Session 1 Aim: To deepen participants knowledge and understanding of high-quality interaction techniques. There will be a focus on responsive interactions that nurture children’s wellbeing, support self-regulation and communication, extend thinking through observation and meaningful conversation, and balance engagement with space for independent exploration. Session 2 Aim: To deepen participants’ knowledge, understanding and use of pedagogical approaches to promote respectful, child-centred interactions which deepen learning through skilled observation and responsive questioning within daily routines and planned experiences. Session 3 Aim: To explore an approach for participants to use with their teams which makes effective use of data, self-evaluation tools, next steps and action planning to support development of high-quality interactions in the staff team. Course tutors will offer individual support sessions TBA between session 3 and 4. Session 4 Aim: To reflect on current improved practice and share evidence of impact on children’s learning

Course Aims

To enable all children to experience consistent, high quality interactions to enhance individual, holistic learning. To enable practitioners to lead improvements of high quality interactions throughout their setting, leading to better outcomes for children

Target Audience

Nursery Managers, Senior Early Years Officers, Early Years Officers, Early Years Practitioners, Primary 1 Teachers

Course Dates

3 October 2025 – 2pm – 3:30pm

7 November 2025 – 2pm – 3:30pm

16 January 2026 – 2pm – 3:30pm

15 May 2026 – 2pm – 3:30pm

Places can be booked through Business World.

September 2, 2025

MSc TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) and MSc Language Education programme students

Dear colleague,

I am getting in touch to ask if your school would be interested in participating in the University of Edinburgh’s one-day visits for MSc TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) and MSc Language Education programme students. In recent years, schools in Edinburgh and the surrounding areas have been paid to receive Moray House students from these programmes to visit and observe classes in their schools. We are very appreciative of this as it has been a great success over the years.

This year Moray House are looking to place approximately 250 TESOL students and 75 Language Education students in primary and secondary schools for a one-day visit at the end of October/early November. Given the large number of students, we are looking for as many schools to participate as possible.

Would your school be willing to participate in offering visits of this kind to these students?

During the visits, groups of student teachers observe lessons within a primary class, or in one or a few subject areas within secondary schools, particularly Modern Languages (any language) and English. This is so that they can see for themselves an experience of teaching in primary or secondary schools in Scotland. It is a classroom observation so our students do not participate in classes (unless asked to), or disrupt schedules within schools, but sit at the back of classrooms and observe good practice.

The students would come fully prepared and are fully informed about the protocol within Scottish schools. Each student will attend school for one full day.

The dates scheduled for the school visits are as follows:

Monday 27th October to Thursday 30th October – MSc Language Education
Monday 3rd November to Thursday 4th November – MSc TESOL

Each student will only attend a school for one day within the date ranges given above.

If your school is able to host students for one or more full school days within either of the date ranges given above, then please let us know by emailing mhses.schoolvisits@ed.ac.uk.

The University arranges for the students to visit schools in groups and require a minimum of two students in each school. Offers that schools have made in previous years have ranged from two students upwards in a very small primary school, to several per class in a larger primary school, up to 20 or more students in large secondary schools.

We have established robust procedures to ensure that the student visits comply with national guidance to schools, and will share further details ahead of the visits. Students will follow a code of conduct that covers areas including in-school behaviour and health and safety.

If you would like to participate in this opportunity, please reply to mhses.schoolvisits@ed.ac.uk by Thursday 11th September, with information on the dates that you can participate and the maximum number of students that could visit your school on those dates. If you are unable to participate, we would be grateful if you could also reply to let us know.

If you require any additional information about these visits, please get in touch.

We look forward to hearing from you.

September 2, 2025

Helping Students Write a Personal Statement Using the New Format

Tuesday 9^th September from 4-5pm.

Delivered by Claire Forsman from The University of Edinburgh organised by Advancing Access

Free online training session

Aims to help education staff to support pupils in writing their personal statement with the new three questions layout.

The session will be live with lots of opportunities to ask questions.

Link to join the meeting – Join the meeting now

August 26, 2025

Targeted Nurture Groups

This course will prepare participants to set up a nurture group in their school or setting. It covers how to set up a nurture group, how to select children for the group, what the nurture room should look like, activities and staffing of the nurture room, target setting, assessment, tracking and monitoring.

This course aims to give participants relevant research and practical advice in setting up a nurture group in their school or setting.

Target audience – school staff who wish to set up a targeted nurture group.

2 courses:

28/10/25 & 11/11/25 3.30 – 5.00pm Venue TBC

28/04/26 & 19/05/26 3.30 -5.00pm Venue TBC

Places will be available to book through Business World. If you have any queries about this course please email CLPL@scotborders.gov.uk and we will be happy to help.

