Author Archives: Engage for Education

In celebration of National Adoption Week⤴

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Post by Aileen Campbell, Minister for Children and Young People

I never fail to feel inspired when I talk to adoptive families, and hear about the hugely positive difference adoption can make, to both adopters and children. The Scottish Government’s ambition is to make Scotland the best place for a child to grow up. We know that living in a secure, stable and nurturing home with a loving family is the best way to ensure that our children and young people get the best start in life.

Adoptive families across Scotland provide the love and security that all children deserve and we want more children to be able to experience this.

The Adoption Register has a key part to play here by enabling children to be matched with potential families from across the country, rather than limiting opportunities within a local authority area. Since its establishment in April 2011, I am pleased to say that the Register has made 127 matches and I look forward to those numbers increasing still further.

It should be added that 17 of the Register’s matches were sibling groups which accounted for 35 children.  This year’s theme of National Adoption Week is the importance of sibling groups and celebrating the importance of our siblings.  We know that it is often in the best interests of looked after siblings to find a family together, rather than experiencing the additional trauma of being separated from their brothers or sisters.  But just as importantly, those who adopt siblings can also find the experience a very rewarding and fulfilling one.

Through the Children and Young People Act 2014, the Scottish Government has put Scotland’s Adoption Register on a statutory basis ensuring that matches can be identified for more children, more quickly. We are now developing regulations which will lay out the detailed operation of the Adoption Register. We will be consulting formally on those regulations in spring next year, and expect them to come into force in April 2016.

The Register is continuing to expand its activities, including national adoption exchange days where prospective adopters have an opportunity to learn more about children who are waiting to be adopted. An encouraging 38 matches have already been made as a direct result of the 9 national exchange days held so far. The Register is also developing a pilot for Scotland’s first adoption activity day, where adopters meet a range of children waiting to be adopted in a prepared, supported, safe and fun environment. I look forward to hearing about the success of this kind of innovative approach in due course.

This time last year, I welcomed the Care Inspectorate’s report on The Quality and Performance of Adoption Agencies in Scotland 2011 – 2013, which found that we were delivering good quality adoption services to looked after children and adopters across Scotland. I made clear, however, that there was much still to do – particularly in relation to the speed with which adoption, and other forms of legal permanence, could be secured.

Since then, we have been working with CELCIS – the Centre for Excellence for Looked After Children – to establish our PACE – Permanence and Care Excellence- programme in Aberdeen City and Renfrewshire. The programme aims to reduce drift and delay for looked after children in achieving permanence. It brings together all partners in a local area to develop improvement projects that identify ways of improving children’s journeys to permanence – focusing on the needs of children rather that the needs of the various systems. We plan to expand the PACE programme to other local authorities over the next three years; sharing learning to support further local improvement across Scotland.

As part of National Adoption Week, I was delighted to attend an event hosted by BAAF- British Association for Adoption and Fostering- at the Scottish Storytelling Centre on Wednesday, which celebrated adoption and the importance of brothers and sisters, through writing and music.

National Adoption Week provides an important opportunity to raise awareness of the benefits that come with adoption, not only in improving the life chances of children but also for adoptive parents themselves. I would urge anyone who has ever wondered whether adoption might be for them, to contact BAAF or their local adoption agency, to find out more.

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Innovative Learning Week at Edinburgh University⤴

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ilw2015

A student’s feedback about last year’s ILW: it gives the freedom and time to explore ideas.

 

This week Edinburgh University is prepping students and staff for Innovative Learning Week (ILW) which runs from February 16th to 20th 2015. Johanna Holtan, coordinator of ILW, is getting out and about to introduce the idea of the learning week and to encourage students and staff to come up with topics for sessions that will allow them to collaborate, meet new people and look at new ways to approach learning.

ILW 2015 is the fourth year Edinburgh University is opening up spaces to facilitate people to come together to play an active role in the academic community. One of the ideas behind ILW is that innovation is a cycle and things should continue beyond the week and this year Johanna and a team of five will do more than ever before to follow up with participants and session coordinators to measure the impact the activity has had.

There is funding available for sessions around interdisciplinary issues, sessions led by students and staff, public engagement, curriculum innovation, student engagement and more and there is a push this year to create events that are community led, not just staff or student led, which gives citizens a great opportunity to get involved with some events during Innovative Learning Week.

