Author Archives: Lisa McCabe

New Training and Induction Programme for Childminders⤴

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Scottish Government has outlined the central role of childminders will play in the delivery of any further expansion of childcare. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced plans for a new standard of best practice for childminders, which is to include a new training and induction programme that all childminders will be expected to complete prior to registration.

The training and induction programme, which will be developed with the Care Inspectorate, will support the development of skills and training for all childminders working in the early learning and childcare sector.

Maggie Simpson, Chief Executive of Scottish Childminding Association (SCMA), said:

“I’m delighted to hear of another piece being added to the jigsaw. Today’s announcement of the development of a quality standard for childminders will bring childminding in line with the opportunities that are already enjoyed by the rest of the early years workforce.

“There is already a robust registration and inspection process carried out by the Care Inspectorate with childminding services amongst the highest graded Early Learning and Childcare providers.

“SCMA and our childminder members also wanted to see more direct access to qualifications and I look forward to working with the Care Inspectorate, Scottish Government, the Scottish Social Services Council and on the development of this quality standard for childminders.”

We look forward to working closely with our partners in SSSC, Care Inspectorate and SCMA in support of this development.

Read the Scottish Government press release here.

Scottish Childminding Association

Care Inspectorate

Scottish Social Services Council

How Good Is Our Early Learning and Childcare? – Draft QIs Consultation⤴

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Effective self-evaluation is the cornerstone of how we effect improvement in learning. There is a great deal of experience in the Early Learning and Childcare (ELCC) sector in using the Quality Indicators (QIs) in Child at the Centre to bring about those improvements. However, since its publication in 2007, there have been a number of significant developments in Scottish education. It is important therefore, that tools to support self-evaluation and self-improvement in ELCC reflect the most up-to-date thinking about how young children best develop and learn.

So, the suite of QIs for the Early Learning and Childcare sector is under review.

The new suite of indictors to be called, How Good Is Our Early Learning and Childcare? (HGIOELCC) will be published in May/June 2016; and, will mirror the framework of the recently published How Good Is Our School? (4th edition).

Over the past few months, the Children and Families team at Education Scotland has been working with stakeholders to produce a first draft of QIs.

So what happens now?

We’ve created a special section on our website for you to view a set of draft QIs and to make comment via Survey Monkey.

The first round of drafts includes:
1.2 Leadership of Learning
2.2 Curriculum
3.2 Securing Children’s Progress

The set of QIs can also be viewed inside Glow Early Learn. We are keen to hear your views via Glow using #hgioelcc.

Of course, Child at the Centre (2007), still has relevance, providing support to early learning and childcare (ELCC) settings and primary schools to look inwards, to scrutinise their work and evaluate what is working well for learners and to decide what could be better.

Make sure you don’t miss out on this opportunity to have your say about how well the new suite of QIs is shaping-up.

Bookbug – it’s time for you to have your say!⤴

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Scottish Book Trust would like to know what professionals think about the Bookbug programme. To do this, our friends at Scottish Book Trust have designed an online survey for you to complete.

BookBugBedtimeCMYK

The Bookbug programme is currently being evaluated by researchers from the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships, based at the University of Edinburgh. The evaluation is investigating what difference Bookbug makes to parents, children and early years professionals. As part of this evaluation Scottish Boko Trust has developed an online survey for professionals whose work supports the delivery of Bookbug bags or Bookbug sessions.

Bookbug Session

The survey will provide for Scottish Book Trust an overview of professionals’ views and experiences of the Bookbug Programme. In addition, findings from the survey will be used to help identify areas for further exploration in four case study areas for evaluation in 2016.

The survey will take between 20-25 minutes to complete, depending on the level of detail that you provide. Scottish Book Trust is really keen to hear your views, so just give as much detail and information as you can in the time you have available.

To thank you for your participation, Scottish Book Trust is giving one lucky participant chosen at random a bundle of books worth £100 .

Bookbug professionals 2

It is really important that we all do our bit to ensure that programmes such as Bookbug are developed to meet the needs of the children, families and staff across Scotland. Please take some time to complete the survey and make sure you send the this link on to colleagues in your organisation and/or locality who have contact with Bookbug.

https://edinburgh.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/bookbug-evaluation

The closing date for the survey is Friday 27th November 2015.

Don’t miss out!