August 26, 2025

Leading Professional Learning

We are excited to announce that registration for the new academic year has officially opened! Please share this with any education colleagues or networks who may be interested in joining our online programme.

The Leading Professional Learning programme is designed to equip participants with the knowledge and skills to plan, facilitate and evaluate a collective and collaborative approach to professional learning in their own education settings. Underpinned by educational research and centred on the national model of professional learning, the programme is specifically tailored to the Scottish education system.

Registration will close on Friday, 5^th September.

Click on the following link to find out more about the programme and book your place: Leading professional learning programme | Programmes | Professional learning programmes, webinars and events | Professional Learning | Education Scotland

August 26, 2025

25/26 Leadership+ Series

Dr Karen Edge will be delivering the first webinar in our 25/26 Leadership+ series bringing global insight and practical strategies to help leaders re-energise themselves and their teams—perfect timing for the start of a new academic year!

Dr Karen Edge: That first-day-back feeling: Sustaining energy and optimism in yourself and your team.
Monday 8 September
4pm to 5pm
Online via MS Teams

Places are limited, and we expect high demand—so please don’t delay!

Click here to register via Eventbrite

Dr Edge’s Leadership+ session last year was attended by over 400 leaders across Scottish education – here’s what they said about the session:

“Karen was so interesting and engaging – she brought a lot of herself to the session which I really appreciated. Really well paced and interactive – thank you!”

“A fantastic session by Karen Edge – genuine and authentic and linking to the research and her own relatable experiences.

The session passed so quickly – very enjoyable and relevant to the here and now. Thank you”

“The ideas were very thought provoking and the interactive activities are ones that I can see me using during staff meetings “

Please note: This session will not be recorded, so we strongly encourage you to attend live to benefit fully. However, Dr Edge will kindly record a 15-minute post-event overview, which will be available on our Leadership+ webpage.

We will be offering more Leadership+ sessions in the 25/26 session, and will be publishing details of these in the coming weeks.

We hope you’ll join us for this inspiring first session and be part of a growing community of leaders shaping the future of Scottish education.

Education Scotland Leadership+ Team

Stay informed with our Professional Learning Announcements page.

August 26, 2025

ASIST – Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (Education Offer)

This will be an annual rolling programme to ensure all pastoral staff, members of senior management teams within secondary schools and central education team are trained. Training is valid for 3 years, then needs to be re-done. This training has been put in place to support staff following a Child Protection Learning Review and should be prioritised for staff to attend.

NHS Health Improvement Team are partially funding this two-day interactive workshop in suicide first aid for SBC education staff.

12^th and 13^th May 2026, 8:50am – 5pm

An ASIST trained caregiver, will be better able to:

Identify people who have thoughts of suicide, reach out and offer support
Seek a shared understanding of the reasons for thoughts of suicide
Apply a suicide intervention model
Review current risk and develop a plan to increase safety from suicidal behaviour
Link people with community resources

Each school has been allocated 3 places and we would be grateful if you could email CLPL@scotborders.gov.uk with attendees for your school now. Attendees will be sent a link from NHS 12 weeks prior to the programme to complete sign up.

If you require more places contact the CLPL team and they will see if this is possible

August 26, 2025

Working together to support readiness to learn

Over the last 12 months, the Scottish Attainment Challenge National Programmes have published four important reports focused on enablers of building readiness to learn, primarily from the perspectives of young people. We would like to invite you to an online event where the Child Poverty Action Group, Young Scot, YouthLink Scotland and CELCIS (Virtual School Head Teachers Network) will share learning from these reports and support a discussion to consider what children and young people say they need to thrive in school. Please do share this event with interested colleagues.

The session will provide opportunities to respond to insights from the reports and discuss with fellow school and youth work leads, Attainment Advisors, Local Authority Equity leads and relevant representatives from the Scottish Government:

what young people are saying about enablers of their readiness to learn
what young people, educators, parents and carers are saying about the role of youth work in supporting readiness to learn
how we can collaborate to more consistently and effectively across the system to offer the support that young people are seeking

Following the event, we will share participants’ key recommendations for action with some of the young people who were involved in the earlier consultations. Our intention is that these recommendations, validated with young people, will inform the future development of the SAC National Programmes and influence thinking about the future of the Scottish Attainment Challenge more widely.

The event will be held online at 3.30pm-5pm on Tuesday 9th September. Please confirm your attendance by replying via the link below:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/working-together-to-support-readiness-to-learn-tickets-1487233688999?aff=oddtdtcreator

Cost of the School Day Big Question report and film from CPAG

YouthLink Scotland Readiness to Learn

YSAttain: Data & Insights – Young Scot Corporate

CELCIS: Virtual School Head Teachers