Sessions will be submitted to Johanna and her team from this week. A brochure will be available from early December and links to events online will be available from January. We’ll update you when the events listings are up so you can start planning what you want to attend but in the meantime you can follow Innovative Learning Week

– on Facebook

– @InnovLearning

– #ILW2015

– on their university web pages

 

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Insight- a new benchmarking tool for secondary schools⤴

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Post by Colin Sutherland, Professional Advisor for the Insight Project

It was such a brilliant feeling when the button was pressed and Insight was made live at the beginning of last month. To have been part of a project which has developed an online benchmarking tool for the senior phase of Curriculum for Excellence has been both a privilege and a highly rewarding experience. Our partners – Education Scotland, Scottish Qualifications Authority, Association of Directors of Education in Scotland, Educational Institute of Scotland and School Leaders Scotland – have been instrumental in getting us to the ‘go live’ stage and the input we have had from secondary schools and local authorities throughout the development process has been absolutely fantastic.

The release of Insight was officially announced by the Cabinet Secretary at the Scottish Learning Festival on 24 September. We also held a joint seminar at the event, along with West Lothian Council, which meant that delegates very powerfully heard first-hand how schools were preparing to use Insight.

The Cabinet Secretary said in his speech that Insight will help schools identify where they are having the most success with senior phase pupils and where more can be done. This is very much the purpose of Insight – to enable teachers, together with their local authority and Education Scotland, to reflect on what the data shows and then focus work towards making improvements for their pupils in the senior phase.

Now Insight is live it is so important that we continue to get feedback on the tool itself, how it has been received in secondary schools and the range of help and support materials we have made available. We have already held events with Quality Improvement Officers who have provided us with a range of feedback about the live edition. We know that there are a few areas that need to be reviewed or further developed and we will continue to work with our stakeholders to determine how Insight can be enhanced in the future.

For more information visit www.scotland.gov.uk/insightbenchmarking

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Recognise all skills and achievements with Open Badges⤴

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This is a re-blog from Scottish Social Services Council’s website

What if, rather than paper certificates, you could earn virtual badges as you gain new skills or knowledge?

The way our skills and knowledge are recognised is changing.  You’ll soon live in a world where you can get recognition for learning that happens anywhere and you’ll be able to share this recognition in places that matter.

This is the potential that Open Badges have to offer us. The concept was adopted by Mozilla, a global community of technologists, and they have turned it into a workable standard that IT and internet professionals can build into the websites we all use.

Nobody describes Open Badges better than Mozilla themselves:

“A digital badge is an online representation of a skill you’ve earned. Open Badges take that concept one step further, and allows you to verify your skills, interests and achievements through credible organisations. And because the system is based on an open standard, you can combine multiple badges from different issuers to tell the complete story of your achievements — both online and off. Display your badges wherever you want them on the web, and share them for employment, education or lifelong learning.” Source: Mozilla Open Badges website.

All of us have something to gain from the growth of Open Badges.  But first let’s look at how they work.

The anatomy of an Open Badge

Anatomy of Open Badge

An Open Badge is more than just a static image or button you can show-off on your blog or Facebook profile. Computer readable data stored within the badge, known as metadata, provides valuable information about:

  • what the badge is for
  • what you had to do to earn the badge
  • who awarded you the badge
  • links to evidence of the work you did to get the badge
  • the date you were awarded the badge and whether or not it will expire.

Third-party organisations can even endorse badges that have been awarded to people, adding additional assurance of quality for employers. The information behind a badge will vary depending on what someone had to do to earn it and who issued it. But generally speaking, clicking on a badge is all you need to do to access all of this information and confirm its authenticity.

When it comes to informal, unaccredited or extra-curricular learning then showing evidence of continuous professional development can sometimes be a struggle.  Open Badges make this easier because they can capture virtually anything. They are indicators of accomplishment, skills, qualities and interests connected across informal and formal learning contexts.

How Open Badges benefit individuals

Anybody can earn, manage and display Open Badges across the internet. All you need to receive a badge is an email address. Badges will give you a comprehensive way of keeping track of your skills, knowledge and achievements and displaying these when you need to.

Your badges can be managed within something called a “backpack”. Think of this as a bit like a virtual portfolio. From here, you can decide whether to accept badges you have been awarded and whether or not they should be publicly visible.

When you decide to make a badge public, you can share it on your own social networking profiles, job websites, blogs or website. You can group your badges into categories making it easier to share the right badges with the right people.

How Open Badges benefit employers

Aside from the cost benefits of moving away from paper certificates, Open Badges create a completely new incentive for learning.

