Welcome back to the new term! We wanted to pass on the good news that Paul Downie, Science Faculty Head at Hyndland Secondary School in Glasgow and currently the WestOS Coordinator, has been awarded the Royal Society of Biology Teacher of the Year Award at UK Level: School teacher of the year award for “the very best of biology teaching” (rsb.org.uk).

In addition to his teaching responsibilities, Paul has created and produced the #HigherBiologyPodcast series which has been supported through Education Scotland STEM Grants. Throughout last year, Paul was involved in coordinating the lesson development (over 1200 lessons) for the West OS (Online School) to support remote learning and also was involved in developing the Sustainable Scotland Programme with e-Sgoil (over 12,000 learners participated in this).

In receiving the award Paul paid tribute to the hard work and team-effort of his whole department and also to the many excellent practitioners that he has worked with and learned from.

The award is very well deserved and is the first time a Scottish teacher has won this award. Congratulations Paul from the EdScot Team – really delighted your contribution has been recognised in this way. Paul is still on secondment with WestOS so we’re looking forward to further collaborations this coming year.