We look forward to welcoming our Middle Leaders to our next Engagement Day on 26 November. The venue for this session will be Council Headquarters and we will have optional workshops to choose from. It is important that all staff attending complete this form so that we can plan workshops accordingly

Please note that attendance is at Headteacher discretion.

Booking form – https://forms.office.com/e/qVQ3XF5tjc Bookings will close on Wednesday 20 November.

Tea / coffee will be provided but those attending should bring their own cup and snacks if required. A confirmation email will be sent prior to the engagement day to confirm room directions.

Leadership+ is offered to anyone in a leadership role in Scottish education, across sectors (this includes classroom practitioners, ELC and CLD practitioners, middle leaders, and school, setting and system leaders). The aims are:

• to enhance leadership learning across pertinent themes
• to encourage critical thinking in leaders at all levels.

Our first Leadership+ webinar will be led by Dr Karen Edge focusing on Leadership for capacity and wellbeing, and is being held on Wednesday 4^th December, 3.30pm – 4.45pm. Further information on Dr Karen Edge can be found on the attached flier. Tickets for this webinar are strictly limited to 300, and we anticipate these will go quickly, so please don’t delay in registering for your ticket. Please click here to register via Eventbrite (you can also use the QR code, or register now button on the flier).

We will be offering more Leadership+ sessions in the near future, and will be publishing a menu of sessions in the new year.

Respect for All updated guidance

The updated ‘Respect for All: The National Approach to Anti-Bullying for Scotland’s Children and Young People’ guidance will publish on Wednesday 13 November. An initial package of support has been developed to support organisations, local authorities and schools to implement the updated guidance. Please share the following support with your networks:

• Training sessions for school staff on the Bullying and Equalities Module recording system within SEEMiS will be held on 28 and 29 November. School staff can register for these sessions on the SEEMiS website.
• A template bullying policy for local authorities based on the new guidance will be available on respectme’s website in time for the launch of the guidance.

respectme continues to offer e-Learning on anti-bullying in line with Respect for All available at respectme’s Learning Academy

We are undertaking a research project entitled ‘Using insight from teachers’ stories of Professional Update to enhance policy and practice’, funded by the SCEL Legacy Fund and overseen by GTCS. We’ve undertaken interviews with both reviewees and reviewers to hear about their experiences and have drawn out key themes from these. The next part of the project is to share key findings with headteachers and to engage with them in focus group discussion exploring what these findings might mean for policy and practice now and in the future. For the purposes of our research we’re looking for 6 local authorities in which to conduct focus groups, but on conclusion of the project as a whole, the findings will be shared with everyone. Ideally, we’d love to come and speak with your headteachers in-person, but if that’s not possible, we could arrange to do this online.

We’re seeking your assistance in arranging this in and would very much appreciate if you could contact Professor Aileen Kennedy (aileen.kennedy@glasgow.ac.uk), Principal Investigator for the project, to discuss how we might best do this in your local context. We’d be delighted to share the emerging findings presentation with all your HTs before moving to work with two small focus groups (with 6-8 headteachers in each) but can arrange the session in a way that will work for you. We anticipate that colleagues will find the findings both interesting and useful to them in undertaking PRD and Professional Update in their own establishments, and hope that they will welcome this opportunity to shape the future of Professional Update policy. Below we’ve included some information from the Participant Information Sheet to clarify what we’re asking for, but full information will be given and explicit consent gained from each participant before we proceed to any data collection.

We hope you’ll be able to support us in gathering vital headteacher perspectives on this important piece of research that will inform future Professional Update policy. Please do get in touch to discuss how we might work together on this in your local authority.

Information from Participant Information Sheet:

• The purpose of this research is to gather teachers’ stories of Professional Update (PU). Insights gathered will inform policy and practice at local authority and national levels.
• You are being invited to participate in the second phase of the research project which uses focus groups to gather views from Headteachers on the data gathered during phase 1. Phase 1 involved individual interviews with teachers who have undertaken PU and as reviewees and those who have acted as PU reviewers.
• Headteachers will be invited to join a small focus group led by the project Co-Investigator and the Research Assistant.
• These will take place during local authority-organised Head Teacher meetings and will last around 60 minutes.
• 12 focus groups will take place across 6 local authority headteacher meetings.
• Through participation in the research, headteachers will be encouraged to reflect on their past, present and future experiences with PRD and PU processes.
• Participation in this research will not in any way impact negatively on participants engagement or outcome with PRD and PU.
• Participants can withdraw from the project at any time up until the focus group recording begins without prejudice. After that, it will be impossible to disentangle individual contributions.