring how their popular Dragons’ Den events can happen virtually and some of you may have been due to attend their awards ceremony – watch this space. Jane and Yvonne will update this post with further information – get in touch with any additional links or sources please.

On Wednesday 18th January 2016, Yvonne McBlain attended the Learning for Sustainability practitioner network meeting organised by Ian Menzies, Senior Development Officer, Education Scotland. The event lasted all day and was organised around short “spotlight” presentations by practitioners, followed by longer opportunities to talk with other delegates from around the country. The people delivering the spotlights represented each educational sector and were:

Anne O’Grady & colleagues from Chesters Nursery in Glasgow

Debra May from East Craigs Primary in Edinburgh

Sandra Buchan from Kemnay Academy in Aberdeenshire

Rebecca Chad from Pilrig Park School in Edinburgh

Each person described how they were taking the various elements of Learning for Sustainability forward in their establishment. Anne’s nursery were combining their LfS (especially their outdoor learning) with Health and well-Being (development of pupils’ mental, social, physical & emotional health). They had a range of projects designed to build up the Ethos and Life of their nursery, and increase family and community involvement.

Debra described her role as the leader of a RACI working group in her school, who were tasked with developing LfS across the school. She shared their progress so far. Sandra’s development of LfS as part of her secondary school development plan (she is faculty head of science) also overlapped with her subject-specific responsibilities. She is gradually building up colleague understanding of what LfS actually is, then supporting them in small projects which progress and enhance their pupil experiences. Sandra and Debra both described how some of their colleagues were planning interdisciplinary LfS teaching which linked to the Sustainable Development goals.

Rebecca had recently returned to her role as head teacher of Pilrig following a “Developing Scotland’s Young Workforce” secondment with Education Scotland. She shared some of the practice she had observed in that role, to illustrate how practitioners could also target skills for work when developing their LfS. She is working with colleagues to make LfS meaningful and enjoyable for her pupils with severe and complex educational needs. All of these practitioners would be happy to welcome visitors wanting to see their LfS in action.

During the discussion times, Yvonne was tasked with finding out how other authorities are supporting practitioners in their development of LfS. She met the Leaders of LfS Learning from Stirling council, who are now developing an LfS practitoner network across their schools. Colleagues from Highland Council and Dumfries and Galloway Council are working towards supporting and encouraging practitioners in similar ways. Everyone agreed that there is still a need to develop awareness of the many elements of Learning for Sustainability, and to reassure practitioners that they are already covering elements of it. Jane Jackson and Yvonne have been working with our own Falkirk LfS practitioner network for a few years now – initially focusing on Outdoor Learning. The next national practitioner network meeting takes place in Stirling Court Hotel in March.

Click here to join the national Learning for Sustainability network group in Glow – this will enable you to access resources, and connect with other practitioners working on LfS. Click here to see the presentation used during this meeting.

On Wednesday 16th March, Primary 4 pupils at Kinneil PS celebrated the value of water. As part of their global storyline learning, they created their own community called Forth Mountain. Each pupil is a character with a job in this new community – Jessica F is a baker and she is 18 years old. Jessica K is the café owner and works as a waitress in the café too! Jessica Kr owns and works in the hairdresser. There are lots of Jessicas in P4 at Kinneil PS!

The characters in Forth Mountain get all of their water from a lovely clear lake further up the mountain and have learned to appreciate having this perfect water supply. All of the characters in the village do jobs which help look after the water, and primary 4 planned how to celebrate their wonderful water supply by holding a water carnival.

They made a plan for the Carnival with their teacher Mrs Morrison:

1. Parade around in a big circle swaying to Shakira music and holding up our water float pictures and slogans
2. Take turns to mime our water jobs in Little Mountain
3. Work with our community group to show our still image of the water
4. Sing our water song – complete with the new verses we’ve made up

Yvonne McBlain joined in with the celebration as a reporter “covering” the event for a television network. She interviewed the community groups, who explained why the water was so important to Forth Mountain people. * 

Primary 4 have done lots of learning about water as well as creating their community – one of their most interesting tasks, was to find out just how much water they used everyday in their homes. They were amazed by just how much they and their families use. Below you can see some of their work.