Open Badges provide you with a platform to give your staff recognition for non-certified learning. Borders College witnessed increased loyalty and attendance at sessions when they used Open Badges to accredit their staff continuous professional development (CPD).  It didn’t take long for all members of staff to obtain a badge.

In terms of talent development, badges help indicate the progress of an employee towards their career goals. Keeping new employees motivated in the early stages of a career pathway.

By encouraging staff to display their badges on internal profiles you make it easier for other staff to identify areas of expertise across the organisation. Suddenly even new staff can find the right people to go to for the right answers to their questions.

Advocates recognise that unless employers realise the benefits then Open Badges are unlikely to become part of everyday life. Thankfully though, the technology needed to issue Open Badges is simple and already available within the Moodle and Totara learning management systems.

How Open Badges benefit learning providers

Open Badges add an element of gamification to the learning process, motivating learners to keep going during long courses. Smaller badges can unlock larger badges in a similar way to how players ‘level-up’ in a computer game and you have complete control over the badge design process.

You can use Open Badges to provide a means of recognising peer assessment. Good co-worker badges are one example. Peers could nominate fellow students for the award.

By setting them to expire after a certain period of time, Open Badges offer you a good alternative to paper certificates for learning skills and knowledge that need to be regularly updated like those for first aid or food hygiene.

As Open Badges gain in popularity, students and learners will expect courses to provide opportunities to earn them. Because you design the look and feel, badges can carry your branding and link back to your website. Friends and colleagues of people who you award badges to will likely come to your website to find out more about the courses you provide.

Support for Open Badges

NASA, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and EDUCAUSE are three examples of a growing list of organisations issuing open badges.

Closer to home, the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) has announced its intention to explore the new technology. Recognising the value Open Badges have in offering greater flexibility for learning and the recognition of achievement, Joe Wilson, Head of New Ventures, SQA said in October 2013:

“SQA will work with Mozilla to explore how we can adopt Open Badges.  We will encourage our partners to investigate how they could benefit from adopting open badges to support learners across Scotland in addition to the recognition we offer teachers and college lecturers through our CDP courses and training we will explore how we can integrate open badges into our certification processes.”

With the SQA looking at the possibilities badges offer in terms of digital certification, can the rest of us afford not to follow suit?

Where to find out more about Open Badges

The Open Badges website is the best place to find out how you can start using Open Badges.

Are you thinking of using Open Badges within your organisation but don’t know where to start? Mozilla’s free online course about Open Badges will get you up-to-speed – http://openbadges.tumblr.com/tagged/openbadgesMOOC

If you’re around on Twitter, you might also want to follow the latest updates from the Open Badge world:

Note from Engage for Education
Since this post was originally published, SSSC has started an Open Badges pilot through which it will deliver three badges for those working in the social care sector and build a platform for others to create their own badges. Handy descriptive video below!

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Introducing Food for Life Scotland’s brand new website⤴

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Guest post from Food for Life’s Communications and Marketing Manager Lauren Szylarski

The Soil Association’s Food for Life Scotland Programme works in partnership to transform food culture and food systems across the country so we can eat food that is good for us, our communities and our planet.

Food for Life Scotland is working with Scottish schools and school communities to increase awareness and education of the connections between food, health, the economy and the environment.

As part of our education and engagement work, our brand new and first ever website is an exciting new resource for schools and broader communities, where people can share their good food stories, read, share and comment on other’s stories, cook and share recipes and even watch the seasons change…

Here are 5 great reasons to check it out

1. We have a really cool video that tells you all you need to know about how and why to tell your story. Just click and watch below.

Food for Life Scotland from D8 on Vimeo.

2. You can feature! head on over to the Tell Your Story page and tell us your Food for Life story.. Need more inspiration? You can read other people’s stories before you decide on your own.

tellyourstory

3. There’s recipes galore! Our recipe bank is packed full of delicious and nutritious meals shared with us by the amazing Cooks at our Catering Mark awarded schools.

recipes

4. There’s a dedicated area for schools, where teachers can get access to a range of education and engagement resources to use in class.

5. Come back and watch the seasons change! Our website is so clever that it knows what time of year it is! Come back to watch the weather change, our tatties grow and the arrival of seasonal fruits and vegetables throughout the year.

giantturnip

So, what does good food mean to you and those you work with? Maybe you, or someone you know has been involved in fantastic growing or cooking project? Maybe you are or know someone who is an innovative local farmer or producer, or you know an inspiring school cook who deserve to be shouted about.  Perhaps you know of schools that are using food-related learning to deliver the Curriculum for Excellence, or as a way of strengthening their links with parents and the community around them. Whatever your good food stories are, we would love to hear them.