Gender equality in Early Learning and Childcare settings⤴

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Water experiment

Our colleagues at Health Scotland have approached us to ask for our assistance with a piece of research that is currently underway to look at gender stereotypes in ELCC settings. Health Improvement Senior, Barbara Adzajlic, said,

“Gender stereotypes are all around us and impact heavily on our children from the moment they are born. From the colours they wear to the toys they play with, the books they read, and the behaviours that are expected of them, girls and boys are influenced by family members, the media and society at large. The impacts of this include performance at school, career choices, expectations within relationships, emotional literacy and mental health.”

Making rockets!

Making rockets!

A group of organisations is exploring approaches to tackling gender stereotyping and gender equality in early learning and childcare settings. The group includes NHS Health Improvement, respect Me, LGBT Youth Scotland, Men in Childcare, Fathers Network Scotland, Zero Tolerance and Baltic Street Adventure Play.

The first step is to run a short survey of projects and organisations in Scotland and the UK which may be doing work to tackle gender stereotyping and gender equality in ELCC. This will allow reseachers to gather information on those resources or programmes already in existence, to learn lessons from existing approaches.

The researchers are looking for input from ELCC practitioners, so get involved if you can. They are also keen to hear from parents and carers about their experiences and views on the issue, so please do encourage parents to get invovled too.

Please follow the link below and complete the survey moneky questionnaire:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/gender_and_early_years

Please note that the survey closes on Friday, 30th October 2015.

Should you have any questions about the research, please call Barbara Adzajlic or Susie Heywood on 0141 232 0174/0171.

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New – Update to infection prevention and control guidance⤴

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Blog

You will be very familiar with the guidance Infection Prevention and Control in Childcare Settings (Day Care and Childminding Settings. The guidance has been recently updated and contains important changes to reflect recent legislation. The guidance incorporates best practice from across the UK.

It is for staff working within nurseries, day-care centres, playgroups, crèches, children’s centres, childminders, after-school clubs and holiday clubs. The guidance is also relevant to staff and to settings in which children spend a signficant time outdoors.

Education Scotland was part of the group involved in the creation of this guidance. The full document can be accessed here.

Connected Colleagues in Clackmannanshire and Stirling⤴

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Carolyn Love, Early Years Training and Improvement Officer, in Clackmannanshire and Stirling Education Service shares the approach she and her team have taken to promoting the use of Glow Early Learn.

“I was really inspired by the conversation event that was run by Children and Families in February this year. There was a clear steer that Glow was going to have increasing importance in supporting and developing professional learning networks.

The conversation on that day certainly gave us food for thought. As we embrace the expansion in ELCC, we are managing carefully limited face-to-face dialogue. Therefore, we know that the use of digital platforms, such as Glow and social media, is crucial for the effective facilitation of career-long professional learning. We wanted to explore how we could develop the use of both Glow and social media locally in Clackmannanshire and Stirling.

We set-up our own Glow community to allow us to share bigger documents, engage in video conferencing and share photographs of children’s learning in a way we know is entirely safe and secure.

We are starting small with a group of 10 Glow Champions who are setting up our own Glow webpage and are tasked with getting the conversation about Glow going across the authority.

Our Glow Champions are members of the national community, Glow Early Learn. We spent time helping our Champions navigate around Glow Early Learn, exploring the resource page, the blogs and the discussions on the page.

I was so impressed by the enthusiasm of the group. They really understood the possibilities that being active in Glow on a regular basis can bring.

Our Champions have already requested that we roll-out an all Authority training session at one of our in-service days during this academic year. They have gone back already to their setting and have rolled-out training on a smaller scale with their teams.

Such is their commitment, the team at Cornton Nursery got together at 8am and signed-up to Glow Early Learn during their weekly development meeting!

More locally, Stirling and Clackmannanshire has a vast geographical spread so the prospect of people using video conferencing to communicate with each other and share ideas is incredibly exciting.”

Social media developments

Stirling Facebook

“We have set-up Facebook page called ‘Early Years in Stirling and Clackmannanshire’. Our Facebook page is going from strength to strength and now has over 200 members. We decided to make this page a closed group as it was designed to be a comfortable space for practitioners to be able to share professional dialogue with others from across our education service. Although the initial posts have come from ourselves, we are encouraging practitioners to contribute by sharing their developments, experience and knowledge with each other.

The most common feedback we receive from practitioners is they would like more opportunities to visit other settings. Using Facebook as a medium to share photographs of early years environments has led to settings being inspired by each other, making links and arranging reciprocal visits. There is a growing sense of ‘connectedness’ between our early years establishments.”

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Future plans

“We are about to roll out a series of 10 ‘roadshows’, which will officially be our local launch of Building the Ambition. We are expecting the majority of staff to attend these so this will be another forum in which we will promote the use of Glow, Facebook and Twitter for career-long professional learning.