Please do get in touch if you’d like to know more.

 

 

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Consultation on a new National Headship Programme⤴

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Guest post by Gillian Hamilton, Chief Executive of Scottish College for Educational Leadership

The Scottish College for Educational Leadership (SCEL) has launched a consultation on a model for Leadership Development Pathways and a National Headship Programme and we are looking for individuals and organisations to write in and tell us what they think about the consultation.

Following a recommendation from the Teaching Scotland’s Future National Partnership Group (NPG) which was accepted by Scottish Government that SCEL would lead the development of a new headship qualification, the SCEL Shadow Board established a Headship Development Strategic Group in May 2014 and tasked this group with producing proposals for a revised National Headship Programme. This group has met a number of times and produced the consultation report, launched this week. The consultation report outlines a new specialist qualification for headship which will provide initial preparation for headship (Into Headship) and an extended induction for new headteachers. The report includes a number of key recommendations, including a facilitation role for SCEL in the recruitment of programme participants, working closely with universities, employers and other partners. The report also recommends two intakes a year to the Into Headship programme and the inclusion of spring and summer vacation schools.

The consultation opened on Friday 10th October and closes on Monday 3rd November and we welcome responses from individuals as well as organisations. You can respond to the consultation by filling in the respondent form found on our website.

 

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Paying homage to Scotland’s teachers⤴

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A message for Scotland’s teachers for World Teachers’ Day from Mike Russell, Cabinet Secretary for Education

On World Teachers’ Day I want to pay homage to the wonderful work that teachers, support staff and other educators in Scotland do on a daily basis.

Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) represents a decisive shift for the better in Scottish education, with deeper learning and a greater emphasis on analysis, engagement and understanding. I’ve been enormously impressed by the motivation, energy and creativity that I have seen in schools across the country.  This has been a challenging year for teachers and their resilience and commitment has been evident.  It is to their credit that the new exams diet went well.

Poverty has a profound effect on educational attainment and future life chances of children and young people in all countries.  CfE has raised the bar in terms of attainment but we need to address the inequalities that still exist within our system and I want to work jointly with the teaching profession to increase awareness of this important issue.

The foundations of successful education systems lie in the quality of teachers and their leadership.  We have thousands of excellent hard working teachers throughout Scotland who are a credit to our country and play a pivotal role in guiding and inspiring our young people to be the best they can be.

 

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Celebrating Wikimedia- Edinburgh hosts EduWiki 2014⤴

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Guest post by Ally Crockford, Wikimedian in Residence, National Library of Scotland

Over the last year Scotland has seen an invigorating growth of interest in the wonderful world of Wikimedia: since appointing the country’s first Wikimedian in Residence at the National Library of Scotland, the word ‘Wiki’ has been cropping up a lot more frequently here. Wikipedia edit-a-thon events have been held at Universities, at libraries, and at the Royal Society of Edinburgh; 1,100 images from the National Library of Scotland have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia’s open access digital content repository; and dozens of Wikipedians have gathered in Edinburgh and Glasgow over coffee and cakes at regular ‘Wikimeets’ since May 2013. The surge of activity has been so significant that Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales presented the National Library of Scotland with a GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) of the Year Award this August at the 2,000 strong international Wikimania conference held in London.

It’s fitting, then, that Edinburgh should play host to EduWiki this year, Wikimedia UK’s annual conference to raise awareness of the educational possibilities of Wikipedia and its sister projects. This one-day event, held at Edinburgh’s St Leonard’s Hall on 31 October, seeks to develop Wikimedia UK’s academic and educational engagement as well, bringing together all those in the education sector who have worked with, or are interested in, the wide range of Wiki platforms.

EduWiki_2013_Day_1_(16)By Katie Chan (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Everyone is surely familiar with Wikipedia, the world’s largest online encyclopaedia that aims to make all knowledge free for everyone; what many people don’t know is that Wikipedia is just one project working towards that aim. Wikimedia Commons is another, a digital content repository that provides every image, PDF file, or film or sound clip on Wikipedia. Not just the English language Wikipedia, either: every different language Wikipedia around the world. All of those millions of files are available under an open access Creative Commons license, making them free to use. Wikisource is yet another project, a site where public domain texts are transcribed and made freely available by volunteer editors. There’s Wikivoyage, Wikidata, Wikiversity, Wikinews, Wikiquote, and Wiktionary, too. They’re all hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organisation that develops and maintains the open content on these sites provided free of charge.

With all of these projects seeking to provide various educational components freely and openly, it’s exciting to see the different ways that educators from all levels have begun to interact with them. EduWiki is a conference designed in part to showcase the newest and most innovative educational collaborations with Wikimedia in the UK. The Edinburgh 2014 conference is the third, following extremely successful events in Leicester in 2012, and Cardiff in 2013. Every year, the conference helps forge new networks between educators and Wikimedia volunteer, and workshops are held to discuss future initiatives and the support available for collaborations.

This year, the event boasts a keynote by Floor Koudijs, Senior Manager of the Wikipedia Education Program, and will showcase Wikimedia UK projects organised by Kate Dorney, TaPRA Research Officer and Senior Curator at the V&A Museum, and Brian Kelly, CETIS Innovation Advocate. Wikimedians in Residence and Wikimedia Ambassadors Marc Haynes and Dr Martin Poulter will discuss the Wikimedian in Residence programme in the education sector, and Dr Greg Singh and Dr Ally Crockford will explore education matters and engaging Wikimedia in Scotland.

Covering topics as diverse as digital literacy, plagiarism, assessment and student contributions, online tools, and using ‘learning analytics’, amongst other things, the conference is not limited strictly to presentations. It will also feature an open discussion and three workshops covering the new Campus Ambassadors programme for HEIs and Wiki*edia Projects in Schools for students under 18, and an EduWiki Hallowe’en TeachMeet will be held that evening from 7pm designed to bring together conference delegates and education professionals from all sectors who couldn’t otherwise attend for informal and lively discussions.

Both the workshop and the TeachMeet are part of a commitment on behalf of the conference organisers and the WMUK team to ensure that as many components of the education sector are included in the discussions wherever and however they take place, and everyone with an interest in education is invited to participate!

Registration costs just £30 full fee; £25 concessions, and closes on 6 October.
Any teachers in Scotland only able to attend in the afternoon are encouraged to contact Ally Crockford at a.crockford@nls.uk, or sign up for the evening TeachMeet.

For more information on using Wikipedia as a teaching tool, a short information guide is available as a free download.

 

 

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Us Together: Supporting Scotland’s Children and their Fathers⤴

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Us Together: Supporting Scotland’s Children and their Fathers officially launched in March 2014 with a clear aim of improving the outcomes of children of lone parent fathers. The project is funded through the Third Sector Early Intervention Fund to deliver the service in Dundee, Edinburgh, Falkirk and North Lanarkshire. Us Together is part of the national third sector organisation, One Parent Families Scotland (OPFS), providing one to one support, parenting programmes, peer mentoring and family activities.

Around 8% of Scotland’s 165,500 single parents are fathers. This means approximately 13,240 families in Scotland are headed by a single dad. Single Fathers can often find it difficult to find the information that’s relevant to them. Some feel that they are viewed differently or that sometimes it’s not easy to find the right support tailored to a father’s needs. Fathers have told us all of this can make the job of bringing up children on their own feel very isolating. There are times when single dads need support that’s more tailored to their situation, and that when they are dealing with a problem they may find it more helpful to hear how other dads have coped.  This links with The National Parenting Strategy which recognises that parents are the strongest influence on their child’s life and deserve quality, expert support to be available and easily accessible when they need it. One father described becoming a single dad “When we separated it was a shock to be left with the kids. It was the amount you need to deal with as well as the emotional turmoil. It’s having to learn so much so quickly! In the evenings at home you are alone. After the kids are in bed that’s when you worry – money, hanging on to your job, feeling no-one is there to turn to…juggling work and the kids. Will I be able to keep my job- that’s what goes through your head”

One of the Family Activity Days – Mini Commonwealth Games at Beecraigs Country Park

Us Together aims to support fathers to give their children the best start in life. Neil McIntosh of OPFS said “We believe that in order to get it right for every child we need to get it right for their family. We do this by looking at the whole family and what needs to change to enable the child to reach their full potential. We recognise that working in partnership with schools and other support services is key to this. We work with the father to build his skills and confidence in continuing the child’s learning into their home and community.