We feel that early years continues to move at a very fast pace and that these technologies allow us to keep up to date with current practice, procedures and initiatives. We are looking forward to getting the whole of Stirling and Clackmannanshire early years ‘glowing’!

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Join the national ELCC professional learning community Glow Early Learn

Get Involved with Education Scotland Developments #calltoaction⤴

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Hugh Smiley Staff

Are you an ELCC practitioner? Are you passionate about the work you are doing with young children? Are you making a difference? If so, we’d really love to hear from you.

The Children and Families Team at Education Scotland have introduced through the ELCC professional community – Glow Early Learn, a new initiative called #calltoaction.

The new initiative is designed to highlight to the ELCC workforce all current and future developments to support improvements in ELCC across Scotland. The exciting development is that this initiative offers YOU the opportunity to get involved and to make a contribution to these national developments.

Our first #calltoaction focuses on involving children in making important decisions about their early learning and childcare. The Children and Families team and the Rights, Support and Wellbeing team are working jointly to devise support materials to support educators in all sectors of education make improvements in this area. We are really keen to ensure that the ELCC sector features prominently in this work…but we need your help.

PromotingParticipation

If you have something to share, let us know by writing a short desciption in the newsfeed using the appropriate hashtag. For our work on Promoting Participation use #promoparty. We will then link with you via Glow, providing suport and development to capture your journey.

Future #calltoaction topics will include: planning learning for young children; assessing children’s progress in learning; Self-Evaluation – How Good Is Our Early Learning and Childcare (HGIOELCC).

Watch out on Twitter for notifications of these #calltoaction opportunities.

Follow us @CaFTeam

New Education Officer for Forestry Commission Scotland⤴

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Forestry Commission Scotland has appointed Sarah Archer as the new Education Officer for the Central Scotland area.

Sarah is responsible for delivering the Commission’s Woods for Learning Strategy, which encourages the use of woodlands for learning outdoors in early learning and childcare, primary and secondary education. Her role will have a focus on young children and involves working with educational establishments to support outdoor learning projects, such as Forest Kindergartens, and to co-ordinate Forest Kindergarten training for early learning and childcare practitioners.

Sarah said: “I know from my own teaching days what a difference being outdoors can make to learning, so I am really looking forward to working with nurseries and schools across central Scotland to develop Forest Kindergartens and other outdoor learning projects.

“There is lots of evidence to demonstrate the education, health and well-being benefits of outdoor learning and the Commission’s involvement in this area is continuing to grow. A key part of my work will be to build on this and encourage greater use of forests, woodlands and green spaces for education.”

Forest Kindergartens provide opportunities for young children to explore their local woodland or natural outdoor setting for active learning and play on a regular basis.

Sarah is a qualified primary school teacher and also brings a wealth of knowledge from working in the environment sector.

To discuss outdoor learning opportunities, please contact Sarah on 01698 368 553 or email sarah.archer@forestry.gsi.gov.uk

Look out for our autumn edition of Early Years Matters, which features an article on the Forest Kindergarten approach.

Scottish Government’s Website for Parents about ELCC⤴

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Reading stories

Have you seen the new website for parents and carers about the entitlement to ELCC?

Scottish Government is keen that parents and carers are reminded to take up a place for their child.

A public information campaign with advice for parents and carers on the eligibility criteria for funded early learning and childcare is currently running.

Check out the new website.

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“You’ve just got to do it”⤴

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Stephanie Porteous, Depute Manager at Cherry Blossom Nursery in Dundee, talked to Lisa McCabe from the Children and Families Team about the impact on her since joining Glow Early Learn in January.

Lisa: How long have you been a member of Glow Early Learn and how did you find out about the community?

Stephanie: I have only recently become a member of Glow Early Learn. In fact it was at the beginning of the year, following a CPD event run by Dundee City Council, my local authority, and the Children and Families Team of Education Scotland.

I found the whole evening to be extremely informative. You were there, Lisa and so was Con Morris. It was really great having you explain and demonstrate how the Early Learn Glow Community can be used as a positive resource for educators across Scotland.

I particularly liked when the community was described as a place for people to share their practice and not be judged on their lack of knowledge on a certain aspect but to be encouraged to ask questions and connected with other professionals. I think that is a really important message to get ‘out there’.

Lisa: What is the best thing about being a member of the community?

Stephanie: For me I often find that just having another colleague agree with what you are providing and what you are doing. I find that encouraging. I think we all need that from time to time. It sort of reinforces what you know.