Us Together impacts on children in many ways but we are increasingly noting influences on educational attainment. One father commented “[The Children and Fathers’] Project has brought us together. It’s just brilliant, especially for the kids. My son’s nursery teacher has even told me that he is now sharing with the other kids and is more co-operative.”Teachers are telling us of improvements in attendance and reductions in late comings, more children having a bedtime story, improvements in literacy and numeracy and in grades. In this video https://vimeo.com/106269504 Lorna Stewart, Head Teacher at Craigroyston Primary in Edinburgh talks about the improvements in father/child relationship and improved relationship with the school.

Stephen Beath, Depute Head Teacher at Graeme High School in Falkirk also recognised how the project helps to improve outcomes of children and young people. “The impact and importance of this work could not be higher.  In our setting it was initially about advocacy.  We had not realised we were dealing with a parent who was virtually non-literate. Rather than our ongoing communications about their child being helpful they were a source of considerable anxiety and stress that helped make the situation worse.  When the Children & Fathers Worker was able to share this with us we were able to stop the unhelpful actions and start to build the positive.  The Workers role changed at this point from simple advocacy to mediation.  He was able to work with both father and child to help them understand what the school wanted and how best to support this.  In this situation there has been a huge turnaround in attitude, behaviour and attainment”.

For more information about Us Together please visit www.opfs.org.uk or follow on twitter @OPFSUSTOGETHER

Us Together’s work shows the vital role families can have in children and young people’s education. To support further family engagement and partnership working the Scottish Government commissioned a new web resource to support parents, schools and communities access the very latest Scottish, UK and international research evidence to support effective family engagement strategies. It has a particular focus on engaging with vulnerable families and those living in our more deprived communities, as well as engaging with fathers and looked after children. http://engagingwithfamilies.co.uk/

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Scottish College for Educational Leadership⤴

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I’m writing this at the start of my fourth week in post as the first Chief Executive of the newly established Scottish College for Educational Leadership (SCEL). The College is an exciting and innovative development for education in Scotland, and I feel really privileged to have the opportunity to work with the team at SCEL and to lead the organisation as it goes forward.

Teaching Scotland’s Future recommended that a virtual college of school leadership should be developed, recognising that there was a need to improve leadership capacity at all levels in Scottish education. Following an extensive scoping exercise, this ‘virtual’ organisation has now become a reality, with our own office space in Glasgow and a clear plan to drive forward leadership development in Scotland in new and innovative ways.

SCEL will support and drive forward leadership development for teachers at all stages of their careers – focusing on high-quality, sustained professional learning; recognising teachers, early years practitioners and school leaders as increasingly expert practitioners, with their professional practice rooted in strong values, taking responsibility for their own professional learning and development.SCEL Gillian Hamilton

We will be taking forward a series of important, national initiatives including: Teacher Leadership, Middle Leadership, revised routes to Headship qualifications, a HeadStart programme for new Head Teachers, a Fellowship programme for serving Head Teachers and a range of national leadership conferences and events. We also plan to establish a register of experts / specialists – who provide high-quality, sustained professional learning in the area of leadership.

A pilot Fellowship Programme is already underway, led by Isabelle Boyd, Head of Education, Standards and Inclusion at North Lanarkshire Council, and John Daffurn, SCEL’s National Co-ordinator. Eleven high-performing Head Teachers with a proven record of strategic leadership are participating, and their feedback will help us shape the future development of this national programme.  The Fellowship programme provides advanced leadership development opportunities for the participants, including access to coaching support, academic support and contributions from national policy makers. Successful participants will be awarded the Fellowship of SCEL and with their considerable experience, they will continue to contribute to SCEL and to national leadership development.

In Scotland, there is already a national focus on high-quality professional learning. The College will make explicit connections across national policy:  The Framework for Educational Leadership, The Scottish Masters Framework and GTC Scotland’s Professional Standards, where leadership is a permeating theme, and we will work closely with other national organisations and employers  to maintain and enhance teacher professional learning in leadership as an integrated part of educational change.

It’s clear that there’s a lot of work to be done, and I started by describing the establishment of SCEL as exciting and innovative. To succeed, it’s really important that, as an organisation, SCEL works for and with teachers, early years practitioners and school leaders. This will be the first of regular Chief Executive blogs, updating you about our progress, providing you with information about developing programmes and seeking your views on a range of issues. Look out too for our planned regional and national events – we’ll publish details of these on our website, at http://www.scelscotland.org.uk/ You can also tweet us at @teamSCEL.  We’ll look forward to hearing from you!

Gillian Hamilton

Chief Executive

Scottish College for Educational Leadership  

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