Being able to connect with other professionals and sharing ideas is a huge positive for me and the way that the Early Learn Community looks makes it feel like a social platform as well as professional one. It’s easy to navigate your way around and nice and simple to upload your resources. The resources section is being used really well by colleagues, which is a great.

I also think that it’s great to see the different approaches to ELCC from across Scotland. Since joining, I have felt extremely supported by everyone. The colleagues I have been networking with so far have been honest and open about their flaws as well as their strengths. I find this really refreshing. They have been very happy to share practice, ideas, resources and photos; and, that has encouraged me to do so too. As an educator, it has encouraged me to look closely at my own practice and in some cases has highlighted areas where I’ve thought ‘How do we do that?, How can we do that better?’.

Lisa: Since you joined, what connections have you made?

Stephanie: I have made a wonderful connection with Allie Rankin through the community. Ailie works in Inverclyde. We have found that we approach things in a similar way. Recently there has been a thread around ‘Sciences’ and I could see during the conversation that Allie and I shared the same challenges within this curriculum area. By the end of this thread both of us came out with a vastly improved knowledge and a fantastic resource that we are currently using, to help improve our practice.

Lisa: For those who don’t know, can you give us a flavour of what have you been discussing inside Glow Early Learn?

Stephanie: For me the main subject that inspired a lot of chat, comments and resources, was the use of ‘I Can’ statements. This really, for me, was the point where Glow Early Learn started having an impact on my setting. Everyone who joined the thread had an opinion on the proper and improper use of I can statements, and it was very obvious that these were being used in a huge variety of ways across different settings. Colleagues were happy to share resources, and the resources shared were nothing less than amazing. It really made clear to me the potential of Glow Early Learn and how it could support anyone from support workers to teachers in providing the highest quality ELCC across Scotland. It also shows that we all have the same challenges in common and that we all need a little support and encouragement from time to time.

Lisa: So, what have you learned by being a member of the community that you may not otherwise have learned?

Stephanie: I have realised that we are not all perfect and that everyday we face broadly similar challenges. I have also learned that there is a huge amount of fantastic resources out there to support the people who work in ELCC, and that people have a genuine love for their job and go, and want to go, the extra mile, daily.

Lisa: And what has been the most significant learning to date?

Stephanie: The support, advice and resources I received through the community with the development of the use of ‘I CAN’ statements across the setting has had an extremely positive impact on my setting. The entire team have felt the effects of the community as I have been able to provide staff training, staff development, etc. through my links with Early Learn community.

Lisa: You have gotten a great deal out of being a member of the community, Stephanie. What have you put in?

Stephanie: I do remember you saying at the evening we had in Dundee that we would ‘get out what we put in’. That is so true. You have to be active as a member. You have to be prepared to give of your opinion and to justify the reasons for your views. I try to be a supportive colleague by responding to questions. I shared our approach to planning and welcomed the feedback from others.

Lisa: Sometimes people worry about time, Stephanie. How do you manage your time on Glow Early Learn?

Stephanie: I would agree about ‘time’ for everything we need to do, not just glow. But by using glow and seeking advice, etc. from other professionals it has saved me time in the long run, I suppose.

So I suppose it’s all about managing your time and using your time for what benefits you and your setting the most. Glow is definitely a HUGE benefit/resource for me as an educator, very positive impact so far.

Lisa: What do you think is better about making connections with colleagues in this way?

Stephanie: I feel supported and more confident in myself as an educator and it’s interesting to see, as I have mentioned before that we all face the same challenges and we ALL need to feel supported

It’s also good to have a support system/community where we are not judged, we are supported and you can ask for advice, help and suggestions.

Also, feedback is quite immediate. You don’t have to wait very long at all for someone to offer up a ‘pearl of wisdom’.

Lisa: How has your practice improved / changed as a result of the being a member of the community, Stephanie?

Stephanie: I would say that I feel more confident in myself and more confident in asking for help/advice and sharing my challenges. It is so reassuring to know that we don’t have to keep reinventing the wheel. It is also good to be able to explain why you do things in the way you do. I think I have become even more of a reflective educator as a result.

Lisa: What would you say to encourage others to join the community?

Stephanie: The community has encouraged me to share, ask questions, answer questions, communicate, research, and further development myself professionally. Since using the community I feel more confident in myself and my abilities. I recruited my mum to the community as she too is an ELCC practitioner. You’ve just got to do it!

Lisa: Stephanie, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us about your experience as a Glow Early Learn member and ambassador.

Stephanie: It’s a pleasure. Thanks, Lisa.